Gameweek 10 | The Juiciest Bits

The Stuff You Should Know

🚨 Gameweek 10’s deadline is Saturday 2nd November, 11:00 GMT.

⛔️ Ten Hag sacked. Ruben Amorim set to be appointed, Ruud van Nistelrooy interim.

🙏 Gabriel’s injury “doesn’t look bad at all”.

🤦‍♂️ But Gvardiol, Eze, McNeil, Savinho, White and Van de Ven could all be injured.

🤕 Jota won’t be back before the next international break (after Gameweek 11).

👌 Son “should be alright” for Gameweek 10.

Stick around to learn whether you ought to get rid of Erling Haaland.

Alright?

No time for a fun intro today. The Professor is in Florida examining the NPxGI/90 of Goofy and his pals, which means we’re more stretched than a hamstring in an EFL Cup fixture (if you don’t get that joke now, you will momentarily).

Don’t worry though: he was good enough to send over his team yesterday, so at least we have that.

Pinch, punch, let’s look at Gameweek 10.

Gameweek 10’s fixtures.

Subscribe to Triptix for free.

If you've ever dreamed of attending a game between two of Europe's footballing giants, you'll love Triptix.

It's a weekly newsletter and website which finds you the cheapest flight and ticket offers for European matches.

To start receiving offers for the biggest games at the lowest possible prices, sign-up for free today by clicking the button below:

The injury room.

Summary for the Lazy: Keep an eye on the press conferences.

Don your scrubs. Find a pair of latex gloves - for your hands, of course. Unfortunately it’s time to visit the injury room.

Gabriel 

Arteta has already said that his injury “doesn’t look bad at all”, and a scan has confirmed that there’s no significant damage to any ligaments. In Friday morning’s press conference he added to that hope by saying “If he can complete the training session today, he will be available.”

If you have him, we’d start him away at Newcastle. It’s likely he either plays 90 minutes or doesn’t play at all.

Eberechi Eze

Eze was forced off during Wednesday night’s EFL Cup game with a hamstring injury, because apparently his owners are enjoying owning him a little too much.

It was one of those unforced injuries where the player sort of just pulls up holding his hamstring. People who know about football always say those are the worst.

Micky Van de Ven

Speaking of hamstrings, Van de Ven seems to have hurt his. He hobbled off the pitch on Wednesday night in tears. Either he’s finally realised he plays for Spurs, or his injury is serious enough for concern.

Josko Gvardiol

Gvardiol was receiving treatment on the pitch at the end of a brief appearance in Wednesday night’s EFL Cup fixture. On Thursday he tweeted this:

We asked ChatGPT to write a brief tweet from a footballer who is trying to keep their injury status ambiguous ahead of a big game. This is what it wrote:

So yeah, it’s ambiguous. Which is irritating. Keep him until further notice.

Diogo Jota

There’s less ambiguity around Jota, who has been effectively ruled out until after the international break.

Savinho

I didn’t watch Spurs vs Man City on Wednesday night. but based on the number of injuries that have come from the game, I can only assume it looked something like this:

According to friends-of-the-newsletter CityXtra, his injury is “nothing serious”, but more tests will need to be carried out to ascertain the extent of it.

Ben White

He’s also a doubt. From Friday morning’s press conference: “With Ben we don’t know yet. He hasn’t trained yet. He could not train and he could not get involved. Let’s wait and see if he’s available or not.”

Martin Odegaard and Riccardo Calafiori 

Arteta has confirmed both of these will miss Gameweek 10. “Ricky and Martin are out definitely.”

Is anyone okay?

Listen, it’s not all doom and gloom here at Lazy HQ.

Heung-min Son “should be alright” for the weekend and Matheus Cunha, who some FPL hipsters are bringing in, was spotted in Wolves’ latest training session.

Penetrative Stats.

We’re going to give you seven facts about a Premier League player. See how long it takes you to guess who we’re talking about:

• £7.4m

• 6.2% owned

• 21 points in his last 3 games

• 6 attacking returns this season

• 4th amongst midfielders for xGI in the last four gameweeks

• Decent fixtures on the horizon

• Goes out with Dani Dyer

Yeah, it’s Jarrod Bowen.

Bowen registered 182 FPL points and 22 attacking returns last season (16G, 6A). It’s nothing too dramatic, but it points to a player who’s capable of the sort of returns you dream of when you buy a mid-priced midfielder. And that wasn’t even his best season.

Here are his fixtures over the next 8 gameweeks:

His underlying stats are solid too.

Forget Bukayo Saka and Brennan Johnson - look at Bowen’s expected goal involvement over the last four gameweeks.

Indeed, Bowen has quietly crept into the top 10 top-scoring midfielders without much pomp or ceremony, and has already played Chelsea, Man City, Aston Villa and Spurs.

So if you’re looking for a reasonably priced midfielder who’s on penalties, with decent fixtures, a history of talismanic returns for his side, improving underlying stats and a C-list fiance, you could do worse than the 6% owned Jarrod Bowen.

But the differentials don’t stop there. It’s that part of the newsletter where we talk about Manchester United.

Man United’s latest squeeze.

Summary for the Lazy: Don’t do anything rash(ford), but keep an eye on Manchester United players.

There remains a small tinge of ambiguity at the time of writing, but it looks a near-certainty that Ruben Amorim is going to Manchester United.

When exactly this happens remains a mystery, but - according to almost every source apart from Sporting Lisbon themselves - happen it shall.

Does it matter?

Well, it might. We’re not sure yet. The takeaway here isn’t that we ought to start buying Manchester United players, it’s that they’re the fickle types who might start playing well under new management. And that’s worth monitoring.

The Professor was good enough to tear himself away from the sweaty queues of Universal Studios to give us a comprehensive analysis of the Man Utd players he’s watching:

“Garnacho, Bruno and Rashford (in that order).”

Cheers, Prof.

Reading between the lines though, Alejandro Garnacho does make sense. Only Bruno Fernandes, who costs £2m more and has played 150 minutes extra, bests Garnacho for total expected goal involvements at Man Utd this season.

Ruud van Nistelrooy has been appointed as interim manager, and we should have clarity over when Amorim is expected to assume full control within days of this newsletter going out.

It’s worth remembering that Manchester United have produced some FPL gems in recent seasons. Marcus Rashford and Bruno Fernandes have, at one point or another, enjoyed the sort of ownership that Mohamed Salah and Erling Haaland enjoy now.

If Wednesday’s 5-2 EFL Cup win against Leicester is anything to go by (and, by the way, it might not be), there’s every chance their assets become viable FPL options again.

Why are people getting rid of Haaland?

Summary for the Lazy: not many people are. We wouldn’t recommend you do either.

The water cooler chat for those sad enough to talk about FPL at work has been whether or not to keep Erling Haaland this week.

Nearly everyone is talking about it, which means, rather annoyingly, we have to as well.

You’d think, given the noise around this topic, that managers were selling him off in their hoards. And yet, at the time of writing (Friday morning, dreary weather, coffee adjacent), only 96,000 have pulled the trigger.

He’s still 73% owned. In our view, that’s for good reason.

James Cooper, another resident expert in the LazyFPL Premium lounge, wrote extensively about this topic in the latest premium newsletter, concluding that Haaland should be kept predominantly because:

1) he’s underperforming.

2) owning lots of premium midfielders instead doesn’t make sense from a captaincy perspective.

3) everyone owns him - it’s too much risk to get rid.

As a reminder, he’s racked up 3.03 xG in his last four fixtures, and has just one goal to show for it. If you’ve got him, hold him. Hold him close.

The best captain for Gameweek 10.

Summary for the Lazy: It’s Haaland.

We’re going for Erling Haaland again, even away to a more-resilient-than-usual Bournemouth.

Mohamed Salah is the obvious alternative here, and at home against Brighton, he’s not a bad pick. Brighton have conceded nearly double the amount of expected goals allowed away from home (8.42) as Bournemouth have at the Vitality (4.26) this season.

But whilst Haaland has significantly underperformed over the past four games, Salah has been flattered by two penalties during the same period.

Both are strong selections, but Haaland’s high ownership swings it for us.

No transfers this week for The Prof.

He’s got 3FTs, £1.4m in the bank and, rather harmoniously, a 1.4m rank too. We can only assume he’s fallen for some sort of FPL hoodoo that dictates his rank and available funds must remain exactly the same.

Haaland gets the captaincy.

The Professor is hoarding his transfers with more ferocity than a hungry squirrel prepping for a cold snap.

But it’s not the winter that he’s saving for: it’s for the Gameweek 12 fixture swing. Chelsea and Brighton’s fixtures suddenly look a lot brighter, whilst teams like Spurs and Man City go the opposite direction.

Chelsea’s fixtures after GW12:

Brighton’s fixtures after GW12:

The Prof is forecasting some wholesale changes around this fixture pivot. A sort of mini-Wildcard, if you will.

The key stats.

UCL Sleeper has landed.

You know how we partner with Sleeper for a Premier League Pick ‘em game?

Well now they’ve launched a UCL game too. It’s the same concept: you predict who will win each UCL game and you can win prizes if you get more right than the others in the league.

The next round is next week. It’s totally free, so get involved and compete for a share of $1,000 in Amazon gift cards. What else are you gunna play during the UCL games?

You can scan the QR code in the image below or click here to get involved.

Other stuff we found interesting.

• One of the VAR officials was playing FPL whilst officiating last weekend.

• Pep: “Rico Lewis is the only player we cannot rest. We would like to rest, but we cannot do it.”

• Pep: “We only have 13 fit players”.

Okay, there’s no early kick-off next week so we’ll be back in your inbox Friday afternoon.

Keep an eye on today’s press conference news and remember, stay lazy.

The LazyFPL Team.