🚨 FPL is LIVE. Here's our take.

🏆 The 26/27 FPL game is live. You can join our free £500 league here.

⏰ Mini-leagues and bonus points will be updated in real time next season. Final points and league positions will be confirmed within 20 minutes of a game ending.

↕️ Predicted price rises and falls will now be a part of the FPL dashboard.

👀 FPL Towers has also added the ability to see future fixtures within the team view.

🤑 Erling Haaland (£15.5m) is the most expensive FPL player of all time.

➕ There have been a few small changes to the bonus points system. We’ll get into them.

🔄 As is common when the game launches, some players have swapped positions.

💰 Chelsea break club record to buy Morgan Rogers from Aston Villa for £117m. Alejandro Garnacho is reportedly going the other way on loan.

Alright?

Having endured a frankly hollow four days of zero footballing intrigue, the 26/27 FPL game has launched. In the infamous words of Justin Bieber, something something Hallelujah.

It means you can build a Gameweek 1 team right this very moment - because why wait until the start of the season for the constant self-doubt and indecision when you can start a month early?

There’s a lot to get through. Aside from which players to pick, there are new site features and, for the real purists amongst you, some of the small print has been tweaked where bonus points and gameweek lockdowns are concerned. We’ll cover it all here.

All around you is darkness, save for a single beam of light illuminating you from a source unknown. A smog of dry ice collects around your feet - it smells like a crusty, suburban nightclub. Wait, are those the opening notes to Europe’s The Final Countdown echoing from some cosmic sound system? They just might be.

The new season is upon us, and the countdown starts here.

If last summer was the summer of new rules, this summer is the summer of new features. We’ll still get two sets of the same chips, and DefCon points are here to stay.

But the FPL website has shrugged off its technological shackles with a much-needed upgrade. And unlike AI-generated club badges, these ones are actually useful.

The pain of having to wait for hours after a match to see your mini-league standings is a thing of the past. It takes its place down memory lane, along with having to submit your transfers by post and the All-Out-Attack chip.

Mini-leagues and your overall rank will now update in real time as FPL points are scored and - in your case - lost.

FPL are adding a dropdown menu to the team view screen that shows different information depending on your choice. The options are opponent, price, form, ownership and FDR (Fixture Difficulty Rating). Selecting FDR shows the difficulty of the next three fixtures below each player, as the screenshot below illustrates:

It’ll make future planning a bit easier.

Bonus points have been tweaked to reduce the overlap between defensive contribution points and bonuses. It won’t drastically change the way you play, but the details are here if you really get off on inane data, like the number of times Jaidon Anthony was tackled last season.

In short, being tackled is no longer punished by the bonus system (which mostly benefits midfielders and full-backs), and there’s less of a reward for clearances, interceptions and blocks (because they get rewarded with DefCon).

Goalkeepers also get extra credit for saving a big chance.

It may slightly shift the narrative in favour of full-backs, which were a bit of a redundant position last season with DefCon proving so prevalent among centre-backs.

Yes, this week was the first time we’d heard the expression “gameweek lockdown” too, but you’ll be familiar with the concept it describes.

A gameweek lockdown is when a gameweek closes for business. It used to happen one hour after the final game in a gameweek, and once it did, any subsequent changes to points couldn’t be applied.

These changes might include a revision to DefCons, or an own goal wrongly awarded to the attacking player.

To allow for these post-game changes to impact your FPL points, the lockdown has been extended. It will now happen at 09:00 (UK time) the day after the last game.

Some players have been assigned different positions in FPL. This is normal, and nothing to be afraid of. Some notable changes:

Here’s the full list:

Summary for the Lazy: Haaland is expensive, but worth it. Every newly promoted defender is £4.0m, which guarantees budget gems.

It’s only been about an hour since the game went live, and so, like an old, shitty computer, we’re still processing things.

The below is our unsophisticated, guttural response to some notable player prices. Don’t hold us to it - we’ll be back in a few days once the dust has settled to offer something more thought-out.

Erling Haaland is £15.5m.

£15.5m gets you about 7.5 million steak bakes from Greggs, which begs the obvious question: Is the Norse God worth it?

The LazyFPL braintrust seems to think so. Such is his reliability that, for most of our resident pundits, the real question is where you put the remaining £84.5m of your budget. Maresca’s influence on Haaland’s FPL prospects throws an unknown variable into the mix, but the risk of starting the season without him remains as potent as it was last year. Sorry, Greggs, but we’re backing the Norwegian bloke.

Only two £10m+ players.

Only Haaland and Bruno Fernandes (£12.0m) are priced above £10m. Everyone else - from Cole Palmer (£9.5m) to Antoine Semenyo (£8.5m) - will only set you back a single-digit fee.

DEFCON monsters get a price hike.

Players capable of getting regular DefCon points have also increased in price, though not as much as some pundits forecasted.

Elliot Anderson - the fifth-highest scoring midfielder in the game last season - is only priced at £6.5m, a £1m increase. Some of that may be because of his move to Man City, which probably doesn’t do his FPL prospects any favours.

Still, James Garner - another DefCon scorer and the ninth-highest scoring midfielder last season - has also had a £1m price increase.

Every newly promoted defender is £4.0m.

Yes, you read that right. For the first time in FPL’s history, every defender in any of the promoted teams will only cost you £4.0m. This effectively makes the “£4.0m non-playing defender” a thing of the past.

Oh yes, we’re back, bargain hunters. Dust off your David Dickinson face mask and get ready to wade through some tat.

Obviously, we need to do some proper research here, but here are some players that we feel could be underpriced after a quick scan:

Morgan Rogers (£7.5m MID) - That Rogers has only increased in price by £0.5m after 18 attacking returns last season will surprise some managers. His move to Chelsea introduces some unpredictability, but, as discussed in a recent premium podcast episode, The Professor believes it could be a good move for all involved.

James Garner (£6.0m MID) - A 90-minute man with assist and DefCon potential, Garner looks to be one of those players you can pick and then forget about. He’s on set-pieces, and will drip-feed points throughout the season.

Tyrick Mitchell (£4.5m DEF) - Mitchell scored 135 points for Crystal Palace last season, and still received a price drop. To put that in perspective, his colleague, Daniel Muñoz, costs £1m more and only scored one point extra.

Luke Shaw (£4.5m DEF) - With Man United’s starting fixtures (Hull (A), Ipswich (H), Everton (A), a defender is well worth a look. Shaw at £4.5m feels like a solid budget pre-Wildcard pick.

Dara O’Shea (£4.0m DEF) - Ipswich’s captain may not be the most exciting pick, but he brings solid DefCon data from the Championship and is as likely as any to start most games.

Dominic Solanke (£6.0m FOR) - As things stand, he’s highly likely to be Spurs’ starting striker next season. Spurs have bulked up during the summer, and whilst plenty of questions remain about their 26/27 aims, it’s not unreasonable to assume they’ll continue to improve under De Zerbi.

The Professor, our resident FPL expert, has also been poring through the new player pricing over the last hour. Here’s his initial draft:

And some of his thoughts around it:

Earlier this week, I published a deep dive into the newly promoted teams, breaking down how I expect them to adapt to the Premier League, which players I think are worth considering, and which ones I'm planning to avoid. Premium members can already read that now, and over the coming weeks I'll be publishing similar deep dives on the teams and players I'm targeting before Gameweek 1.

As England were beating France 6-4, far more important games were unfurling around the UK.

Pre-season friendlies have begun. Of all the many red herrings in pre-season, friendlies are surely the loudest and the most deceptive. But insights can be gleaned.

In their first pre-season friendly of the summer, Crystal Palace’s Matheus França scored a hat-trick against Swindon Town in just 45 minutes. Eddie Nketiah scored the other two in a 5-1 win. Man United were beaten 0-1 by Wrexham, and Spurs’ new signing, Mateus Fernandes, scored a banger against the mighty MK Dons.

Everton, Nottingham Forest, Aston Villa, Newcastle, Coventry, Middlesbrough and Sunderland have also seen some action. For the full list of results, we use Fotmob.

Right, we’ll be back early next week to give you a more comprehensive look at some of the early stand-out picks. Until then, happy team building.

Stay lazy,

The LazyFPL Team.