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We dive into the stats to work out whether Omar Marmoush is a must-buy in the FPL.
Between goals against Brighton and Leicester and an injury that will keep Erling Haaland out for up to seven weeks, Manchester City’s Omar Marmoush has become hot property in Fantasy Premier League circles, and was even the second-most captained player in Gameweek 30 – but is Marmoush really as good as his form suggests, and is he worth signing over other FPL forwards?
We’ve done a deep dive into the stats to work out whether the Egyptian’s recent success is sustainable and whether he’s likely to outperform rival strikers over the final eight weeks of the season.
Just how good is Manchester City’s Omar Marmoush?
Since arriving at the Etihad, Marmoush’s form – at least in terms of goals and assists, which is what we care about from an FPL perspective – has been all over the place. A brilliant hat-trick against Newcastle was the only return he managed across his first nine appearances across all competitions, but he’s now bagged in three consecutive matches.
That form, combined with the obvious potential he flashed against Newcastle and his fine performances for Eintracht Frankfurt – for whom he scored 20 goals in 26 games – has made him look like an FPL must-buy, especially at a price of just £7.4m and with a likely Manchester City double gameweek in GW33.
Marmoush has scored his five Premier League goals from a combined xG of 2.7 (his hat-trick only needed 0.71xG’s worth of chances) which is an exceptional rate. Any striker averaging above their xG is worthy of consideration for an FPL team, but going at nearly double is remarkable.
For context, Erling Haaland, generally regarded as one of the most predatory forwards in the division, has scored his 21 goals from an xG of 20.8 this season, and actually undershot his expected goals in 2023/24, at least in the Premier League. That demonstrates just how good Marmoush has been in front of goal so far, but is it sustainable?
To work that out, we need to look at his past track record – and it’s massively impressive. With Frankfurt he managed 15 league goals from 8.8xG in the first half of the season, a ratio of 1.70 goals per expected goals, only slightly worse than that which he has managed in the Premier League so far.
The season before, his return was slightly less amazing – 12 goals from 11.8xG – but he has kept up an exceptional finish rate right across the 2024/25 season and there’s no immediate reason to assume that he will drop off.
The other important factor, of course, is just how high his xG will actually be for the rest of the season. Being a brilliant finisher means little if the chances aren’t coming, and with Manchester City proving to be pretty inconsistent in terms of chance creation this year, it’s possible that he won’t get a huge volume of chances.
So far, in the small sample size we have for his play at the Etihad, he’s been offered chances at a rate of 0.43xG per match. That’s pretty high, and based on his current goalscoring ratio would mean he scored, on average, 6.3 goals across the rest of the league season. Not bad, but how does it compare to other high-end forwards?
Is Omar Marmoush the best striker you can buy in FPL?
Comparing the likely performances of some of the FPL's best strikers for the remainder of the season.Comparing the likely performances of some of the FPL's best strikers for the remainder of the season.
Comparing the likely performances of some of the FPL's best strikers for the remainder of the season. | NationalWorld
If we assume that the most popular strikers in the game continue to both get chances and score them at the same rate that they have done in the Premier League this season for the rest of their matches, then as we can see Marmoush is only ‘likely’ to get more chances than Chris Wood (just) and as such even at his amazing conversion rate, he’s liable to be outscored by both Alexander Isak and Jean-Philippe Matetea, partly because they have one more match left to play. Please note that the total predicted xG and goals assume the players are involved in all 90 minutes of every remaining match, so they will trend downwards slightly in reality.
Of course, there are caveats here. Firstly, in any given single game, Marmoush is more likely to score on current form than any (healthy) striker save for Isak, so while Mateta would be a better bet as a hold for the rest of the season due to his impending double gameweeks, Marmoush is liable to outscore him once GW32 is out of the way.
With the way transfers work, in other words, keeping Mateta for two more weeks and then swapping him out for Marmoush would be a very solid play, if it weren’t for the fact that having both of them right now is probably the right move. The best front three based on form is Marmoush, Mateta and Isak, and it isn’t all that close.
The second caveat is that prior to Haaland’s injury, Marmoush was occupying the pseudo-ten role previously played by Julian Álvarez. In other words, now that he’s almost certain to play as the central striker instead of supporting Haaland, his expected goals should logically go up, and as the last remaining ‘recognised’ striker in Pep Guardiola’s squad, he shouldn’t take too much of a hit from the dreaded Pep Roulette.
The stats tell us that Marmoush is a great buy, especially at his price point, while Haaland is out. Next season, I’d expect him to be less attractive as he would once again be operating behind Haaland most of the time and it’s highly probable that his price goes up (perhaps to £8.5m or even £9.0m), meaning his points-to-cost ratio would get worse.
Isak is, undoubtedly, the best forward in the FPL right now, and it isn’t especially close, but the numbers suggest that if you can afford Marmoush, you should sign him. If you can only afford one of Marmoush and Mateta due to your team structure, then Mateta is probably better for Gameweeks 31 and 32, while Marmoush will be the superior signing thereafter, at least if the stats hold up and Guardiola keeps playing him – which, given that we’re dealing with a very small sample size for Marmoush and a manager noted for making interesting team selections, isn’t guaranteed.
Either way, Manchester City have signed a very good player who’s in the form of his life – and form matters, too. With three goals and an assist in his last three matches (including the FA Cup win over Bournemouth), Marmoush has the hot hand as well as the raw data behind him. Sign him, or regret it.
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