Enough has been said about the more popular picks already, so I've trimmed down my list to those which are on less than ~20% of the teams:
NAME | PRICE | POPULARITY |
DEMARE Arnaud | 743 | 15 |
ASGREEN Kasper | 565 | 6 |
TEUNS Dylan | 384 | 8 |
ALBANESE Vincenzo | 380 | 3 |
KELDERMAN Wilco | 324 | 3 |
BATTISTELLA Samuele | 224 | 7 |
HONORE Mikkel Frølich | 169 | 13 |
FUGLSANG Jakob | 163 | 4 |
KANTER Max | 157 | 9 |
QUINN Sean | 151 | 3 |
TRATNIK Jan | 121 | 9 |
STEIMLE Jannik | 98 | 4 |
GAZZOLI Michele | 78 | 4 |
ABERASTURI IZAGA Jon | 72 | 2 |
BEVIN Patrick | 10 | 16 |
SOTO MARTINEZ Nelson Andres | 1 | 2 |
Several of those fit the same reasoning, with Arkea und Astana currently in the WT relegation zone. Battistella has specifically said that it'll be all about points hunting in 2024 (no GT for him, only suitable races), and I'd assume that this will be a common theme on those teams. Albanese (injured) and Gazzoli (doping) have also missed significant parts of 2023, and Kanter - for the first time since turning pro - will have a designated leadout man to follow him through all/most races. Demare is a bit of a different story, as he honestly just don't seem to be quite as good anymore, but he looks happy at Arkea, will have strong support, and probably free choice what races to do, which imo should somehow accumulate to 1000+ points in the end.
Although Asgreen basically did a normal racing schedule in 2023, to me it looked fairly obvious that he wasn't at his best again yet for the first half of it - same as Teuns, who fell into kind of a hole after his divorce (?). So they should have room for improvement, same as Fuglsang, Tratnik or Kelderman, who missed (or weren't at 100% in) most of the races they initially had aimed for.
About Sean Quinn I know nothing in this regard, but he looked incredibly strong in some of the Burgos/Vuelta stages, and with some more experience, hopefully will be able to also translate this into results more than before.
Steimle and Aberasturi are a bit of a risky ones, as stepping down to PT level rarely comes with a boost of results, but Steimle also missed large parts of 2023, and will obviously have much more freedom than at Quickstep. With Zemke, Q36.5 also signed a quality (German) DS, which he could benefit from. And Euskadi needs to secure a Top 40 to stay in the hunt for the Vuelta wildcards, so they normally should send Aberasturi to as many flattish one day races as they can find (his PCS schedule currently lists 13 of those in the first 8 weeks of the season).
Soto honestly hasn't really set the world on fire during his first stints on (p)ct level, but he looks like the fastest gus at Petrolike, and with Savio on board now, the team should normally do a lot of crappy races with sprinting opportunities for him.
Can't say I'm very confident about Bevin, but he said that he was improving again (after whatever problems in 2023), and hopefully won't be quite as bad again.