Aston Villa and Scotland star John McGinn proves captaincy skills with world-beating fantasy football choices

Aston Villa star John McGinn has proved he knows all about what it takes to be a great captain in an unusual way.

The midfielder is one of many Premier League professionals joining 10 million people across the world who enjoy playing the Fantasy Premier League game.

Part of the fantasy football strategy sees users pick a player on their team to captain for every Gameweek. This player then has their score doubled and added to the team's total in that round.

Picking a player to give the fantasy armband to can cause headaches for users with few daring to take it off Manchester City talisman Erling Haaland over the past 12 months. However, if fantasy managers are bold enough to gamble on different players every week, it can reap great rewards.

That's something that McGinn has proven with his 'Meatballers' team. The Scotsman is Aston Villa captain himself and clearly has a knack for knowing who deserves the armband every week.

The 28-year-old has played Fantasy Premier League every season since 2013, when he was 18 years old, but won't have had a start to the season quite as impressive as the 2023/24 campaign.

X account All About FPL dug through some data and found that not one player across the world had scored more points from captain choices this season than McGinn - ignoring one player who had used the Triple Captain chip.

The midfielder gave the armband to the obvious choice, Erling Haaland, in Gameweek 1 and Gameweek 4, benefitting from his brace and hat-trick. He was also brave enough to take the captaincy off Haaland in between those matches, to great reward.

In Gameweek 2 McGinn captained Liverpool star Diogo Jota for his goal and assist against Bournemouth and in Gameweek 3 he went for Raheem Sterling against Luton Town, when the England international scored twice, bagged an assist and kept a clean sheet.

Reacting to the stats online, Fantasy Premier League players begged McGinn to reveal who he might be captaining next week. Another added: "Like…what? John McGinn you crystal ball owner you."

McGinn's fantasy football side sits with an impressive overall rank of 200,495 in the world. The star's best-ever end-of-season finish in the game came in 2018/19 when he placed just inside the top 500,000 at 499,830.