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FPL Pod

S4 Ep17: Off The Bench: Is Bruno Fernandes a perma-captain candidate?

FPL Pod

Premier League

Sports, Fantasy Sports

4.6749 Ratings

🗓️ 3 February 2026

⏱️ 51 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

With Man Utd’s stunning improvement under Michael Carrick, the form of Bruno Fernandes is hard to ignore, especially as captain while Erling Haaland continues to struggle in front of goal ⚽️👹⚽️

So FPL experts Harry Daniels and Lee Bonfield discuss whether the midfielder deserves the armband full-time, going with two Chelsea attackers, and how Nordi Mukiele could go down in FPL history.

LISTEN 👇

* Double Chelsea (04m 07s)
* Wirtz decision (10m 05s)
* Selling Saka (18m 05s)
* Haaland struggles (24m 37s)
* Bruno perma-captain (31m 14s)
* Mukiele v Lundstrum (48m 00s)

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Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0

Welcome back to this week's off the bench podcast from the Premier League. I'm Lee from

0:20.1

FPL family. And Lee from FPL Family.

0:26.1

And I'm FPL Harry. Well, Harry, most weeks this podcast does seem to start with a comment on Mr.

0:31.6

Erling Harlan. So who are we to break that trend? Last week, Harlem was captain by over seven million managers and this week it was just 5.6 million. So it's definitely trending downwards. That was

0:36.8

Harlan's lowest captaincy since game week 16. So who had your armband this week, Harry? And how did the game week go for you? Yeah. So the decision on captaincy was basically enough to change what would have been a red arrow into a green arrow. So I went Bruno Fernandez captain with a very last minute second assist, which also got him a couple of bonus points.

0:56.0

But I have to say, what was it, 25 minutes into that Manchester City game where Harlan picked

1:00.8

up his first assist and it looked all one-way traffic in that game.

1:04.3

You were panicking.

1:04.8

I felt I was panicking.

1:06.3

And I think everyone who decided to take Harland on had that same fear at that time in that game. And you get that every time you take on Harland, whoever he's playing against, right? You have that fear when they go to kick off. If he gets an early return, you know, you know, it's a long wait to see until the full-time whistle goes. But, yeah, enough for me to get a green arrow. The real highlights were Gabrielle 8, who just seems unstoppable at the moment once again.

1:28.3

Now he's back from injury. I decided to keep your striker, Hugo Eckertique, for 13 points. Very happy

1:33.8

to finally get some points from him, although a lot of people move to Jal Pedro, who I think we'll

1:38.7

talk about. And the hero, that is my cheap midfielder in Elliot Anderson, who needs Harry Wilson scoring three kicks every week when you get Elliot Anderson scoring seven points without even an attacking return. Just ticks over, doesn't he? Elliot Anderson, just every week. It's phenomenal. I know. He's one of those that it's infuriating to own at times because I spent my time counting DefCon. And then at the end of the week, he's never

2:01.1

going to be the issue in my team. He's always going to be the one that was there turning up, whereas there's lots of other players in my, in my midfield at my attack that I'd rather be selling at the moment who are not scoring goals. So at least Anderson is, yeah, I think he's 10th for all midfielders over the past six game weeks, another seven points at here. I feel like He is going quite under the radar just because he's not explosive.

2:19.9

But we'll talk about that when we get to it.

2:21.4

How was. all midfielders over the past six game weeks, another seven points at here. I feel like he is going

2:17.5

quite under the radar just because he's not explosive. But we'll talk about that when we get to it. How was your week? Yeah, pretty good. 73 for me this week, which was enough for a green, which is good. It was all about my transfers in, actually. I had a bit of a splurge during the week on transfers. I did three. I did the Fernandez in, so I did Bruno in as well as Enzo Fernandez in.

2:36.7

And I also, because, and we'll talk about the Chelsea fixture run right now, I also put in Zhao Pedro. I did it quite early on. I did it. I never do this, Harry, but I did the Jao Pedro transfer last Sunday. So, you know, just as the previous game week was finishing, I went early because I

2:51.4

thought, well, it looks like he's going to go up in price. A lot of people going to get on him, and I don't want to be priced out. So I did quite early, Eckertique, the Zhao Pedro. And as the week went on and then obviously the Napoli game happened, he played a lot of minutes. I had regret. I had the FPL regret.

3:07.0

I was like, well, he's definitely going to be benched at the weekend.

3:09.1

And so it proved.

3:10.1

So given that he come on, played a lot of minutes. I had regret. I had the FPL regret. I was like, well, he's

...

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