FPL Post-Season | What's happened this week? (Ep. 4)

The stuff you might’ve missed this week.

🗓 The Premier League fixture schedule has been released. Keep reading for our initial analysis.

🤦 The Premier League has warned fans to expect an increased likelihood of fixtures moving at relatively short notice due to a record nine PL teams in UEFA competitions in the 2025/26 season.

🤝 Florian Wirtz joins Liverpool.

👀 Liverpool agree deal with Milos Kerkez for £40m+, according to multiple sources (including his own brother).

Alright?

FPL managers, rejoice. Unfurl the banners. Prepare the feasts. Finally tell your crush how you feel.

The fixtures have been released, and the Premier League has once again confirmed that every team will play each other twice. Huge.

Some FPL pundits see the fixtures as the first step towards planning their Gameweek 1 squads. It might be a bit early for that, though. The transfer window is still a fluid beast, and besides, we have no idea how much players will cost next season.

So as a fair warning, we won’t be putting together a Gameweek 1 squad today. Still, we’ll share our thoughts on the fixture release and what it might mean for the Gameweek 1 template.

It’s week four, people. You’re doing great.

The fixtures are out.

If there’s one thing we can depend on in FPL, it’s the deluge of infographics that inevitably follows a fixture release. The first to surface was this rather grotesque one from Opta:

The big question isn’t ‘Who has the best fixtures?’, but rather, ‘Couldn’t Opta have used some different colours?’.

Then @BenCrellin, the fixture guru, released this full-season fixture calendar:

The big caveat here is that nobody knows how any team will perform next season. Last pre-season, Nottingham Forest were considered an easy fixture and Spurs a challenging one. Fixture difficulty ratings should be taken with a blood-pressure-increasing pinch of salt.

With that in mind, what can we deduce from the fixture release?

5 things we learned from the fixtures.

If you’re feeling particularly lazy, skip to point (5).

1) No stand-out teams.

As far as Opta is concerned, Man United have the worst opening five fixtures, and Crystal Palace/Aston Villa have the best.

But you’ll notice something: No team has been given a blemish-free start to the season.

Take Crystal Palace, for example, the team with the joint-best fixtures as far as Opta is concerned. They’ll play Chelsea (A), Nottingham Forest (H) and Aston Villa (A) in their first three games: hardly a froth-inducing run.

Indeed, the gulf between the “best” fixtures and the “worst” fixtures is more of a jumpable puddle than the choppy English Channel.

2) Liverpool, Man City and Spurs players will be popular.

We’d expect Liverpool’s players to be popular anyway, but Bournemouth at home to start the season is a particularly appetising prospect for FPL managers who want a vested interest in the Friday night kick-off (don’t we all?).

Man City could’ve had nightmare fixtures and we’d still be queuing up with our bowls, grovelling for another ladle of Rayan Ait-Nouri or Erling Haaland. As it goes, they have Wolves away and Spurs at home to start.

The combined forces of Thomas Frank’s appointment and Burnley at home in Gameweek 1 mean Spurs players could be popular in Gameweek 1, too.

That’s partly because most managers don’t look ahead to Gameweeks 2, 3, 4 and beyond.

3) Expect to see plenty of Jarrod Bowen.

Jarrod Bowen peaked in popularity towards the end of last season, and, if he stays at West Ham, we’d expect that popularity to increase.

His opening fixture against Sunderland is appealing, but his talismanic status at West Ham gives him some immunity to trickier fixtures (like Chelsea in Gameweek 2) too.

4) Look out for the rotating pairs.

Every season, some teams will always play at home whilst the other plays away, and vice versa. Liverpool and Everton are the classic examples, but there are others. Here are the rotating pairs this season:

Arsenal – Tottenham Hotspur
Aston Villa – Burnley
Brentford – Brighton
Chelsea – Fulham
Crystal Palace – Wolves
Liverpool – Everton
Manchester City – Manchester United
Newcastle – Sunderland
Nottingham Forest – Bournemouth
West Ham United – Leeds United

This could be an interesting way to approach your goalkeeper rotation. For example, could Emi Martinez and Burnley’s goalkeeper make for a nice “always home” pairing?

5) The Professor’s take.

The Professor’s fixture analysis was comprehensive, but one paragraph in his latest newsletter really summed things up nicely (assume that Liverpool players go without saying):

“Ait-Nouri, Bowen, Eze, Palmer, Cucarella, Haaland, Porro, and maybe some fodder options here and there, and you have hit a decent chunk of the ‘good’ fixtures. Easy game, see you in the 26/27 season.”

The big done deals.

This section will only include transfers that have been confirmed by an official source.

Florian Wirtz ➡️ Liverpool

Yeah, the big one this week is Florian Wirtz, which we covered in last week’s update.

FPL pricing doesn’t correlate with actual pricing (see Enzo Fernandez), but we’d expect Wirtz to be fairly expensive for managers. It’ll likely lead to a debate for the ages: Do you go for Wirtz and Mohamed Salah (who will surely be the most expensive player next season), and double-up on expensive Liverpool players?

Or do you pick one over the other and pray you get it right?

We’ll endeavour to answer that question nearer the time.

Anyway, here he is pretending to sign a contract:

Adrien Truffert ➡️ Bournemouth

Whilst Adrien Truffert might sound like a tasty starter at your local French bistro, he’s actually a promising 23-year-old left-back who’s just moved to Bournemouth.

The Cherries need a left-back after saying goodbye to Milos Kerkez (see the next section), and the former Rennes player joins the Premier League with plenty of promise, but not much by way of goals and assists to show for it.

He’s not going to be in your Gameweek 1 team, but Bournemouth have a history of producing good full-backs, so he’s worth keeping an eye on.

Other notable done deals:

Diego Coppola ➡️ Brighton. The £22m centre-back is apparently a great pick on Football Manager, according to Brighton fans.

Fer Lopez ➡️ Wolves. The 21-year-old attacking midfielder joins Wolves from Celta Vigo.

The rumour mill.

This section will include transfers that are strongly rumoured by reliable sources. We won’t include pure speculation, and will always try to verify the rumour with multiple sources.

Milos Kerkez ➡️ Liverpool

This is happening. Aside from the usual suspects (Ornstein, Romano) confirming the move, Kerkez’s own brother shared this:

Barring a dramatic twist, Kerkez will be a Liverpool player next season.

This has obvious FPL appeal. Kerkez was the sixth-highest scoring defender last season, notching 8 attacking returns (2 goals, 6 assists). Cue the meme:

With Andy Robertson’s minutes closely managed, there’s every expectation that Kerkez will play more Premier League games than not. Let’s see what pricetag he’s given.

Key dates this summer.

Another key date bites the dust, folks.

June 10th - Mini Transfer Window closes.

June 14th - The Club World Cup kicks off with the two best teams in the world: Al Ahly vs. Inter Miami. Chelsea and Manchester City are the Premier League’s representatives.

June 16th - The Summer Transfer Window opens.

June 18th - Premier League fixtures released.

~Early-mid July - The 25/26 FPL game is likely to launch.

Mid-July - Pre-season friendlies begin.

August 10th - The Community Shield (Liverpool vs Crystal Palace)

August 16th - The 25/26 season begins 😍

Other stuff we found interesting.

1. Jarrell Quansah, a star of last season’s Gameweek 1 draft, is going to Bayer Leverkusen, according to Fabrizio Romano.

2. Man City have progressed out of the group stage of the Club World Cup after a 6-0 win against Al Ain. Erling Haaland scored a penalty and assisted a nice strike by Rayan Cherki. Ilkay Gündoğan scored two.

3. Chelsea, meanwhile, lost 3-1 against Flamengo, with Nicolas Jackson sent off (again). Pedro Neto scored his second goal of the competition.

Calm down, we’ll be back next Monday.

Stay lazy.

The LazyFPL Team.