🚨 GW9: the FPL cheat sheet 🤫

⏰ Gameweek 9’s deadline is Friday, 24th October, 18:30 BST ⏰

👋 Ange Postecoglou sacked by Nottingham Forest. Sean Dyche appointed.

🤕 Alexander Isak went off with a groin injury in Liverpool’s UCL game. “Let’s wait and see”, says Slot. Jeremie Frimpong was also injured.

🧐 Mohamed Salah only played 15 minutes in an otherwise full-strength UCL side for Liverpool during the week. BREAKING: In the last few hours, he’s removed the visible stuff associated with Liverpool from his Twitter account (like the cover photo and profile pic). Look, it could be nothing, but this is the world we live in now.

👀 Keep reading for some new graphics that should make reading Lazy on your phone an even lazier experience.

Alright?

These days, LazyFPL is a multinational community that spans more than 50 countries.

So it won’t be obvious to everyone reading that this Sunday, the clocks go back an hour here in the UK. We move from British Summer Time (ironically named, given how crap the weather is) to Greenwich Mean Time (GMT). We don’t know why, but we’re pretty sure it has something to do with making sure everyone in Britain remains as miserable as possible.

This Friday’s Gameweek 9 deadline is the last BST deadline until we move back to it at the end of March next year. From Gameweek 10, we’re in GMT.

Every season, some poor sod writes to us to tell us that they’ve missed the Gameweek 10 deadline because of this change. So if you’re that poor-sod-to-be, please consider this your advance notice.

Anyway, Gameweek 9 is outside, and it’d be rude to keep it waiting any longer. Here’s everything you need to know.

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We read it, and we like it. It makes us more clued up. So now we’re recommending it to you.

Don’t take our word for it, though: click the button below to do some due diligence:

Lazy summary: Quite a bit.

Enough happened in Europe during the week to justify looking at each game in turn. And by “looking at” we mean “picking out the FPL-relevant stuff and ignoring literally everything else about the game”.

Tuesday

Three Premier League teams were in action, and all of them kept a clean sheet.

Arsenal 4-0 Atlético Madrid

Gabriel scored and assisted. Viktor Gyökeres scored a brace.

Newcastle 3-0 Benfica

Harvey Barnes didn’t start but scored two from the bench. Anthony Gordon got a goal and an assist. Nick Woltemade had one shot.

Villarreal 0-2 Man City

Erling Haaland scored, as per. Bernardo Silva nabbed the other. Tijjani Reijnders and Phil Foden were both rested, with Reijnders coming on in the 73rd minute. Nico González picked up an injury and was replaced by Mateo Kovačić. The big concern for FPL managers is that Reijnders could, at some point, be deployed deeper due to injuries.

Wednesday

Another three Premier League teams played in the UCL.

Chelsea 5-1 Ajax

Marc Guiu, Enzo Fernández, Moisés Caicedo, Tyrique George and Estêvão scored. João Pedro was suspended for this game, and Fernández only played a half after returning from injury. Incidentally, Guiu (the £4.3m forward) was bought off at half-time. Was it a rest ahead of Gameweek 9?

Frankfurt 1-5 Liverpool

Another five individual goalscorers here. Hugo Ekitike, Virgil van Dijk, Ibrahima Konaté, Cody Gakpo and Dominik Szoboszlai all scored. Florian Wirtz notched two assists and Jeremie Frimpong went off injured. Mohamed Salah was rested…again. He played for 15 minutes off the bench.

Perhaps most notably, Alexander Isak went off with a groin injury.

Monaco 0-0 Spurs

Despite the scoreline, Spurs got more battered than a sausage in a chippy. There was a Man of the Match performance from Guglielmo Vicario here, but that’s about it.

Thursday

Nottingham Forest, Aston Villa and Crystal Palace are all in action, but our crystal ball is on the blink again, so we can’t tell you much about those.

We do know that Villa’s most tempting prospect, Morgan Rogers, is on the bench for Villa.

Lazy summary: It’s about spending transfers, not saving them.

This season, for the first time in FPL history, the FPL Gods will give us five free transfers in Gameweek 16 to help us prepare for AFCON.

It feels like overkill. The Premier League published a list of players who could go to AFCON, but only a small minority are interesting for FPL managers. They include:

🇪🇬 Mohamed Salah and Omar Marmoush
🇨🇩 Yoane Wissa
🇩🇿 Rayan Aït-Nouri
🇨🇲 Bryan Mbeumo
🇸🇳 Ismaïla Sarr and Iliman Ndiaye

So, what do we need to do to prepare?

Well, we need to make sure we’ve used up all of our transfers before Gameweek 16 so that we feel the full benefit of the five free ones.

There’s simply no point in banking transfers, because in Gameweek 16, everyone will have five anyway.

And that’s about it. Five free transfers is effectively a mini-Wildcard, and it’s a disproportionate response to the mild inconvenience that is AFCON. Salah’s poor form only makes it an easier obstacle to navigate.

Speaking of Salah…

Lazy summary: Sell, keep, keep (just). Respectively.

The three horsemen of the 25/26 FPL apocalypse are surely Mohamed Salah, João Pedro and Tijjani Reijnders.

Each has enjoyed significant ownership this season, and each has managed to find creative and emphatic ways to disappoint their owners.

The question now becomes: Do we keep them, or is it time to get rid?

Mohamed Salah - 32% owned. Sell.

Salah’s stats have dropped off a cliff, and given how impressive he was last season, that cliff is pretty high. It’s like that cliff in The Princess Bride - if you know, you know.

Sky Sports published the graphic below before Gameweek 8, but Liverpool’s defeat against Man United did little to improve upon his numbers so far:

This isn’t the first time over the last few seasons that Salah, the greatest FPL asset that’s ever lived, has been scrutinised.

But it is the first time, as far as we can remember, that his underlying stats have not stood up to that scrutiny. Whether you’re watching his performances or studying his charts, the inescapable reality is that Salah really has dropped off.

This, when combined with a few other factors, makes for a heady cocktail:

Factor 1 (the vermouth): On Thursday, he removed references to Liverpool from his Twitter profile, including changing his profile and header banners. It could be nothing, but it’s ominous.

Factor 2 (the vodka): Erling Haaland has effectively made the armband a redundant clothing accessory by this point.

It means that Salah is not worth his £14.4m asking price. Of course, he will score more goals this season, but the only argument left for keeping him is that “it’s Salah”. And that just isn’t enough at the moment.

João Pedro - 58% owned. Keep…for now.

There’s no hiding from the fact that Pedro’s stats have been amongst the worst for forwards over the last four gameweeks (he’s registered just one shot in his last four Premier League games).

But Waylon Lazy’s teachings are unequivocal: fixtures beat form. We’re not saying that Pedro is a buy - far from it - but if you have him in your team, using a valuable free transfer to get rid of him ahead of Sunderland at home feels wasteful.

With other strikers in his price bracket - like Nick Woltemade and Jean-Philippe Mateta - looking so good, Pedro ought to be on ice thin enough to make Peter Crouch look chunky. But for now, he’s a keep for us.

Tijjani Reijnders - 30% owned. Keep if you can’t afford an upgrade.

One of the most transferred-out players this week, Tijjani Reijnders was the Gameweek 1 darling that hasn’t registered a single return since. Which is almost impressively shite, given he’s started every game for Man City this season.

For many of his owners, a ‘58 substitution in Gameweek 8 was the final straw.

But hang on a second. Reijnders is £5.7m and playing for (arguably) the best attacking team in the league. He’s starting games, he’s getting forward, and he’s unfortunate not to have had more returns.

Assuming he continues to do that (and who knows with Pep?), he’s probably still the best midfielder in his price bracket.

But if you’ve got the money, there are better midfielders north of the £6.0m mark. Ismaïla Sarr is our favourite between now and AFCON.

It’s Erling Haaland away at Aston Villa. His form and popularity are just too potent to look elsewhere.

A quick note on your Triple Captain, for those who still have it. It’s hard to look past the Norse God, but he’ll have better opportunities than Aston Villa away. Leeds (H) in Gameweek 13, Sunderland (H) in Gameweek 15 and West Ham (H) in Gameweek 17 stand out.

The Professor has described the number of options he has this week as “a slew”, so you know it’s serious.

He has three free transfers (not easy to say after a few pints) and a few issues in his team to deal with.

Phil Foden and Tijjani Reijnders are on the potential chopping block, and he’s eyeing up Enzo Fernández, Yankuba Minteh, and Ismaïla Sarr as possible replacements. But nothing is set in stone yet.

Will it be surgery or yet another roll of the transfer for the Prof? Find out on the next episode of-oh wait, wrong plug. Find out by joining LazyFPL Premium for the cost of a meal deal a month.

1) Omar Alderete is ruled out of Gameweek 9 due to concussion protocols.

2) Fulham’s Joachim Andersen has a “not that serious” muscle injury - Silva.

3) A defender has been the top-scoring player in five of the eight gameweeks so far this season.

4) The team of the season so far:

5) Every single centre back that has played against Crystal Palace in their last 5 league matches has hit DEFCON. All 10 of them. They play Arsenal next. [@FPL_TomHadley]

There’s no early kick-off next week, so we’ll be back in your inbox on Friday afternoon, at 13:30 GMT. Try to enjoy Gameweek 9 and remember,

Stay lazy.

The LazyFPL Team.