FPL tips: Could surprise Creativity king Hourihane save your season?

With the Fantasy Premier League season coming to a close, managers chasing mini-league titles will be looking for the most marginal of gains – so how can Creativity help?

Creativity is the metric used by the FPL to illustrate which players are creating the best chances for their team-mates, regardless of whether or not those chances are converted.

Here, we have analysed the players with the best Creativity outputs since the Premier League’s resumption. So who is showing potential in the assists department?

Rock me like a Hourihane

Perhaps not the man who comes to mind when looking for a player to save your FPL season, Aston Villa’s Conor Hourihane has the Creativity stats to raise eyebrows.

The 29-year-old has featured in all but one of Aston Villa’s league games since lockdown, and while he has registered just one assist, he boasts the best Creativity per 90 minutes score of any PL player since the league’s return (68.4).

Generally a cumulative total of 100 Creativity is enough for a player to register an assist, so the Villa man could reasonably expect to have returned three assists rather than one in recent weeks.

At £5.7m and 0.1% ownership, the Irishman is a great differential bargain option too.

Elsewhere, Leicester’s Marc Albrighton sneaks into the top 10 for Creativity since the league’s resumption, at 36.8 per 90.

Albrighton has just three assists this season, but clearly has the potential to add more in the Foxes’ final games of the 2019/20 season, with Bournemouth and Sheffield United to come.

Finally, Chelsea’s Willian has returned to action in fine fettle also, scoring 50.1 Creativity per 90.

His two assists against Crystal Palace showed the Brazilian’s worth in Frank Lampard’s young and talented team, and at £7.3m he can be considered a bargain for an attacking midfielder.

Premium passers

Of course, if you’ve got plenty of funds knocking around, why pinch pennies on a bargain when you could buy one of the league’s premium passers?

It will surprise few to see that Kevin De Bruyne has the highest cumulative Creativity score this season by some distance (1712.2) while the Belgian is just two assists away from Thierry Henry‘s season-record of 20 set in the 2002/03 campaign.

KDB has registered three FPL assists since the league’s return and boasts a Creativity per 90 score of 57.4 in that time, second only to Hourihane – with Brighton, Bournemouth, Watford and Norwich to come, his £10.8m price tag should be no barrier.

Elsewhere in City’s talented ranks is Riyad Mahrez, who has a Creativity per 90 score of 33.5 in recent games, as well as two assists to boot.

With Leroy Sane on his way out, Mahrez’s game time looks more assured, while his £8.6m price tag is very reasonable given City’s favourable fixture list.

And last but not least, Bruno Fernandes is hard to ignore these days, and predictably finds himself in the top 10 for Creativity per 90 since the return of the Premier League with a score of 43.9.

Fernandes has revolutionised Manchester United’s post-Ferguson midfield, and demonstrated his providing abilities with two assists against Bournemouth.

With Southampton, Crystal Palace and West Ham up next, the Portuguese may fancy his chances of adding to his impressive tally.