🤫 Six underrated mid-priced FPL players 👀

Summary for the lazy 😴

😡 Gameweek 2’s Burnley vs Luton is postponed, making it a Blank Gameweek.

🔵 Man City sign Gvardiol; Mahrez leaves for Saudi.

🧠 Today we’ll look at the mid-priced gems your mates probably don’t own.

🤝 Onana (£5.0m GK) signs for Man United, Nakamba (£4.5m MID) joins Luton.

🏆 Join our free-to-enter league.

Keep reading for a promising £4.5m forward option who’s having a blinding pre-season.

Alright?

Mid-priced players are to FPL squads what bread is to a sandwich.

Unless you’re ordering some deconstructed nightmare at an overpriced bistro in Soho, the bread is the most integral part.

But too much can be stodgy and tasteless. Too little? The whole damn ensemble might just collapse in on itself.

The same is true of mid-priced FPL assets. They’ll form the majority of your squad for the time-being. They’re the underrated sustenance, capable of making or breaking your season without you even noticing.

Whether you like brioche or brown, gluten-free or granary, it’s time to delete the calorie tracker and throw the super foods in the bin.

Today we’re tucking into some carby mid-priced snacks.

LazyFPL Premium is back

We reckon that now (a few weeks before the season starts) is probably the best possible time to try LazyFPL Premium, which is why we’ve reopened it.

For a cheap pint a month, you’ll get:

• Two extra emails from the Professor every gameweek (and his biblical pre-season content).

• Access to our broadcast WhatsApp group, where we report need-to-news as it happens (and occasionally leak team lineups early).

• Access to a chat WhatsApp group.

• An invite to our Premium mini-league (excellent prizes).

Here’s what Brian, a Premium member, said about it:

Burnley vs Luton is Lut-off

The 23/24 season has already had two blank gameweeks confirmed, making it possibly the most disappointing season that hasn’t actually started yet in history.

Thankfully, unlike Man City vs Brentford’s blank in Gameweek 18, Burnley vs Luton’s postponement is a lot more palatable for fantasy managers.

If there was any temptation to stockpile their assets ahead of the new season, that temptation has, just like their Gameweek 2 fixture, surely been put on hold.

Six underrated mid-priced FPL gems

You already know that Bukayo Saka and Marcus Rashford are pretty decent footballers.

You probably also have an inkling that James Maddison can play, and that Martin Odegaard and Bruno Fernandes might be a little bit underpriced.

We like to err-on-the-side-of-boring early in the season. It’s how you win mini-leagues.

But the mid-priced category gives us the most room for creativity, so here are six mid-priced players all owned by less than 15% of managers, who probably deserve a lot more attention.

[Btw, the data for all of these picks was sourced from the resource-rich mines of our partners, Fantasy Football Hub. Join here and get your money back if you don’t win your mini-league (T&Cs apply).]

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🔨 Jarrod Bowen (£7.0m MID, 5.8% owned)

The memory of an FPL manager is notoriously short. They’re like bigger, grumpier goldfish.

So it’s no surprise that few managers remember how excellent Bowen’s 21/22 season was, in which he mustered 29 attacking returns and 206 FPL points.

Has he lost it? Apparently not. With three goals and two assists to his name already in pre-season, he’s living proof that English people that spend their summers in Australia can still be somewhat productive.

There are a few other intriguing over-achievers too, neatly outlined by All About FPL.

🔵 Phil Foden (£7.5m MID, 13.2% owned)

Foden is the sort of player that could’ve cost £1.0m more without too many shaved-eyebrows being raised.

If he gets more than 2,000 minutes in the Premier League (a feat he has only barely scraped once - in the 21/22 season), he’ll probably be one of the highest scoring FPL midfielders in the league.

He managed 18 attacking returns in just 1,832 minutes last campaign. For context, Martin Odegaard (the second highest scoring midfielder last season) had 3,132 minutes and only mustered 5 more. No midfielder scored more FPL points-per-90 than Phil.

It’s a tale as old as time for a player who many believe deserves more match time than he currently enjoys. With Mahrez gone and De Bruyne injured, Foden has more of an opportunity than ever to finally get it.

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Callum Wilson (£8.0m FOR, 10.2% owned)

I hope you’re sitting down for this one, but of the players who played more than 200 minutes last season, Erling Haaland had the highest xG/90 (expected goals per 90). ‘Course he did.

But Callum Wilson was second.

18 goals, 6 assists. He did it in 1,870 minutes.

He was also third for FPL points per 90 (amongst players who actually played regularly). Only Haaland and (rather strangely) Firmino bettered his 7.5 points-per-90 tally. In the final eight gameweeks, he was top.

There’s concern over how frequently he’ll play, but he played over 60 minutes in five of the last seven games last season, starting alongside Alexander Isak in all five.

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🔴 Darwin Nunez (£7.5m FOR, 7.5% owned)

For a player who was famously - and almost comically - wasteful throughout last season, it’s hard to believe that Darwin Nunez still managed 14 attacking returns in just 1,684 minutes of football.

Indeed, his expected goal involvements per 90 - a solid barometer for forwards - was second (1.18) only to - you guessed it - Erling Haaland (1.27) amongst forwards.

In lazy terms, this means that when Darwin was on the pitch, he was very involved.

He started and played 46 minutes in Liverpool’s only pre-season friendly so far. It took him 3 minutes to score.

Diogo Jota and Cody Gakpo (who both scored in that game too) are the nearest thing to a like-for-like replacement, but none have the towering, bouncer-outside-a-nightclub presence of the Uruguayan.

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🐓 Pedro Porro (£5.0m DEF, 4.2% owned)

In the final six gameweeks of the season, it was not Trent Alexander-Arnold or a trendy Arsenal defender topping the charts for FPL points-per-90 amongst defenders.

Instead it was Pedro Porro. The little Spaniard that could.

We’ve already talked about Ange Postecoglou’s love of full-backs, so if Porro is his preferred choice (the alternative is Emerson Royal), there’s plenty of potential for him to thrive.

Spurs have only played one friendly so far - a 2-3 defeat to West Ham. Porro started.

🦹 Alex Moreno (£5.0m DEF, 0.4% owned)

A proper hipster pick, this one.

Villa’s Alex Moreno is orange-flagged at the moment due to a hamstring injury, but boy is the left-back one to watch.

Last season, Moreno was second only to Trippier for FPL points-per-start amongst defenders. After joining in January, he started 14 games.

This, combined with Villa’s strengthening at the back, bodes very well.

(check out Pedro Porro in there too).

Unless we get clarity on his recovery, he’s not one to rush into your team just yet. But monitor his progress closely, reader, because he might just be one of the most underrated FPL prospects in the game.

City lose Mahrez but get Gvardiol

Fabrizio Romano, football’s equivalent of the Oracle from The Matrix films, has confirmed that Riyad Mahrez is moving to Al Ahli (if you get your Al’s confused, those are the guys that have just signed Roberto Firmino).

The consolation prize is Josip Gvardiol, the Croatian 21-year-old centreback. He’s the one who wore a mask throughout the World Cup which made his remarkably mature performances all the more intimidating.

Luckily for you, we’ve asked our best analytical brains to determine how he’ll fit in to Pep’s system and, after days of research, this is what they came up with.

Nice one.

Bargain hunters rejoice

It’s been a fantastic week for the David Dickinsons amongst you.

Firstly, André Onana has joined Manchester United from Inter Milan, and he’ll only cost £5.0m. A great way into one of last season’s most sturdy backlines.

But it gets even better, because £4.5m midfielder Marvelous Nakamba - scouted by us a few weeks ago - has completed a permanent move to Luton.

Back then we said “if he moves, he plays”, and we’re sticking to it.

A £4.5m midfielder who will get minutes? Ruddy Marvelous.

And - because you’ve stuck around for this long - a Brucey Bonus. West Ham’s Divin Mubama has scored in 3/3 pre-season friendlies so far, including their most recent fixture against Spurs.

He costs just £4.5m 👀

Lazy tidbits

• Christopher Nkunku has scored in both of Chelsea’s pre-season friendlies now.

• Winger Moussa Diaby has signed for Villa - he notched 9 goals and 8 assists for Leverkusen last season.

• A reminder of the Hub’s pre-season friendly article, constantly updated.

• FPL legend Matt Doherty has returned to Wolves.

• Chelsea’s Wesley Fofana has sadly broken his ACL and undergone surgery.

• Harvey Barnes joins Newcastle.

• Here’s every done-deal so far this summer.

Next week is all about strategy. How will the world’s best FPL managers be approaching the 23/24 season? All will be revealed.

Stay lazy,

The LazyFPL team.

p.s. if you’re new around here, please hit “reply” and tell us what you thought to your first email. We read every single response, and we’re desperate to improve.