Say goodbye to your loved ones for another season.

📢 The 25/26 FPL game is live.

💌 Here’s the auto-join link for our free cash league. The code is ygvli7 if you’re old school. Prizes and eligibility here.

💰 Mohamed Salah priced at £14.5m. Erling Haaland is priced at £14.0m. Only 10 players priced over £8.0m.

🏆 Get LazyFPL Premium for access to better cash leagues, a huge community, extra emails and a team of experts.

🍟 We’re getting two of each chip. The Assistant Manager chip is no more.

👞 Assists are changing. Intended targets won’t matter if a deflected pass is received inside the box.

🔄 We’ll also get five extra transfers ahead of AFCON.

🤓 The way bonus points are calculated will be slightly tweaked. More credit will be given to goal-line clearances, tackles and saves from shots inside the box.

🛡 Let’s not forget about defensive contributions. You can read our initial take on those here.

🔀 Some players, including Omar Marmoush (FWD > MID), Jarrod Bowen (MID>FWD) and Matheus Cunha (FWD>MID), have been assigned new FPL positions.

👀 Oh, and there have been some transfers too. We’ll cover those later.

Alright?

Assemble the emergency committee and sound the alarm. The Prime Minister rang us earlier to tell us that the DEFCON level has already been changed - it now means “Defensive Contributions”.

You know that scene in 28 Days Later when Cillian Murphy’s character walks through a post-apocalyptic London in his hospital gown? That’s how FPL managers who have been off-grid for the last week might feel now. It’s as if someone at FPL HQ asked ChatGPT how to improve the game and then rolled out every single suggestion.

Fear not. We’re here to give you plenty of ration packs, a bottle of Mum’s crème de menthe and sage advice on how to survive and thrive in this new world.

The 25/26 season is live. It’s time to start building the first of ~500 ‘perfect’ Gameweek 1 drafts. We’ll do our utmost to help you land on the best one.

Our WhatsApp chats are buzzing at the moment. Peer-reviewed Gameweek 1 drafts, our team of experts picking out hidden gems and plenty of friendly ridicule.

Now’s the time to join LazyFPL Premium (we know you’ve thought about it at least once before bed). The community is going to be bigger and better than ever (more experts, more content, the most inventive prize league in FPL history), but it’s still only £5/pm or £50 for the year.

Whether you want FPL news and expertise on tap, access to the most active mini-leagues on Earth or a friendly community of FPL managers, we built LazyFPL Premium to be a sanctuary for managers who need an outlet to talk about this game as much as they like, with people who actually get it.

Start the timer, we’re going in.

🍟 Two of each chip. Goodbye AssMan.

We’re getting two Wildcards (normal), two Bench Boosts, two Free Hits and two Triple Captains next season. One for each half of the season. Shockingly, the Assistant Manager will not return.

More chips = more opportunities to widen the gap between you and the plebians. Fine by us.

👞 Assists are changing.

FPL HQ has released a confusing essay about how they’ve simplified assists.

TL;DR: Previously, a deflected assist was only awarded if it still reached the intended target. Now the intended target doesn’t matter. So long as the pass only gets one deflection and the scorer receives it in the penalty area, it’s an assist.

If it’d been in place last season, it would’ve meant 41 extra assists.

🌍 Five transfers ahead of AFCON.

You know the African Cup of Nations? Now our stash of free transfers will be topped up to the maximum (5) in Gameweek 16 to help us replace any lost players. It’s a bit much, as this Reddit exchange illustrates:

🧮 Changes to the bonus points system.

The changes favour defenders and goalkeepers. Successful tackles and goalline clearances will contribute more significantly to bonus points, and if your goalkeeper saves a shot taken from within the box, he’ll get a little extra juice too.

Penalty goals will be equally impactful for bonus points, regardless of the player’s position. You can read the breakdown here if you’re a glutton for punishment.

🛡 Defensive contributions.

Players will be awarded a maximum of two points per game for accruing defensive contributions: defenders need 10 in a game, midfielders/forwards need 12.

Defensive contributions include clearances, blocks, tackles and interceptions. For forwards and midfielders, recoveries are also included.

We like it, but it makes it harder to know how many points you’re on during the game. The Professor shared his initial thoughts in our last newsletter.

🔀 Player position changes.

This happens every season. A manager (the real kind of manager) selfishly decides to put one of his players in the wrong place, not thinking about his fantasy colleagues (yes, we’re using the word colleagues).

And so FPL HQ has to act. Here’s the list:

The game is nigh.

We’ll get into the weeds for goalkeepers, defenders, midfielders and forwards in future emails, but here are some initial observations that’ll make you sound knowledgeable when you inevitably get asked, “Who are you looking at for Gameweek 1?” by an overly curious mini-league rival.

Defenders

If you were wondering if the introduction of Defensive Contribution points would impact the price of defenders this season, we have our answer:

Jarrad Branthwaite and James Tarkowski (both £5.5m) have been priced £0.5m below the most expensive defenders in the game.

The search for a budget Tarkowski starts here. Speaking of which…

Four budget defenders we like the look of:

🛡 Maxime Estève (Burnley, £4.0m)

Burnley’s player of the season last year, the centre-back was good for defensive contributions in the Championship.

🤔 Ola Aina (Nottingham Forest, £5.0m)

Whilst Forest’s centre-backs are priced at £5.5m, Aina comes in at £5.0m. He won’t get as many defensive contribution points, but does his attacking power make up for that?

👌 Ezri Konsa (Aston Villa, £4.5m)

It’s surprising that Konsa is priced at £4.5m, particularly given the price increase for other centre-backs across the game. We didn’t think we’d see a world where Tarkowski is priced at £1.0m more.

🕊 Maxim De Cuyper (Brighton, £4.5m)

Brighton’s new full-back could, according to Brighton fans, also be on set-pieces this season.

Midfielders

Midfielders are often where you find the best breakout budget options (see if you can say that 10x faster without saying “breast”), and with Mohamed Salah priced at a more-than-fair £14.5m, the need to find affordable side-kicks is all the more important.

Four midfielders we like the look of:

👀 Donyell Malen (Aston Villa, £5.5m)

Most Villa fans expect Donyell Malen to be important for Villa next season. If he gets regular starts on the right for Aston Villa, he’ll be a bargain.

🦅 Ismaila Sarr (Crystal Palace, £6.5m)

The third-highest scoring £6.5m midfielder (based on last season’s tally), Crystal Palace have a pretty nice fixture run (including Sunderland at home in Gameweek 4) for the first five gameweeks.

🔴 Florian Wirtz (Liverpool, £8.5m)

People who are good at FPL expected Wirtz to be cheaper than £8.5m. We don’t know how he’ll transition to the Premier League, but given his initial popularity, there’s risk in not owning him from the outset.

🔫 Declan Rice (Arsenal, £6.5m)

Bit fruity this one, but he’s on set-pieces, he’ll pick up defensive contributions, and he has the propensity to score goals from open play too. Plus, he’s the best free-kick taker the world has ever seen (at least he was for 12 minutes).

Forwards

It’s much harder to own Erling Haaland (£14.0m) and Alexander Isak (£10.5m) this season, and many of you will be choosing one or the other.

But hidden beneath their lofty price points is a bargain bucket of mid-priced gems.

Here are three of ‘em:

⚽️ Strand Larsen (Wolves, £6.5m)

With Matheus Cunha moving to Man United, the door is open for Larsen to consolidate a solid 24/25 campaign.

🐓 Dominic Solanke (Spurs, £7.5m)

Solanke hardly had a great season last campaign, but neither did Spurs. There’s still a great player hidden there somewhere, and with Mohammed Kudus already looking threatening, perhaps we’ll see him again this season.

🦅 Jean-Philippe Mateta (Crystal Palace, £7.5m)

After 14 goals in less than 3,000 minutes last season, some expected Mateta to get a price increase. He hasn’t. £7.5m feels more than decent for such a reliable scorer of goals.

👀 Hugo Ekitike could also be worth a look, depending on his FPL price when he signs for Liverpool.

Please give a reclining ovation to the first (of many) LazyFPL Gameweek 1 drafts, brought to you by sheer laziness:

It’s subject to plenty of changes.

In fact, just in the time it’s taking to write these words, we already hate it a bit.

We’ve condensed the confirmed transfers and rumours and given it a totally original and definitely not copied name: The Transfer Centre.

Confirmed transfers

🍒 Bournemouth have signed goalkeeper Djordje Petrovic from Chelsea.

➡️ Brentford sign Jordan Henderson on a free.

🔫 Noni Madueke joins Arsenal.

🤝 Centre-back Cristhian Mosquera joins Arsenal.

🧤 Everton sign goalkeeper Mark Travers from Bournemouth.

⚒️ West Ham sign left-back El Hadji Malick Diouf.

⚪️ Leeds sign Sean Longstaff.

⚒️ West Ham sign Kyle Walker-Peters

Not-quite-confirmed transfers (but they’re happening)

⚽️ Striker Hugo Ekitike to Liverpool

🔴 Bryan Mbeumo to Man United

If you made it this far, reply to this email with your first draft, and we’ll reply with a rating out of 10.

We’ll be back next Monday to help you fix your back issues. Your backline, that is.

Stay lazy.

The LazyFPL Team.