A differential is a player few managers own: when he scores, you gain on most of your rivals, which is how ranks climb. These are owned by fewer than 10% of managers and ranked by expected points over the next five gameweeks.
Expected points come from our own model (team strength from recent results, each player’s goal and assist rates per 90 minutes, his chance of starting and of playing 60 minutes, clean sheets and bonus). Tested on every gameweek of 2024/25 and 2025/26 using only the data available before each deadline, it ranked players closer to their real scores than FPL’s own projection (correlation 0.57 against 0.49), and its top pick each week averaged 11 points against 5.9 for FPL’s.