The stuff you should know.
⏰ Gameweek 8’s deadline is Saturday, 18th October, 11:00 BST ⏰
🛌 Erling Haaland and Mohamed Salah were rested for the second of their international fixtures.
🤦 Enzo Fernández missed Thursday’s training. His availability for GW8 will be based on Friday’s training session. Moises Caicedo and Pedro Neto are also doubts.
🥶 Cole Palmer is set to be out for “six more weeks” - Enzo Maresca.
🤕 Martin Ødegaard is expected to be out until after the November international break.
🏥 Ollie Watkins, Ryan Gravenberch, Niclas Füllkrug and Omar Alderete also pick up injuries, varying in severity.
👀 Keep reading for a perfectly fine Wildcard draft.
Alright?
Another international break bites the dust, and thankfully, this one duly ingested its dust with far less drama than the last one.
In fact, some of our most important players may be returning in a more rested state than when they departed - a rare slice of good fortune that we can only assume we earned by sacrificing João Pedro’s form to the FPL Gods back in Gameweek 4.
We don’t know how your season has been so far, and frankly, we don’t care. Not because we don’t like you (if you’re subscribed to this newsletter, there’s always a seat for you at our table), but because it’s still early enough that the four gameweeks between now and the next international break could be transformative for your team.
For good or for bad.
Here’s how to ensure it’s more of the former.
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Gameweek 8’s fixtures.
What happened in the international break?
Lazy summary: Just read the bold bits.
A few minor injuries to some fringe FPL players probably aren’t the meatiest talking points to emerge from the international break.
If we can be so bold, we want to highlight five good things that happened instead. We published a more comprehensive summary here for the slightly less lazy among you.
1) Erling Haaland and Mohamed Salah were rested.
Haaland and Salah were spared from the second of their international games so that the pair could rest. Incidentally, both scored in the first of their games - Haaland grabbed a hat-trick (but also missed a penalty, and the retake of that penalty) and Salah scored a brace.
2) Jean-Philippe Mateta scored his first international goal.
Mateta is off the mark for France. The five managers who have stuck with him are desperately hoping this will be the start of a goalscoring run in the Premier League.
3) Ollie Watkins and Morgan Rogers both scored for England, both assisted by Marc Guehi
They might not be firing for Aston Villa, but Watkins and Rogers scored within 11 minutes of England’s friendly against Wales. Is it time for the pair to find their 24/25 form again? Don’t look at us - like we’d know.
4) Estêvão scored a brace in Brazil
The Chelsea man has only had four starts this season (and was subbed off after five minutes in one of them), but the £6.5m midfielder always looks great when he plays, and he’s quickly becoming a star in Brazil. With Chelsea about to face four relegation candidates in their next five fixtures, he’s surely one to watch.
5) Jeremy Doku impresses again
Speaking of £6.5m midfielders, Doku was many people’s Man of the Match in Belgium’s 4-2 win against Wales. He only managed an assist, but did lots of that running-at-defenders thing that footballers used to do before it became suboptimal.
Is five at the back the new 3-5-2?
Lazy summary: Not yet, but we ought to be more mindful of defensive contributions.
There’s something odd about the current team of the season:
It looks like a pair of Y-fronts with the label sticking out of the top. That’s not what the team of the season usually looks like after seven gameweeks.
For many FPL purists, playing five at the back is akin to voluntarily offering your chips to a passing seagull, or wearing socks with flip-flops. You just don’t do it, and if you do, you’re going to look totally mental to those around you.
Yet here we are. If nothing else, the current team of the season stands as a top-heavy totem to the power of defensive contributions; a reminder that whilst they might not have the explosiveness of an Erling Haaland hat-trick or an Antoine Semenyo brace, these innocuous two-point contributions can steadily rack up.
So…should you go five at the back?
Before we get too carried away, there’s a big caveat here.
It’s still early in the season. We’re not even out of the BST timezone yet. Sure, defenders are scoring well, but part of that is owed to the lack of prolific goalscorers so far. Only four players have scored four or more goals this season (Haaland (9), Semenyo (6), Anthony (4) and Thiago (4)).
For comparison, 13 players had reached this milestone at the same stage last season.
The lack of goal scorers is making defenders look good, and we don’t expect the team of the season to look like this come Gameweek 38.
How can I leverage this information?
It’s too early to commit to five at the back week in, week out.
For us, the biggest takeaway here is to give defensive contributions the respect they deserve. Players like Marcos Senesi are hardly prolific goal contributors (he has a decent, if not exceptional, two assists to his name), but his consistency with defensive contributions has added 12 points - the equivalent of two goals - to his season’s tally.
Whilst rivals continue to give disproportionate weighting to goals and assists, you might well consider a recruitment strategy that puts defensive contributions top of your criteria.
Chip watch.
Lazy summary: The Wildcard will probably be the most popular chip this week.
As with any post-international break gameweek, the Wildcard will probably be the most popular chip this week. It accompanies the fixture swing we talked about in last gameweek’s newsletter, but with the added security of another international break safely navigated.
Here’s a credible Wildcard team if you’ve hit the button but you’re still floundering:
It’s very neurotypical, but capitalises on Chelsea’s fixture swing, Arsenal’s nice run and feels primed for a decent Bench Boost if you haven’t played it yet. Remember, Wildcards and Bench Boosts pair well together.
The Triple Captain on an in-form, well-rested Erling Haaland will also pick up plenty of suitors, and one of our resident boffins will be playing his Bench Boost. You can see his final team selection by joining LazyFPL Premium.
The best captain for Gameweek 8.
Lazy Summary: It’s Erling Haaland.
Yup. Often in FPL, the most obvious decisions are the best. Haaland at home to Everton gets our armband.
As discussed already, if you still have your Triple Captain, this is also a perfectly reasonable week to play it. Haaland comes into this game in the form of his life (which is saying something) and well rested.
Whilst Everton have only conceded seven goals so far, they’ve conceded five of those seven in their three away games. They’re also the fifth-worst team for expected goals conceded.
Haaland meeting an FPL manager who still doesn’t own him.
The Professor is more undecided about this week’s decisions than usual. Like a lot of good managers, he wants to capitalise on Chelsea’s fixture swing, but is waiting for any late news that might influence his decision.
There’s an elephant in the room - four of them, actually; it must be a bloody big room - and that’s his four free transfers. The Professor has earned the right to perform major surgery on his team if he chooses, but the scalpel remains sheathed, for now.
Here’s his team at the moment:
Still a slab on the operating table.
If you want to find out what the Professor lands on, subscribe to LazyFPL Premium and you’ll get his final team (along with the final teams of our other experts) posted in the WhatsApp chat before the deadline.
The Key Stats for Gameweek 8.
Other Stuff We Found Interesting
1. Erling Haaland really is in a league of his own this season, as this zoom-worthy graphic from Opta illustrates:
2. There are quite a lot of players nearing a ban for picking up five yellows. This graphic from Fantasy Football Edits shows them:
Okay, it’s a Friday night kick-off next week, which means we’ll be back in your inbox on…say it with us…Thursday evening.
Assuming we all make it through Gameweek 8, we’ll see you then.
Stay lazy,
The LazyFPL Team.