🚨 GW2: Your 4-min cheat sheet 🤫

⏰ Gameweek 2’s deadline is 18:30 BST on Friday, 22nd August ⏰

🤝 Eberechi Eze will now join Arsenal (Fabrizio Romano).

🤕 Jeremie Frimpong is injured and out until after the international break (Paul Joyce).

🟥 Ezri Konsa (sent off in GW1) will only miss Gameweek 2.

⚽️ Arnaud Kalimuendo (forward) signs for Nottingham Forest for £26m, Amine Adli (winger) joins Bournemouth from Leverkusen for £25m.

👀 Nine £4.0m defenders played 60+ mins in Gameweek 1. We’ll list them all below.

🏆 It’s not too late to join our £750 mini-league if you haven’t already. The code is ygvli7 if you’re old school. Prizes and eligibility here.

Keep reading for the Prof’s tricky dilemma this week.

Alright?

Just as it would be bonkers to judge the outcome of a 100m sprint based on the first two and a half metres, so too should it be strange to read too much into your season based on the 2.63% that has elapsed so far.

And yet, plenty of managers still do. You’ll definitely have managers in your life who fit these profiles:

Manager 1: Had a good Gameweek 1. Has already posted a screenshot of the mini-league standings in the group chat. Offers unsolicited FPL advice now.

Manager 2: Had a bad Gameweek 1. Is quitting FPL for another season.

It’s times like these when we return to the scriptures. When Waylon Lazy discovered the Lazy Scriptures in 1352 (which is why it’s also our favourite FPL formation), the first line he read out to the assembled crowds is as relevant and resounding today as it was back then:

“Whether you had a decent gameweek or a crap gameweek, don’t be a tit.”

With Waylon’s powerful words still ringing in our ears, let’s move with patience and humility into the warm embrace of Gameweek 2.

We refreshed Fotmob last weekend more often than our players narrowly missed out on Defensive Contribution points (which, believe me, is saying something).

Fotmob is a functional, easy-to-use live scores app. But that doesn’t mean it’s not powerful. It’ll also give you live stats, in-game commentary, player ratings, physical stats (like distance covered) and - ding ding ding - live FPL points. Every time we talk about it in public, we get comments like this:

So yeah - if (by some miracle) you’re not already using it, you really ought to be. It’s one of four shortcuts on our phone (and, of those, the only one we actually use).

(Btw, we always try to work with partners we genuinely like and use, and Fotmob is definitely one of those. It’s getting harder and harder to find these sorts of partners, so if you’re in the market for a live football app, show Fotmob some support, and you’ll also be supporting us in the process.)

David Dickinson returns with another episode of Bargain Hunt. This time, he’s in Burnley, rummaging through scratched DVDs, Cliff Richard B-sides and dusty erotica novels in search of a bargain bucket gem.

Here’s who he’s spotted from Gameweek 1:

Defenders/Goalkeepers:

A real smorgasbord here. There were nine £4.0m defenders who played over 60 minutes in Gameweek 1, and only four of them play for Burnley. They are:

As well as these nine, £4.0m Goalkeeper Martin Dubravka (BUR) also started.

Midfielders/Forwards:

Josh King (£4.5m midfielder) started for Fulham. Bournemouth’s Hamed Traorè is the top-scoring £4.5m midfielder (4 points) because he managed to grab an assist against Liverpool during his 16-minute cameo. Every other £4.5m midfielder either didn’t play or featured for 1 minute.

The only £4.5m forward to register any points was Bournemouth’s Eli Kroupi. Jr, who played for 1 minute.

Summary for the lazy: Wait and see, but if there’s a gun to our head, Tijani Reijnders gets the nod.

The Italians have a saying (of course they do - the Italians love a saying): Football in August is a lie.

Well, if football in August is a lie, FPL in August is a full-blown, cloak-wearing, Claudia-Winkleman-fringed traitor.

The boring reality is that we lack the information to draw definitive conclusions about anything we’ve seen in Gameweek 1. Is Mohammed Kudus the real deal at Spurs? Will Hugo Ekitike score 11 points every game? Could Sunderland be title contenders?

We don’t know. Ekitike has two tough fixtures coming up. Kudus got lucky and overperformed his xStats. And Sunderland…well, watch this space.

If you really want to channel your inner Magnus Carlsen and play FPL like an expert, the best thing you can do at the moment is probably nothing. Roll a transfer. Watch some football. Learn. Next week, you’ll have more of the two most important things in FPL: information and free transfers.

With that said, if we had to make one transfer ahead of Gameweek 2, it would be to buy Tijani Reijnders. Not because he’s going to score 10 points every gameweek (he won’t) but because, for £5.6m, he’s a relatively risk-free purchase.

If he continues to start, he’ll be great value. If he doesn’t, he’s cheap enough that you haven’t ruined your team to get him.

With the appropriate precautionary messaging already delivered in the section above, it’s important that we still extract any morsels of insight that Gameweek 1 can offer us.

Here are four things we’re pretending to know now:

1) Tijani Reijnders will be important for Man City.

We’re not saying he’s a must-buy yet, but it seems apparent that Pep Guardiola trusts Reijnders. Barring injury, it’s likely we’ll see him a fair amount this season.

2) Man United were probably unlucky.

The 0-1 scoreline didn’t really do justice to Man United’s performance in their defeat to Arsenal. They certainly showed enough to remain interesting, as this screenshot from Fotmob illustrates:

3) West Ham under Potter is still a work-in-progress.

The fact that the BBC published an article on Monday titled “Fans’ Views on Potter’s Future” should speak volumes. Graham Potter is yet to work the sort of magic at West Ham that his brother, Harry, is capable of. They remain a team in transition.

4) DEFCON points are…actually quite fun.

Less of an insight and more of an observation. The target contributions (10 for a defender and 12 for a midfielder/forward) already appear to be in that sweet spot between easy to get for most players, but impossible to get for yours.

If you haven’t seen it before, welcome to the LazyFPL stats section.

This is actually due for a revamp soon, so don’t get too used to it. The underlying stats are from one gameweek, so take them with a pinch of salt so large that it would make Salt Bae proud.

Summary for the Lazy: It’s Mohamed Salah.

It didn’t take long for the 25/26 season to throw us a bit of a captaincy conundrum.

Those who own bookies’ favourite Erling Haaland will almost certainly be captaining him at home against Spurs, but at the time of writing, his ownership is still under 30%.

It’s likely that Cole Palmer, despite his anticlimactic performance in Gameweek 1, will pick up plenty of suitors given he’ll visit a vulnerable West Ham. But it’ll take some guts to trust him with the armband, particularly as he plays on the Friday night.

And anyone who owns Arsenal attackers - particularly Bukayo Saka (17% owned) and Viktor Gyokeres (25% owned) - will be eyeing up that Leeds fixture in the same way my dog eyes up the Cathedral City when I’m making a sandwich. However, given that neither has particularly high ownership, simply owning them should be enough.

For all of that temptation, Mohamed Salah will probably be Gameweek 2’s most popular captain, despite the fact that he’ll visit a robust-looking Newcastle side. He remains the most consistent captaincy pick FPL has ever seen, and whilst he left it late in Gameweek 1, he still rewarded those who put their faith in him.

He’s our captaincy pick for Gameweek 2 for managers looking to play it safe.

The Professor’s Gameweek 1 was fine. Here’s his Gameweek 2 team as things stand:

The big question for The Prof this week is “To Bench Boost or not to Bench Boost?”, a problem first posed in Shakespeare’s Hamlet, when its titular character, Keith Hamlet, agonised over whether to use the chip in Double Gameweek 36 or 37 of the 1623/24 season.

We outlined the arguments for a Gameweek 2 Bench Boost in last week’s newsletter, but in short, it’s as good as any other gameweek, and the Prof likes the idea of using it early. Still, if he does Bench Boost, he’ll also need to make a transfer, because Ezri Konsa will miss Gameweek 2 through suspension.

So he remains undecided. Either he’ll keep it as it is and save his Bench Boost for another week, or he’ll play his Bench Boost and swap Konsa out.

LazyFPL Premium members will be updated via our Broadcast WhatsApp group once he’s made his decision. Upgrade here to join the inner sanctum for the price of a meal deal per month.

Gameweek 3 starts on a Saturday, which means we’ll be back in your inbox next Friday at 11:00am BST. We’ll be sure to knock before we barge in, but please make sure you’ve got some clothes on.

Stay lazy,

The LazyFPL Team.