⏰ Gameweek 3’s deadline is Friday, 4th September, 18:30 BST.

🔒 The transfer window has closed. We’ll give you a summary of the big moves since we last spoke.

👀 Some managers will use a chip this gameweek, with the Triple Captain, Wildcard and Free Hit more popular than usual. For more info, read this week’s bonus newsletter.

🤕 Mosquera was not seen in Arsenal’s Thursday training session after being withdrawn during Gameweek 2 with a muscular issue.

🧐 Iraola on new signing Barcola: “If everything goes well in training, he will definitely be available for tomorrow”.

🎙️ Our free podcast is live. Listen to the Gameweek 3 preview on Spotify here or search “LazyFPL” in your podcast platform of choice.

Alright?

Can you hear the crescendo of horns ringing across the land? Gameweek 3, or Gameweek the Third, as it’s known in the Royal Court, has arrived with much fanfare.

A direct descendant of the gameweeks that have come before it, it’s adorned with all of the usual gameweek regalia: 10 Fixtures, 20 teams and countless ways to ruin your weekend. And just as they did with its ancestors, millions of FPL managers throw themselves at Gameweek 3’s feet, begging for the thing they want most: A few fantasy points to call their own.

But not Lazy managers. We bend the knee to no gameweek. We are the rebels in the woods, stealing points from the template and giving them to ourselves.

Here’s how to make Gameweek 3 kiss your ring. The one on your finger, that is. Behave.

We don’t go clubbing anymore. Too old. Too miserly. Instead, we go CLUBbing. That is, we play CLUB, the free fantasy game that keeps you entertained throughout the week.

And when we say we play CLUB, we really do play. Last week, we dropped Tzolis to make room for Saka and won our head-to-head by a single point. It was thrilling.

It really doesn’t matter if you missed Gameweek 1, btw. The head-to-heads* make it interesting regardless, and unlike FPL, CLUB is designed as a multi-season game with much longer progression.

Here’s our team as of yesterday:

Join the Lazy league and come CLUBbing with us and other readers. It’s fun, free and way less likely to result in a hangover.

*Side note: The head-to-heads are one of our favourite features. They’re a bit like the Cup in FPL, but they happen all season. Alongside the leagues you’re in, you’re also randomly drawn against another CLUB owner with a similar level of experience, and you get prizes if you beat them.

The transfer window has closed, which is good because the draught it was letting in was ruining our drafts.

Here’s what happened on a busy transfer deadline day, with a sprinkle of FPL analysis thrown in for good measure.

Headline moves.

Enzo Fernández (£6.9m MID): Chelsea to Manchester City, £125m.

Enzo registered 15 goals and seven assists across all competitions last season and reunites with Enzo Maresca.

Someone at City is losing minutes here, because Enzo will play at least some of the time. Who it is remains to be seen, but it could have knock-on effects too. O’Reilly, Cherki, Foden…nobody is safe.

Iliman Ndiaye (£6.0m MID): Everton to Manchester City, £60m plus £5m in add-ons.

This isn’t good for Ndiaye owners. He essentially loses all the stuff that made him really good value: Penalties, high expected minutes - even his occasional DefCon returns are in doubt.

His potential gain could obviously be huge, too, but he’ll need to start regularly for that, and it’s hard to see an obvious gap that Ndiaye can fill in that City side.

Matias Fernandez-Pardo (£6.0m FWD): Lille to Newcastle, £51m.

The 21-year-old can play through the middle, as a number ten or from the left, but he’s down as a forward in FPL. He registered eight goals and ten assists across all competitions last season, and he comes from Lille, so he must be good.

With Woltemade leaving for Juventus on loan, there’s a place for Fernandez-Pardo at Newcastle, but with Wissa performing increasingly well, it’s unclear where he’ll operate.

Malick Fofana (£5.5m MID): Lyon to Sunderland, £31m.

Not to be confused with Wesley, the Chelsea defender, this Fofana has been hampered by injuries, but apparently has a lot of talent. He’s a winger, so one to watch from an attacking perspective.

Ibrahim Mbaye (£6.0m MID): PSG to Aston Villa, £47m.

Just 18, Mbaye is a promising right-sided attacker who has already scored four goals in 15 appearances for Senegal.

He could eventually join McGinn and Manzambi behind Jackson, but Emery tends to take his time with new players, so his immediate inclusion would be surprising.

Jack Grealish (£6.5m MID): Manchester City to Everton, loan.

Grealish is back at Everton. He managed two goals and six assists from 18 starts last campaign before picking up a season-ending injury at the start of the year. Could be one to watch.

Other confirmed arrivals, sorted by club.

Aston Villa

Taylor Harwood-Bellis [£4.5m DEF]

Brighton

Chema Andrés [£5.5m MID]

Crystal Palace

Darío Osorio [£5.5m MID]
Quinten Timber [£5.0m MID]
Ben Chilwell [£4.5m DEF]
Honest Ahanor [£4.5m DEF]

Everton

Ainsley Maitland-Niles [£4.5m DEF]

Fulham

David Affengruber [£4.5m DEF]
Hugo Larsson [£5.0m MID]
Manuel Ángel [£5.0m MID]

Hull City

Ilyas Ansah [£5.0m FWD]
Sorba Thomas [£5.5m MID]
Tim Iroegbunam [£5.0m MID]
Christos Mouzakitis [£5.0m MID]
Brooke Norton-Cuffy [£4.0m DEF]
Robinio Vaz [£5.0m FWD]

Ipswich Town

Zian Flemming [£5.5m FWD]

Leeds United

Jean-Mattéo Bahoya [£5.0m MID]
Melvin Bard [£4.5m DEF]

Liverpool

Lucca Brughmans [Not added yet - GK]

Sunderland

Kevin Danso [£5.0m DEF]
Juan Angulo [£4.5m FWD]

Tottenham Hotspur

Mykhailo Mudryk [£5.4m MID]
Tosin Adarabioyo [£4.5m DEF]

Summary for the Lazy: He’s a great player who could become incredible value, but beware of his expected minutes.

Cherki has been transferred in by over 1,300,000 managers at the time of sending. People are truly pining over him.

But is the Frenchman worth the clamour? We examine whether this is true love, or just a high school fling.

The case for Cherki.

£7.5m is a decent price for a starting Man City midfielder, and if Cherki starts, he tends to be sensational. His expected goal involvements per 90 (xGI/90, if you’re a sucker for an acronym) was 0.67 last season, and in his first start for Man City last weekend, he scored two goals and put up 0.9xGI.

New manager, playing well, getting starts: That’s marriage material.

He also plays Coventry in Gameweek 3. COV (H) just looks good on him.

Why you should tread carefully.

We’re not anti-Cherki here, but someone’s gotta say it, and that someone is usually us: He might be a honey-trap. Or at least, he may possess less honey than it looks like he has.

The obvious risk is minutes. For whatever reason, Cherki has never been a regular starter at Man City. He played just 27 minutes in Gameweek 1, and cameos are common. Indeed, for all his talent, he was only given 1,772 minutes and 19 starts last season.

Of course, Maresca is not Pep, and Cherki may yet be the first name on his team sheet. But City’s transfer window activity adds further doubt to Cherki’s minutes. The arrival of Enzo from Chelsea, for example, gives Maresca even more riches in attacking midfield to work with.

Should you buy him?

Well, we’re not judging you if you do, because he’s relatively affordable, plays for a good team and, in case it’s not obvious, he’s also very bloody good at football.

He’s also a fun “pre-Wildcard” pick if you’re planning to Wildcard during the international break like the rest of the normies.

But if Cherki were in a RomCom, he’d probably be the good-looking bad boy who ends up breaking the protagonist’s heart. Getting burned by exciting, minutes-threatened players in FPL is a sadly familiar trope.

We’ll always be here when you need a shoulder to cry on.

Summary for the Lazy: Good managers accept that they can’t predict the future, and tend to play their best players, even if they clash.

Selfishly, Arsenal play Chelsea this weekend. Won’t anyone think of the FPL managers in all of this?

It means you’ve got another benching headache. Questions that you’ve almost certainly asked yourself - and possibly others - this week might include:

It’s tough. Here’s what we’d recommend:

1) Play Pedro. Most top managers will, because he’s very good at football.

2) If you own an Arsenal defender, play him. Calafiori is a glorified midfielder anyway, and you shouldn’t be benching the £8.0m Gabriel, particularly with his propensity for attacking contributions and DefCon.

3) If you own Chelsea defenders, bench them.

4) Play your Arsenal attackers, but after his half-time substitution last week, Tzolis is a minutes risk. We expect plenty of his owners to give him a rest this week if they have a reliable replacement.

There’s always a temptation to go “all in” on a decision like this, and commit to choosing one team over another. But, let’s face it, you’re not particularly good at predicting what’s going to happen in a football match. Nobody is. It’s impossible.

Instead, in situations like Arsenal vs Chelsea, the best FPL managers tend to accept that some of their players may cannibalise the point-scoring potential of others in their team. They’d rather hedge their bets, accepting that anything can happen, and backing the best players in their squad to do something regardless.

We shared this in our bonus newsletter, but y’know, you’re lazy, so just in case you haven’t read it:

Summary for the Lazy: It’s Haaland. Triple Captain if you’re not using another chip.

Haaland plays Coventry at home, and he’s the best captain for Gameweek 3.

Should he be your Triple Captain?

You can’t use two chips at once, so if you’re playing a Free Hit or a Wildcard, you’re shit out of luck.

But if you’re able to play your Triple Captain, now is as good a time as any to use it. Here are three good reasons for playing it now:

1) The Champions League starts next week. That means rotation, early benchings, and other thorns in our arses. A Triple Captain on Haaland when he’s playing Real Madrid the following Tuesday doesn’t inspire as much confidence.

2) Coventry may well be his best home fixture this season. We thought it would be Hull, but they’ve kept two clean sheets so far. Coventry looked vulnerable against Arsenal and are the most likely team to concede goals this gameweek by some distance.

3) Teams haven’t “figured out” Haaland yet. Haaland tends to score more goals at the start of the season, and we reckon at least some of that is explained by the theory that teams “figure him out” as the season goes on.

The Triple Captain needs luck to go well. You might not get it. Haaland could miss a penalty, pick up a yellow card and get subbed off on ‘59. It happens. Manage your expectations: It’s a pretty crap chip anyway.

As we said in the bonus newsletter, all we can do is give ourselves the best possible chance of getting lucky. From our view, a home fixture against Coventry for the best FPL asset we’ve ever seen is exactly that.

Having had one of his best starts to a season ever, the Professor is playing his Free Hit this week, as has been his plan since before the season got underway.

There are plenty of conundrums: Which three Man City players? Is triple Liverpool against Ipswich a must? Can Villa be trusted against Hull?

As is often the case with the Prof, some of his picks are a bit fruity. As is evident on this week’s free podcast, there’s plenty of disagreement amongst our pundits about who ought to be included.

Why is the Prof’s team blurred this week?

When we started LazyFPL, we committed to keeping it free, forever. Obviously we’ve stuck to that commitment, hence why you’re reading this.

We even decided to include the Professor’s team reveals each gameweek, which wasn’t always the plan. Originally, that was going to be Premium-only.

But, on a week as important as this one, it would feel like a disservice to our Premium members to reveal the Prof’s team to more than 100,000 managers. The whole point of paying for LazyFPL Premium is to gain an edge, and revealing his team in such an important chip week would really blunt that edge.

LazyFPL is an independent business, and it only exists because some readers choose to support it through Premium.

But hey, it’s not all bad news. If you’ve ever found the newsletter useful, or even just tolerated our terrible jokes, please consider supporting us by going Premium. Then you’ll be able to see his Free Hit team - and the rest of our experts’ teams - too.

Try to enjoy Gameweek 3. We’ll be back with another bonus email next week. Until then, catch you on the flippity flap, or something.

Stay lazy,

The LazyFPL Team.