GAMEWEEK 2

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Summary for the lazy

- The Gameweek 2 deadline is Saturday at 11:00am BST ⏰- Haaland (£11.6m) most transferred in player, Kane (£11.4m) most transferred OUT. The City man could rise in price again tonight.- Perisic (£5.5m) pictured on holiday...in Croatia.- Matip (£6.0m) could be a doubt for Palace, making Joe Gomez (£4.5m) the likely starter.- City sign Sergio Gomez who will compete with Cancelo at left-back.- Gerrard continues to publicly back Leon Bailey (£5.0m)- Join our new FPL Slack group. It's totally free.- Read on for advice from last season's winner and every stat you could possibly need ahead of Gameweek 2 🏆

Transfer news

Man City have completed the signing of Sergio Gomez. The Spanish left-back arrives from Anderlecht, and will, according to Pep's comments today, be a first team player.If our sources are to be trusted, the signing was made purely because "FPL managers were getting too comfortable with Cancelo's guaranteed starts", although that rumour is yet to be confirmed. 

Remember Maxwel Cornet? He's the one who scored nine goals last season for a very goal-shy Burnley side.Well, he's moved to West Ham, and FPL Towers have just added him to the game. He'll cost you a very reasonable £6.0m. Tempted?

Everton have made two acquisitions this week, both of whom should shore up their defensive form this season.The first is Wolves' centre-back Conor Coady (£5.0m) on loan. The second is defensive midfielder Amadou Onana, who arrives at the club from Lille.You won't have the Belgian in your FPL team any time soon, but the 20-year-old arrives at Goodison with a considerable amount of hype. Expect lots of "Aaaa-maa-doo-doo-doo" chants sung to the tune of Black Lace's Agadoo.Here's an unflattering screenshot of Belgium national team coach Roberto Martinez giving his definitely unbiased opinion on the lad.

Brentford have signed winger Mikkel Damsgaard (£5.5m), the scorer of that wonderful free-kick against England in the Euro semi-finals. The Dane makes our favourite bargain-bucket midfielder Josh DaSilva (£4.5m) a less appealing option. Time will tell whether he remains Frank's first-choice. 

Finally, West Ham's Issa Diop (£4.5m) has joined Fulham.

Quick one: get the funniest stories in sport with The Upshot, a weekly email filled with drunken antics, dressing room squabbles, and everything else BBC Sport won't touch with a ten foot bargepole.  Last week they explained why West Ham's new striker, Gianluca Scamacca, has a comically terrifying family. It was a fun read.Click here to sign up instantly and get a 3 minute mood enhancer every Friday morning.

Shitizen Kane

Not our strongest pun, but it was the best we could come up with on short notice.As we predicted last week, Harry Kane (£11.4m) is the most transferred out player ahead of Gameweek 2.Over 750,000 managers have shown him the door because, as we all know, if you fail to register an attacking return in Gameweek 1, you must be completely rubbish.Unsurprisingly, it's Erling Haaland (£11.6m) who benefits from the anti-Kane-train. Over 1,000,000 managers have signed the Norwegian. I'm sure he's absolutely chuffed.If you're not making that move, you're probably either rolling your transfer, or doing something ill-advised.

In FPL lingo, an OOP player is an "out of position" player. In other words, they're playing in a different position to the position assigned to them in fantasy football. The undisciplined scallywags.

Kai Havertz

was a good example of an OOP player last season. He was listed as a midfielder in FPL, despite starting most real-life, actual games as a forward. A discrepancy that has now been fixed.

We've spotted a few from Gameweek 1. You should know about them: they can come in handy.

Joe Aribo (£5.5m)

Despite being listed as a midfielder, Southampton's Joe Aribo started alongside Adam Armstrong as one half of a front two. He looked sharp, too.

Anthony Gordon (£5.5m)

Another £5.5m midfielder masquerading as a forward, Everton's Gordon played on his own up-top in a 5-4-1 against Chelsea. He was alright, but he was playing Chelsea.

(Incidentally, £4.0m defender

Nathan Patterson

played a blinder in that game.)

Erling Haaland

With that said, we'd be remiss not to show you this, produced by our friends at FPL Updates and Tips

.

After all, what's a captaincy call without a seed of doubt?

Still, it's Haaland for us. He'll be the most captained player this week, and boring is best for now.

Unless you were a subscriber at the end of last season (shout out to our OG subscribers), you won't have seen our stats graphic yet. Well, here it is. Every important stat you need ahead of Gameweek 2.

Jamie Pigott won the entire game last season. Here's what he has to say about Gameweek 2."Heading into GW2, my biggest piece advice: be patient. The narrative on social media and in the community can be strong, but don’t let it sway you too much. Remember we didn’t really know much before Gameweek 1 and we still don’t know much now. The narrative can change quickly. We all spent the past month tinkering with drafts and made 15 picks, if you still think your 15 decisions were good, that’s good enough. 

My thoughts ahead of Gameweek 2:- I like the idea of rolling a transfer this week unless you have an obvious affordable transfer.- I don’t love a hit after Gameweek 1 for anyone unless you planned it ahead (even Haaland).- Haaland could score buckets this week. I’m not bringing him in and it terrifies me.- Captain: Salah vs Haaland - Don’t overthink it this week, it’s one of these two. If you own both and don’t have a favourite, flip a coin. I think it’s a true 50/50Top teams I’m looking to scout in Gameweek 2:    - Spurs vs Chelsea - who plays wingback?    - Arsenal - Jesus blanks again and people might start to get nervous (pains me but he looked great Gameweek 1. despite the blank)    - Fulham - intrigued to see their attack against not Liverpool...Andreas?    - Liverpool - Does Darwin start? (I think yes) and does how does he affect Salah?    - Man City - how many goals can they put past the Bournemouth Bus. Does the Norwegian focal point continue?    - Brighton & Brentford - good upcoming fixtures, is there anyone worth brining in?    - Watchlist I have my eye ahead of Gameweek 3: Kulusevski, Darwin, Zinchenko, Saliba, Mitrovic, Bamford, Aaronson, WelbeckGood luck everyone. Watch some games this weekend. Early weeks I feel it’s important before we have good sample of data to rely on.Football. Is. Life. Futbolislifefpl.

We also handed him the reigns to our team this week, and he decided to roll a transfer. Practicing what he preaches. Here's how it looks ahead of Gameweek 2.

By the way, the team view you see here is from Fantasy Football Hub's new My Team tool. We'd recommend you start using it, if you're not already.It gives you predicted points, suggested transfers, a team rating and the ability to visualise what your team is gunna look like in future gameweeks.Oh, and it's free to take for a test drive. Apparently we're scoring 60 points on the nose this week.

Due to the constant inconvenience that is this year's World Cup, the Champions League group stage is being squeezed into a 57-day orgy of midweek competition this season. It'll start on 6th September and finish on 2nd November.For perspective, last season it took 86 days to complete. The Europa League group stage will be similarly truncated.This, combined with the five-substitution rule, is going to make it challenging to pick the 90-minute-men from the clubs involved.A reminder: Man City, Liverpool, Chelsea and Spurs compete in the Champions League this season. Arsenal and Man United will spar for a place in the Europa League knockouts.It's worth monitoring closely who starts in these midweek clashes. We will, of course, do our best to keep you in the loop.