⏰ Gameweek 8’s deadline is 11:00 BST on Saturday 7th October.

🌎 It’s followed by the season’s second international break.

🤕 Estupinan, Eze and Botman ruled out.

👀 Saka and Diaby also doubts for the weekend.

📈 It’s a big Wildcard week.

Keep reading to see the Professor’s Wildcard team.

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Alright?

FPL has usually submitted to the will of the people by this point.

It might try it on a bit in the first few gameweeks, but by now it should be slapping the canvas, yielding to the stranglehold of the millions of managers hellbent on keeping it pinned.

Not this season, though. This season shows no signs of capitulation. If it was a person, it’d be one of those massive bald blokes you see working the doors at a Glaswegian Wetherspoons; built like a brick shithouse, with a zero-tolerance policy for tossers.

Of the top 10 FPL managers of all time, only one (yeah, one) is currently in the top 500k. Seven of them are currently outside the top 1m. It’s still very early, but have we ever had a start quite as challenging as this?

Perhaps not, but the game remains the same. Don’t quit and try to score as many FPL points as you can. Persistence is the best resistance to this rather miserable existence.

Let’s talk about Gameweek 8.

Ahh yes, autumn. My favourite season. The long shadows of a chilly afternoon. The cosy innards of a fire-lit pub. The decaying colour palette of yellows, oranges and reds…

Autumn is here alright, and it ain’t just the leaves that are decaying.

What we know:

Pervis Estupinan is ruled out for “one month, more or less.”

Bukayo Saka is a doubt for this weekend after coming off with an injury in the first half of Arsenal’s UCL fixture against Lens. He’s been selected for the England squad but Southgate has said he’s “still being assessed”.

Sven Botman will be out until after the international break, according to Eddie Howe.

Moussa Diaby was ruled out for Villa’s Conference League match on Thursday. Emery “doesn’t know” if he’ll be ready for the weekend.

Eberechi Eze is facing 6 weeks out after picking up an injury against Man United, according to the BBC.

All of this - combined with pre-existing injuries, suspensions and the general feeling that things can’t possibly get any worse - has spawned an insatiable appetite for the Wildcard. Let’s talk about that.

The Professor is playing his Wildcard. So is our other resident expert, James Cooper. In fact, most top managers appear to be pulling the trigger this week.

There’s a high chance you are too.

The numerous high-ownership injuries and suspensions provide a convenient scapegoat, but I’m fairly sure if you ask The Professor, Cooper or any of the others playing their Wildcard this week, they’ll all say the same thing: Wildcarding is just really, really fun.

It’s sort of like starting from scratch. For the first time in weeks, the Professor sounds optimistic again. He’s like a reptile shedding his old skin. The other day he even smiled.

Here’s his current Wildcard team:

But you know what? You’ve been good to us. So here’s James Cooper’s current Wildcard team too. Two expert Wildcards for the price of one…

But these screenshots don’t tell the full story. See, whilst these teams are pretty similar (11/15 players are the same), for most of this week the Professor and Cooper were sat on identical teams.

This warrants some discussion.

On first consideration, the fact that both our resident experts independently arrived at exactly the same Wildcard team is rather remarkable.

It’s almost creepy; like identical twins who dress the same and speak in union.

But on further reflection, it actually makes a lot of sense. Our strong opinion is that building a great Wildcard team only requires three, readily-available resources.

1) A good fixture analyser. We use Fantasy Football Hub’s.

2) Our table of essential stats (you’ll find it if you scroll down).

3) Seven gameweeks’ worth of FPL management under your belt.

This is why everyone’s Wildcard team looks pretty similar. It’s not because of plagiarism: it’s because once you’ve spent five minutes having a gander at the fixtures and the stats, you’ll have an intuitive sense for who is a good pick and who is a crap pick.

It ain’t rocket science, despite what some may tell you.

To be honest, the endless content generated around Wildcards is the epitome of everything we here at LazyFPL stand against. Having a limitless number of transfer options is incredibly conducive to overthinking, over-analysing and over-stressing.

Take M People’s infamous advice and search for the hero inside yourself.

You know what to do here. Consuming hours of content isn’t going to make it easier to arrive at a decision; in fact, it will do the opposite.

With Estupinan, Botman and Chilwell all recently ruled out, we thought it might be helpful to outline a few replacements.

To illustrate, we’ll use the internationally recognised sliding scale of lager. Obviously.

Kieran Trippier (£6.8m, 43.4% owned) - a delicious pint of Kronenbourg.

Kieran Trippier is inevitable. Now owned by over 40% of managers, he plays for one of the best defences in the league, and has some of the best attacking stats in recent weeks. Expensive, but most are happy to pay the price.

Matty Cash (£4.9m, 24.6% owned) - a dependable can of Fosters.

Rising in popularity, Cash is sort of like a budget Trippier: for when you fancy another pint but you’re at the point where they all sort of taste the same anyway. He plays for a slightly-less defensively robust side and will probably rack-up slightly-fewer attacking returns across the season, but he’s still a great pick for his price.

No defender has more expected goal involvements than the Villa man so far.

Joachim Andersen (£4.8m, 12% owned) - a tin of Carlsberg.

The fact that both Carlsberg and Joachim Andersen are Danish is completely coincidental. He’s the highest scoring defender in the game at the moment. Carlsberg don’t do FPL defenders, but if they did…

Andy Robertson (£6.6m, 6.8% owned) - some BrewDog hipster swill.

Once an incredibly popular pick, Robertson has occupied the fringes of FPL ownership this season. We don’t usually like differentials; particularly pricey ones, but Liverpool have excellent upcoming fixtures and the Scotsman is nailed. We know what he can do when he hits form.

Dan Burn (£4.6m) and Pedro Porro (£5.1m) are also solid, relatively budget-friendly options.

Son Heung-min will likely be the most popular captain amongst active managers this gameweek. He plays Luton in the early kick-off at Kenilworth Road.

Since his hat-trick in Gameweek 4, Son has added another three goals to his tally. Six goals in four gameweeks: it’s very decent.

Here’s the devil’s advocate argument against captaining Son.

1) Son is over-performing. He’s a great player, so that’s not entirely shocking, but his 2.64xG over the last four fixtures hints towards a slow-down at some point.

2) Statistically, Luton have the second-best defence at home in the entire league so far this season. Only Man City can better their 2.91xGA (expected goals allowed) at home. It’s a small sample size, but still.

3) Erling Haaland plays an Arsenal side that are yet to keep a clean sheet at home this season.

Listen, some very good managers (most of ‘em, in fact) are backing Son. There’s plenty of sound logic there and, even if there was no logic at all, it’s still one of the league’s best attackers against Luton.

But at the least, it’s noteworthy that the Norse God might just be a differential captain amongst active managers in a week where:

It’s still Haaland, after all.

Safe captain = Son.
Differential captain with a decent chance of returning = Haaland.

Here are the most important numbers going into Gameweek 8.

We’ve already covered the Professor’s Wildcard team.

I’ll stress here that, just like Ryanair’s terms and conditions after you’ve booked a flight, it’s liable to change suddenly and without warning.

Captain = Son Heung-min.

Btw, if you want to up your game this season (don’t we all), Fantasy Football Hub are offering a free week of membership, which gives you access to MyTeam (seen above) as well as loads of articles, tools (like OPTA stats) and expert team reveals. Click here to try it.

Right then. Gameweek 9’s deadline is exactly two weeks from now, but we’re incredibly clingy, so we’ll be in touch before then with an update on anything you might need to know during the international break. Any excuse.

Until then, stay lazy.

The LazyFPL team