📈 GW1 - the secret to a perfect start 🏁

The stuff you should know:

📈 6m+ FPL teams registered.

😭 Bayern agree deal with Spurs to buy Harry Kane. Will he leave?

🤝 Raya to Arsenal, Gvardiol to Man City, Ward-Prowse to West Ham.

👀 West Ham also interested in Balogun (£4.5m FWD).

💰 Matt Turner (£4.0m GK) joins Forest.

🎁 Our tell-a-friend rewards launch today.

Keep reading for some incredibly reluctant differentials.

Alright?

What does it mean to be a lazy FPL manager?

When we changed our name in January, one reader (we’ll call him Pete) emailed us, agitated and insulted. “I don’t like being called lazy”, he said in no uncertain terms.

What Pete - and I’m sure others like him - didn’t realise is that being a lazy FPL manager is a talent that must be cultivated and refined. It is the ability to do in minutes what others can only do in hours.

To be called a lazy FPL manager is the highest of compliments.

By subscribing to LazyFPL, you’re part of a 26,000-strong community of managers who have chosen to work smarter, not harder. Your laziness is a badge of honour, and we’re proud to be starting the 23/24 season with you.

Slip on a robe, put your feet up and contemplate what you’ll do with all your free time. Your best fantasy season ever starts here.

Let’s look at everything you need to know to nail Gameweek 1.

Get free stuff by sharing LazyFPL

Enjoy this newsletter? As of today, we’ll give you free stuff if you share it.

If I’ve done this correctly (no guarantees), you should see a rather ugly referral section below this section. It’ll give you a unique link to share with the FPL communities you’re apart of - whether it’s a WhatsApp chat with your mates or an entire online community.

When anyone signs up using your link, you get rewards.

1 referral - get a curated list of free-to-enter mini-leagues with cash prizes, totalling over £15,000.

3 referrals - get the Professor’s 35-page guide to FPL mastery.

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50 referrals - get the super-exclusive LazyFPL t-shirt.

100 referrals - get a custom LazyFPL robe.

1,000 referrals - get LazyFPL Premium for life.

The Professor’s Team

We’ll start with the big man’s team.

If you’re new around here, the Professor is one of the best managers in the world. In fact, in nine seasons, he’s never finished outside of the top 100k. He also writes our premium emails.

But whilst his FPL record is exceptional, he’s just one man. You can copy his team if you like, but it’s intended more as guidance.

Here it is:

Btw, he’s using MyTeam this season - Fantasy Football Hub’s monstrous AI-powered team planner, which can also suggest transfers, display predicted points and give your team an AI-powered rating.

Get your team rated for free here and see if you can beat the Prof’s 91% rating.

Harry Kane’s will-he, won’t he.

Honestly, Harry. Must we do this every summer?

Every time Harry Kane does anything during a transfer window, the rumours begin.

Did he order a burger? Then perhaps he’s moving to the US. Wait, it was a mozzarella burger? Must be a shock move to Juventus. But hang on - the burger was served by an underpaid immigrant with no entitlement to basic human rights? Ah, it’s a move to Saudi.

This time, there’s some actual meat behind the speculation - not least Thursday’s news that a deal has been reached with Bayern Munich.

But, hours later, this emerged:

Aside from the mouth-watering prospect of Kane attempting to speak German in his first press conference, there are some other very interesting FPL considerations here too:

• the impact on Richarlison, who, at £7m, could yet be the season’s biggest steal.

• the impact on Heung-min Son. Will he be on penalties?

• the impact on Spurs as a whole.

• the impact on Haaland’s ownership.

We don’t deal in speculation, so these topics will be covered if and when he moves. For now, he’s a Spurs player.

Maybe don’t put too many of your fantasy eggs in his basket, mind.

The science to mastering Gameweek 1

If you want to be that manager that everyone else in your mini-league hates, you must start by accepting that the most important decisions you’ll make before the deadline have actually already been made for you.

The key questions of who to captain and where to allocate the majority of your budget have already been answered. Nobody will force you into captaining Erling Haaland, nor will there be a knock at your door if you choose to omit Bukayo Saka from your side.

But going against the grain is not recommended by anyone who regularly mixes it with the elite managers. As we always say, boring wins leagues.

Instead, the fate of the first few gameweeks will be defined by your half-decisions. These could include:

• which fifth midfielder should I pick?

• Should I optimise for a 3-5-2 or a 4-4-2?

• Should I opt for one budget defender or two?

• How much money should I leave in my bank?

This is the stuff that gives the top managers the sweaty night terrors. It isn’t “should I buy Haaland?”, it’s “will Onana get more bonus points than Luke Shaw?”.

Let’s look at the key half-decisions in each position.

The forward conundrum

Erling Haaland - the human/Norse-God hybrid - hasn’t scored in six games for City, which has panicked a small lobe of the collective FPL brain.

Like @ml27__ who, in his delirium, inexplicably posted a picture of international recording artist Pitbull to support his no-Haaland hypothesis.

Our advice would be to ensure you’re amongst the 86.5% of his devout followers who have kept the faith.

The more significant problem is who to select as the Samwise to his Frodo. There are two presiding approaches:

Approach 1 - buy a mid-priced forward (like Ollie Watkins or Nicolas Jackson).

Approach 2 - buy a budget forward (like Brighton’s Joao Pedro (£5.5m).

The approach you choose will depend largely on what you want to do with the rest of your team.

A cheap striker like Joao Pedro facilitates more expenditure in your midfield/defence, but it means starting a player who, for all of his promise, is not assured consistent starts at Brighton.

It’s sort of like buying a pair of flip-flops so you can afford the Armani suit: 95% of your body might look fantastic but the gap between your toes is still getting sliced like Edam on a Morrisons cheese-counter.

Opting for a player in Watkins’ price category gives you less financial freedom elsewhere, but in return you get a proven striker who is certain to start most games.

Divin Mubama remains the best £4.0m bench warmer.

Making the most of your midfield

Ah yes, the midfield. The cummerbund of your FPL team, holding the rest of the outfit together.

The midfield is particularly interesting this season, primarily because there are so many promising options to choose from.

Bukayo Saka and Marcus Rashford are the Simon and Garfunkel (Sakon and Marfunkel?) of the current template: they’re incredibly popular and they harmonise well with one another. You should probably own them.

It’s all about the other three slots. For brevity, we’ll call them The Indecision Trifecta. Or TIT for short.

TIT is where you’re most likely to own a differential, and I’d wager that it’ll be the key variable in how well your team performs in the opening few gameweeks.

Depending on how other parts of your team look, your TIT is probably going to resemble one of these:

Option 1: a £6.5m, Mo Salah, a £4.5m. For example:

Option 2: a £6.5m, and two £8.0/£8.5m options. Like this:

Option 1 involves a four-man midfield and is more conducive to a 4-4-2 formation. Option 2 lends itself to a 3-5-2. Both of these options are identical in cost.

LazyFPL’s very subjective thoughts: both approaches have merit here but we had a whole section in an earlier newsletter about the merits of Salah as a differential and, with a great pre-season under his belt, that hypothesis has not changed.

Mounting your defence

Variation amongst fantasy defenders is common. There are loads of ‘em, after all.

But variation amongst the teams represented in FPL defences is less common.

What? I’ll explain:

Most managers will own three or four defenders from five teams (Man United, Brighton, Man City, Newcastle and Arsenal are the most popular) in Gameweek 1, along with one or two budget defenders. Chelsea assets are also gathering momentum.

But the defenders they pick from within those teams will vary. One manager might go for Timber and Trippier, another might opt for White and Botman.

In a 50/50 call, we’ll almost always opt for the player who is nailed to start every week. As much as Pep seems to love John Stones at the moment, he is nothing if not fickle with his affections.

With the signing of Josko Gvardiol, it’s difficult to put too much faith in the starting-status of City defenders until the dust has settled. For that reason, defenders from Brighton, Arsenal, Man United and Newcastle should probably be your stalwarts.

Between the sticks

The shameful truth about goalkeepers in the FPL punditry community is that, when push comes to shove, nobody really cares about them.

Lip service is offered, of course, but most pundits stop thinking about their goalkeepers the moment the Gameweek 1 deadline has passed.

But remember, a goalkeeper is for life, not just for Gameweek 1. Will you give one a loving home?

Follow these rules and your goalkeeper pairing will be fine:

• Don’t spend more than £9.0m on your goalkeeper pairing.

• Ensure the more expensive goalkeeper starts every game.

• Ensure your cheap enabler has an outside chance of starting eventually.

Matt Turner has just been signed by Nottingham Forest from Arsenal, making him the best £4.0m goalkeeper available. As the Professor pointed out in his latest email, he rotates excellently with Brentford’s £4.5m starter Mark Flekken.

Nice. Sorted.

The end result

Take a step back. Give your Frankenstein’s monster a good once-over before you shock it into life.

It’ll probably look a little…unimaginative?

This is no coincidence. It’s how your team should look at this point. There will be a time and a place for creativity, but Gameweek 1 is not it.

If you need to express yourself, come up with a funny team name and tweak the colours on your team’s strip.

Ugh, fine. Here are some differentials.

But only because you asked so nicely.

Goalkeepers: Sam Johnstone (£4.5m, 1.5%).

Defenders: Levi Colwill (£4.5m, 3.1%), Destiny Udogie (£4.5m, 1.7%), Issa Kabore (£4.0m, 6%).

Midfielders: Moussa Diaby (£6.5m, 6.6%), Kevin De Bruyne (£10.5m, 15.1%), James Maddison (£7.5m, 12.1%).

Forwards: Aleksander Isak (£7.5m, 15%), Callum Wilson (£8.0m, 9.8%), Cody Gakpo (£7.5m, 6.2%).

Don’t say we don’t spoil you.

Just use them sparingly, yeah?

What are the bookies saying?

Did you know that there are these companies full of computers, analysts and mathematicians who get paid actual money to figure out who is most likely to score you FPL points?

They’re called bookies, and they’re bloody everywhere.

Whilst we don’t advocate for gambling here at LazyFPL, we do recommend looking at the bookies’ odds to see who they reckon is going to do the business. They’re not usually wrong.

The best captain for Gameweek 1

Yup, it’s Erling Haaland. Don’t overthink this one. He’s playing a newly promoted side and he’s hungry to break his own records.

(French Haaland was painted by RoryPaints, btw. Isn’t he c’est magnifique? Oui oui.)

Other stuff we found interesting

• Our free-to-enter mini-league.

• FPL legend Tino Livramento has joined Newcastle for £32m.

• Ben Crellin’s harrowing remarks on a Gameweek 1 Bench Boost.

  

You’re ready for this, so just chill out. Put on some Sade or something. Remember, if it all goes tits up (there’s a decent chance it will), there’s always next week.

After all, the season is long, and full of terrors.

We’ll be back in your inbox next Thursday, 24 hours before Gameweek 2.

Until then, stay lazy.

The LazyFPL team.