🤑 The expensive FPL players 💸

Summary for the lazy

⚽ Pre-season friendlies in full swing

💸 Today we look at the premium players - who’s worth the cheese?

🤝 LazyFPL Premium relaunches today - get it whilst it’s hot

👀 Elsewhere, Mahrez could be out, Rice completes Arsenal move.

Stick around for a look at the Professor’s first draft…

Alright?

Just like getting home safely from a night on the piss, success in FPL is mostly about your ability to balance.

Ying and yang. Mings and Hwang.

Last week we looked at the bargain-bucket fodder that every fantasy team needs if they’re to stick within their £100m budget.

This week, we look at the fruits of that sacrifice: the premium assets.

It’s time to dust off the fancy crockery: Haaland is coming to dinner and he doesn’t eat off any old shite.

A signing for the ages

We once made a promise that we’d only partner with organisations that we genuinely enjoy using ourselves.

Well, we’ve partnered with Fantasy Football Hub for that very reason. This was Ross on our internal WhatsApp chat just the other day:

So yeah - we approached them. No shame in that. Why? Well, because their product is really good (hence why we’ve been using it for years).

They publish loads of articles, team reveals, videos and podcasts but they also have a range of FPL tools like a fixture ticker, an OPTA-powered stats tool and, the jewel in the crown, My Team - an AI-powered team rating tool that offers personalised suggestions based on the weaknesses in your team.

And it works. They’re so confident of that fact that, if you join Hub and then don’t win your mini-league, they’ll actually refund your membership.

You can get your team rated here for free, which is a good place to start.

What counts as an FPL premium?

For reasons unbeknownst to us, the Oxford English Dictionary is yet to include an official definition of an FPL premium player.

Still, consensus amongst managers is relatively easy to reach. It’s an unspoken understanding, similar to knowing when to get the bill at the end of a meal.

Premiums are the most expensive players in each position. Trent Alexander-Arnold, who costs £8.0m, is still a premium despite costing a whole Joelinton less than Erling Haaland.

There are five premiums this season. Haaland (£14.0m), Harry Kane (£12.5m), Mo Salah (£12.5m), Kevin De Bruyne (£10.5m) and Trent (£8.0m).

Others, like Rashford/Son (£9.0m) and Robertson/Trippier (£6.5m) could be included in this category, though the £1.5m gulf between them and their pricier counterparts is enough to exclude them for most.

Let’s talk about a few of ‘em.

Is Haaland worth the money?

Yes.

Look, you’ve probably flirted with a non-Haaland draft in the early hours and realised, just like I did, that you can afford basically everyone else you want if you leave him out.

But the spoils of your mini-league victory will be won on a different battlefield. Just get him. 86% of managers already have.

Perhaps he gets injured. Maybe he gets a straight red against Burnley. Or maybe, just maybe, Pep decides to play him as a centre-back. Let’s not rule anything out.

We’ll be the first to look at alternatives, reader. But until then, his 36 goals last season equalled Southampton’s total goal tally, and bettered those of Everton and Wolves.

The man is a whole team in and of himself.

Mo Salah or No Salah?

Every season a significant chunk of FPL bosses manage to find a reason not to include Mohamed Salah in their Gameweek 1 squads. He is invariably the sacrificial lamb - the first on the chopping block when extra funds are needed.

The reasons for this are unclear. Aside from his remarkable season-long consistency, Salah’s Gameweek 1 record makes for frightening reading for the 74% of managers that have so far opted to go without.

But whether or not Salah is a good player isn’t what’s up for debate here. Instead, the question should be “is Salah worth the £12.5m that FPL HQ are asking?”.

The arguments against

The most compelling argument against is Haaland’s captaincy dominance, which makes his fee harder to justify. £12.5m feels like a sensible outlay for a player you’re captaining more often than not, but that likely won’t be the case this season.

Which forces us into like-for-like comparisons with his counterparts:

Will he outscore Rashford, Odegaard or Saka to the tune of £3.5-£4.0m? Perhaps not.

And could his admission be worthwhile if it enables us to afford a 263-point Kane? Very possibly.

The arguments for

Aside from Salah being excellent (a given, I hope), the best argument we’ve found for buying him is that, to be frank, there ain’t many alternatives.

Kevin De Bruyne, for all of his magnificence, is currently ruled out. His return date is unknown, which makes it hard to build dependable drafts that include the Belgian at the moment.

Salah is not the financial hindrance he has been in other seasons. Where once we might have had to choose between excellent midfielders, this season we can, as legendary FPL manager Harry Potter once said, take the lot.

Take this draft, for example, which includes five excellent midfielders without any obvious sacrifices.

The debate between Mo Salah and No Salah might be as arbitrary as the order of his first two fixtures.

Liverpool will play Chelsea away in Gameweek 1, followed by Bournemouth at home in Gameweek 2.

Would arguably the best FPL player of all time only be owned by 24% of managers if that fixture order was reversed?

It’s hard to imagine he would.

Trent vs The World

At one point, Alexander-Arnold was close to essential. “Whatever the price, I’ll pay it” said my mate on the precipice of the 20/21 price reveals once upon a time.

But as George Baldock will tell you, things change for defenders.

Whilst Trent has been priced at a career-high £8.0m, it comes after his worst ever season as a regular Liverpool starter.

33% of managers have taken the plunge regardless. There’s logic to this.

Firstly, Trent finished the season incredibly strongly. He was, in those last eight gameweeks, head and shoulders above other defenders. Not a single flake of dandruff in sight.

Secondly, hes been playing OOP (which, for the civilians, means “out of position”) as a midfielder in recent Liverpool fixtures.

Very simply: if he continues his late-22/23 form, he’ll be worth the £8.0m. If he - like last season - only musters two clean sheets and three attacking returns from his first 18 games, he’s worth avoiding for now.

All eyes on pre-season.

Speaking of pre-season…

What a happy coincidence that our new partners at FFHub also happen to maintain an always-up-to-date article that tracks every relevant pre-season result.

These guys tend to this article like a grounds-keeper tends to a pitch. It’s pruned and immaculate.

We’d rather not waste valuable space in our weekly newsletter documenting pre-season results like Luton vs Ipswich, so please bookmark it.

A note on Kane

It’s hard to discuss Harry Kane with too much vigour given he might not be a Premier League player by Gameweek 1.

Rightly or wrongly, most of the top FPL managers see him as a disposable luxury rather than a must-have at the moment. He’s in just 16% of teams.

That might change if his future at Spurs is assured but, until then, building a team around him feels like tempting fate.

The Professor’s first draft

Our premium members have already received the Prof’s first draft with a data breakdown for every pick (you can join them here), but we’re not the sorts to withhold valuable information, so here it is:

Remember, this guy has never finished outside of the top 100k.

(Btw, the Prof is using FFHub’s My Team tool. Try it for free here.)

Other tidbits

• Riyad Mahrez has agreed personal terms with Al-Ahli.

• Benjamin Mendy has been cleared of all charges, and will be a free agent this summer.

• Declan Rice completes his Arsenal move.

• This tweet from us:

Right - we’re back next week, looking primarily at the massive number of mid-priced players we like the look of.

Stay lazy,

The LazyFPL team.

p.s. it feels fitting that we should launch LazyFPL Premium on the same day as our email about premiums. If you want access to our exclusive WhatsApp groups, invites to our private leagues and two extra emails a week, take a look.