🚀 GW6 - the easy way to bounce back 📈

The stuff you should know 🚨

⏰ Gameweek 6’s deadline is 13:30 BST on Saturday 23rd September.

👀 Julian Alvarez “almost undroppable” - Pep.

🤕 Ivan Perisic and Rico Henry out for rest of the season.

🤦 Bernardo Silva out for a few games.

Stick around to see which Premier League footballer made 114 transfers on his Wildcard.

Alright?

Though Dante’s The Divine Comedy is celebrated as one of the great works of poetry, it made one crucial error.

Nine circles of hell are described, but there is, in fact, a tenth. This circle, more revolting and repugnant than even Dante’s most visceral rungs of suffering, is reserved only for those foolish enough to make an FPL team.

The punishment? Having to watch your well-researched set of fantasy players score sod-all points. Every bloody gameweek. Ad infinitum.

The small consolation, reader, is that at least we do it the lazy way.

Let’s put the Divine Comedy of errors that was Gameweek 5 behind us and look ahead to Gameweek 6. Calm, collected and calculating.

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Is Jackson to Alvarez a must?

The most popular transfer ahead of Gameweek 6 is Nicolas Jackson out, Julian Alvarez in.

Last week we argued that with his decent underlying stats and solid fixtures, Jackson deserves some patience.

We stand by that position, but our conviction has been wobbled by the fact that, once again, the Chelsea man picked up a booking. He’s now 1 yellow away from a suspension and we’re barely out of the gates. Diego Costa would be proud.

This, combined with a succession of missed goal scoring opportunities, has finally robbed Michael Jackson of his long-held “most unpopular Jackson” title.

Golden boy Julian Alvarez is his antithesis. Earlier this week Pep described him as “almost undroppable”, and the World Cup winner plays Nottingham Forest next. He also costs just £6.9m (behave).

Listen, nobody will begrudge you of making this transfer. It’s a £6.9m forward playing regularly for arguably the best attacking team the Premier League has ever seen.

He’s over-performing, but that’s what excellent players who regularly start for Man City tend to do.

Still, it would be incredibly FPL-y of Jackson to finally bag his well overdue haul on the week that everyone decides to finally get rid, wouldn’t it?

You’ve been warned.

Wildcards don’t always shine.

Wildcards on the table: none of us at LazyFPL HQ are playing ours this week.

Premium members will know that The Professor - who, like many top managers, has had a challenging start to the season - likes to regularly remind us (and himself) that he “really likes his team”.

But really liking your FPL team is becoming a controversial stance.

It’s sort of like telling people that you really like Nickelback. You’ll need to be ready to defend your position.

“But what about your rank?”
“But what about Chilwell?”
“But don’t you want Salah?”
“But weren’t they just a one-hit wonder?”

It might be the right time to Wildcard for you, but do remember:

• There’s another International Break after Gameweek 8

• There’s a huge fixture swing after Gameweek 8

• You’ll probably need an easy way to get rid of any Luton/Burnley players you’ve acquired for their double in Gameweek 7

The Professor is waiting to play his Wildcard after Gameweek 8. He never made it as a wise man, but he’s pretty decent at FPL. We suspect most good managers will do the same.

If you need something to distract you whilst you wait, it turns out Nickelback actually have 11 studio albums for you to get through. That ought to tide you over.

Newcastle’s impressive defence.

Newcastle have already played Man City, Liverpool and Brighton this season. They lost to all three, but have still emerged as the fourth-most robust defence in the league, statistically speaking.

Now, off the back of two clean sheets (one at home to Brentford, one away to the lesser-known AC Milan), their fixtures start to get much better.

Sheffield United (A), Burnley (H), Crystal Palace (H) and Wolves (A) await them in four of their next five fixtures: a run that has more clean sheet potential than a Travelodge launderette.

Sven Botman remains the tastiest pick. At £4.6m, he’s a starting 11 stalwart with a more promising attacking output than Kieran Trippier at the moment.

A double-up with Nick Pope or Fabian Schar isn’t out of the question either.

What to do with Chilwell?

Speaking of defenders, Ben Chilwell is the most transferred out defender after his benching in Gameweek 5. The Chilwell to Botman move is proving particularly popular.

The consensus amongst top managers is to see whether he starts against Aston Villa before rushing him out. We all know how good he is when he starts, and given Chelsea lacked a clinical edge against Bournemouth in his absence, it wouldn’t be shocking to see him reintroduced on Sunday.

If he fails to start again, he’s an easy transfer out.

What happened in Europe?

Top tip: skip this bit if you already know.

Tuesday’s games

Man City - Beat Red Star 3-1.

⚽️ Alvarez (2), Rodri (1)
👟 Haaland, Foden

Every player who returned played 80 mins or more.

Newcastle - Drew 0-0 with AC Milan.

Isak started and played 90. Wilson introduced at 60-minute mark.

___

Wednesday’s games

Arsenal - Beat PSV 4-0.

⚽️ Saka, Odegaard, Trossard, Jesus
👟 Saka, Odegaard, Trossard, Nelson

Saka played 69 minutes (behave), Odegaard played 90.

Man United - Lost 4-3 to Bayern Munich.

⚽️ Hojlund, Casemiro (2)
👟 Rashford, Martial, Fernandes

Rashford and Fernandes both played 90. Hojlund scored his first goal for the club.

___

Thursday’s games 

West Ham - Beat TSC 3-1.

⚽️ Kudus, Soucek
👟 Ward-Prowse (2)

Brighton - Lost 2-3 to AEK Athens.

⚽️ Pedro (2 penalties)
👟 Pedro won them both

Mitoma played 86, Estupinan played 90.

Liverpool - Beat LASK 3-1.

⚽️ Nunez (p), Diaz, Salah
👟 Nunez, Gravenberch

Salah introduced on 74 mins.

Aston Villa - Lost 3-2 to Legia Warsaw.

⚽️ Duran, Digne
👟 Zaniolo

Diaby, Watkins and Cash all introduced after 60 minutes.

The impact of European football.

Most FPL managers harbour a vague notion that teams involved in midweek European games will play worse at the weekend.

This is a myth.

A 2015 study by UEFA themselves found no evidence to suggest that teams perform worse in Premier League games that immediately follow a midweek European tie. And when have UEFA ever lied about anything?

There is enough evidence to suggest that a longer-term detrimental impact can usually be observed over a whole season, but this is relatively negligible.

What about lineups? 

It’s hard to collect sturdy evidence for pre or post-European tie rotation trends because Premier League clubs tend to rotate more regularly these days anyway.

Last season, Pep would often play key players three times a week, taking opportunities to rest them where he could (for example, he substituted Erling Haaland at half-time against FC Copenhagen last year, but the Norse God had already bagged a brace and City were 3-0 up).

Klopp was relatively rigid with his most important players too: Mohamed Salah would regularly play 270 minutes across a 7-day span.

Nothing is concrete, but one conclusion can be drawn: team selection after a midweek European group-stage game doesn’t appear to be impacted by a lack of rest, but rather by other factors: specific tactical considerations, the form of players, the quality of the opponent etc.

The morale of the story is simple: please don’t transfer out or bench top players just because they’ve featured in midweek European tournaments. Cool? Cool.

The key stats.

Despite scoring at the weekend, Haaland racked up an xG of 2.56 against West Ham. His outlandish xG now stands alone; a marginalised freak of nature.

Here are all the other stats you need to avoid stupidity.

The Professor’s team.

The Professor went into a fair bit of depth about his team and planned transfers in the latest Premium email.

This is how it looks now.

He’s eyeing the “relatively boring” (his words) transfer of removing William Saliba, probably for Crystal Palace’s Joachim Andersen or Newcastle’s Sven Botman.

Nicolas Jackson stays, Haaland captain.

Fantasy Football Hub’s MyTeam gives it a 92% rating at present. Wanna see how your team does? Get it rated for free here.

The best captain for Gameweek 6.

If you think we’re wasting words on why you should captain Erling Haaland this week, you are sorely mistaken my friend.

Check out RoryPaints on Instagram: he’s painting a custom piece for the winner of our free mini-league.

Other stuff we found interesting.

• FPLGeneral runs an invite-only mini-league called Elite64, which mostly includes the best managers in the world. Only 5 of them are currently in the top 500k.

  

• FPLFocal discovered that Matt Targett made 114 transfers on his Gameweek 5 Wildcard. You can view them here if you like.

• Mohamed Salah has now returned in 11 consecutive games.

• David Raya started ahead of Aaron Ramsdale in Gameweek 5 and in the UCL. Arteta is apparently undecided on who will start in Gameweek 6.

Right, you’re filled in.

Let’s do brunch together next Saturday? 11am BST. Looking forward to it already.

Until then, stay lazy.

The LazyFPL team.