🎁 This is a bonus email. The deadline is three days away (Friday, 28th August, 18:30 BST).

🏆 There are League Cup fixtures during the week. If you want to make a transfer, try to wait until they’ve finished.

💰 Spurs sign Sávio (often called Savinho) from Man City for £75m. He’s a £6.5m MID in FPL.

🔴 Manchester United sign Brighton’s Carlos Baleba for £65m plus add-ons.

🤕 Morgan Gibbs-White picked up an injury in Gameweek 1, and will miss the midweek League Cup game. “We’re working hard to get him fit for Liverpool.”

🤝 Newcastle reach agreement to sign Man City’s Nico González (£5.5m MID) [Ornstein].

🩵 Man City reach an agreement with Lille for teenager Ayyoub Bouaddi for €100m [Ornstein]. He has zero career goals from 99 professional appearances, so very much a defensive midfielder.

🌳 Nottingham Forest reach verbal agreement to sign Liam Delap (£5.5m FWD) from Chelsea for £45m.

🎉 Maresca thinks Elliot Anderson’s early withdrawal was just a cramp.

Alright?

This is a bonus episode of LazyFPL. The feedback on our more frequent newsletters in the build-up to Gameweek 1 was pretty nice, so we’re going to send occasional bonus newsletters up until the international break. Much like our FPL team, we’ll reassess after that.

Today we’re taking stock of everything we learned from the first gameweek of the season, from budget starters to the injuries and absences that may impact your Gameweek 2 (and beyond) plans.

For all of the insight we might provide here, we - as always - defer to the timeless wisdom of pop artist and avid FPL manager Ronan Keating, who famously said, “You manage best, when you do nothing at all”. We’re pretty sure that’s the lyric.

It’s highly likely that the best thing you can do this week is, to echo Ronan’s words, nothing at all. This newsletter is essentially a treatise on why.

We scored 151 points in Gameweek 1 of CLUB. As a reminder, CLUB is like a combo of FPL, Ultimate Team and Football Manager. It’s designed for maximum fun, and totally free to play.

Our 151 points came mostly from João Pedro, Christos Tzolis, James Tarkowski, Ryan Gravenberch and Bart Verbruggen. That puts us about midtable in the Lazy league.

If you’re not in there yet, it’s not too late to join. Aside from the table, there are also weekly head-to-heads with other CLUB managers (matched based on when you joined, btw, so you won’t be playing any of the veterans).

It’s kept us pretty busy this week, which is nice given we’re practising stoicism in FPL. Bukayo Saka and Phil Foden have been bought in. Saka’s wage demands meant we had to let go of a few players from our bench, but we’re feeling good going into Gameweek 2.

A few of our squad members are on three-game contracts, so next week’s priority is to renew those.

There are hundreds of managers in our CLUB league, and we’re having fun over there. Click the button below and start building your team.

Summary for the Lazy: You picked your players for a reason. Unless something fundamental has changed (i.e. they probably won’t play GW2), give them a chance to prove themselves.

Unless your player is injured, suspended or otherwise unlikely to play in Gameweek 2, it’s probably a bad idea for you to make a transfer this week. As is often the case with Lazy, our reasoning is both practical and philosophical.

Practically, there’s the League Cup during the week to navigate. Players might get injured or suspended or, more likely, we’ll get some insight into the importance of certain assets. At the very least, you should hold your transfers until those games have concluded.

The philosophical argument is far more compelling.

Firstly, what an insult to your former self that you would so quickly erase their hard work after a mere 90 minutes of football. Do you not remember the weeks of preseason turmoil they endured? The weird, FPL-infused dreams that startled them awake? That time when they stumbled upon the Elf DVD in the Christmas cupboard and took it as a cosmic sign that they needed to buy Enzo Le Fée?

Don’t sully their memory with the frivolity of a Gameweek 1 transfer.

We totally get the temptation. Cole Palmer looked good. And you already knew, deep down, that Bruno Fernandes was a little overpriced.

But if you trust nothing else, trust this: Football is weird and unpredictable. It just so happens that, right now, Gameweek 1 is 100% of the Premier League football we’ve consumed so far. But take any given gameweek, and weird, unpredictable stuff will happen. In Gameweek 1 last season, Tijjani Reijnders looked like he might be the player of the season.

Adopt a high-conviction mindset: You picked these players for a reason. Let them breathe.

Right then, here’s a list of all the unexpected injuries and mysterious absences from Gameweek 1, the first of its name:

🔴 Bruno Guimarães | He missed Gameweek 1 because of a groin issue. Arteta has downplayed its severity.

🕊️ Ferdi Kadıoğlu | Unlucky for his owners, this. He picked up a “slight” injury after Thursday’s Conference League game, which wasn’t reported before the deadline.

🔵 Moisés Caicedo and Marco Palestra | Both players “suffered setbacks” during the week and weren’t risked. Much to The Professor’s dismay (he owns Palestra).

🦅 Chadi Riad | Sad scenes for Riad as he was stretchered off with a knee injury against Everton.

🩵 Elliot Anderson | As already explained, Maresca has said his early substitution was due to cramp.

👹 Amad Diallo | Picked up an injury in training and early reports suggest he’ll miss 6 weeks.

⚫ Dan Burn | He’s out for a few weeks with an ankle injury.

🌳 Morgan Gibbs-White | Will miss the League Cup game with a knee injury that he picked up in Gameweek 1. Glasner says they’re working hard to have him ready by Gameweek 2, which suggests it’s nothing major.

🦅 Ismaïla Sarr | He was omitted from Crystal Palace’s squad. Rumour has it that he’s pushing for a move.

🦹‍♀️ Ollie Watkins | A similar story to Sarr. He wants to move, and wasn’t included in Aston Villa’s shoestring squad.

Summary for the Lazy: It’s a list of £4.5m midfielders and attackers who actually got minutes. The list is quite short.

Who are the cheap enablers that might come in clutch when we need to make upgrades elsewhere? Gameweek 1 tends to yield some real bobby-dazzlers.

We asked David Pickinson, a bargain-hunter famous for his FPL picks, who just so happens to look identical to British TV personality David Dickinson.

Defenders

We already know about the £4.0m defenders - no surprises there.

£4.5m Midfielders.

Regan Slater and Matt Crooks (Hull).

Both Slater and Crooks started and played 90 minutes for Hull City against Man United. The former even bagged an assist.

George Hemmings (Aston Villa).

The full-name wonder was rumoured to start by Villa fans, and indeed he did. He accrued 0.00 expected goal involvements and five defensive contributions in his 90 minutes.

Two other £4.5m midfielders, Brighton’s Malick Yalcouyé (4 mins) and Ipswich’s Casey McAteer (24 mins) also featured in Gameweek 1, and that’s your lot.

£4.5m Forwards.

Of the nine £4.5m forwards available this season, only one played any minutes in Gameweek 1: Ipswich’s Sindre Walle Egeli. He managed 10 minutes at the end of the game, but had zero expected goal involvements.

Summary for the Lazy: The out-of-position players in Gameweek 1.

OOPs, we did it again. We used an acronym. Got lost in the game, lads.

OOP stands for Out Of Position, which is when a player plays in a different position to his designated FPL position. It can be a vital part of finding value in FPL.

Here are the OOP players we spotted in Gameweek 1.

Maxim De Cuyper (£4.5m DEF, playing in attacking midfield).

Spoiler: We’re talking about De Cuyper in our next section, which is about players to be wary of. He had a fantastic Gameweek 1 as a winger, but this probably won’t last all season.

Reece James (£5.5m DEF, playing in defensive midfield).

We’re not convinced this is good for James’ FPL prospects, but he was used as a midfielder in Alonso’s Gameweek 1 team.

Marc Guéhi (£6.0m DEF, playing in defensive midfield).

His attacking threat came from set-pieces, but it’s worth noting that he may play in a more advanced role under Maresca. He only hit four defensive contributions.

Nico O’Reilly (£6.5m DEF, playing in attacking midfield).

O’Reilly was a glorified No. 10 in Gameweek 1, though he was substituted in the 68th minute.

Matheus Cunha (£8.0m MID, playing upfront).

Cunha started as the No. 9 for Man United vs Hull, despite the widely held expectation that Mbeumo would play there. He had three shots and 0.24xG. It’s worth noting that Benjamin Šeško was subbed on, so it’s likely Cunha won’t play OOP for long.

Emiliano Buendía (£6.0m MID, playing upfront).

After Watkins went AWOL, Buendía was fashioned into a forward for Villa’s Gameweek 1 game. He missed two early chances, but only accrued 0.13xG.

Trai Hume (£4.5m DEF, playing in attacking midfield).

Not a huge surprise, this one, as Hume had been playing on the wing in preseason as well. Sunderland are looking to recruit, so it’s unlikely he’ll keep his current role for too long. Accrued 0.31 expected goal involvements, which is very good for a defender.

Of course, it’s also possible to have reverse OOP players - or, as we call them in the industry, POOs. These are FPL forwards playing in midfield or FPL midfielders playing in defence.

Everton’s Merlin Röhl (£5.0m MID, playing as a defender) was a POO in Gameweek 1, and ought to be avoided unless that changes.

If you’re enjoying this email, you’ll enjoy our LazyFPL Premium bonus newsletters. Every week, you’ll get a post-Gameweek review written by The Professor, but rather than just recapping the facts, he’ll go into depth about the players that caught his eye (for good and for bad).

It’s the best way to identify good, emerging FPL assets before the general population picks them up.

Upgrade to LazyFPL Premium today, and you’ll also get access to our key news WhatsApp group, all of our experts’ Gameweek 2 team reveals, a daily podcast, ad-free LazyFPL and loads more.

It’s easy to look at points,
And start to fret and worry,
That your players will disappoint,
And you’ll need to get rid of them in a hurry.

But before you decide to quit,
It’s important to study the facts.
Perhaps your team isn’t totally shit,
So let’s look at some underlying stats:

Mbeumo should’ve scored,
And his expected goal involvements were 0.73.
Haaland was knocking on the door,
He accumulated 0.74xG.

Isak had an xG of 1.09,
That’s 3x as much as Gakpo.
Bruno’s performance was pretty much fine,
He’s the fourth-most-transferred-out, though.

Calvert-Lewin wasn’t great,
But we haven’t seen his all.
Semenyo’s xGI was just 0.08,
Still, at least he hasn’t spent the vast majority of his Tuesday afternoon writing a poem about fantasy football.

Rubbish poems aside, it’s almost certainly worth holding on to your players for now. Players like Bruno or Semenyo are not suddenly bad picks after one underwhelming game, just as Dominik Szoboszlai is not suddenly a good pick just because Liverpool were awarded a penalty in the 95th minute.

What we need is evidence. Right now, we have very little. We are Hercule Poirot, twiddling our moustaches and piecing together a conclusion based on nothing more than a spurious hunch.

The real answers - the ones we can build a proper case with - come from the forensic team, who dust for fingerprints and match DNA traces. And that sort of evidence takes time to collect.

We’ll be back 24h before the deadline, or “Thursday evening” as the civilians call it.

Stay lazy,

The LazyFPL Team.