Gameweek 2: Essential news.

The Stuff You Should Know

🚨 Gameweek 2’s deadline is Saturday 24th August, 11:00 BST.

👋 £4.0m heartthrob Barco goes to Sevilla on a season-long loan.

🤝 Andersen joins Fulham from Palace, Nketiah set to move to Forest.

🤦‍♂️ Quansah drops in price and misses Wednesday’s training with a “bit of an injury”.

🔄 Felix (£6.5m MID) back to Chelsea, Gundogan back to Man City.

👀 Ayew (£5.5m MID) has moved to Leicester, Sepp van der Berg (£4.0m DEF) set to move from Liverpool to Brentford.

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Keep reading to get our take on whether it’s time to use the Triple Captain already.

Alright?

How was your Gameweek 1? Go on, we know you’re gagging to tell us. Click “reply” and describe it using one word.

Ours was…succulent.

But hold your horses - or whatever animal you use to get around - because despite the hootenanny, Gameweek 1 is but a skid mark on the regalia of your 24/25 season.

That’s right - Gameweek 1 might feel extra important, but in reality it’s as important as Gameweek 29, Gameweek 13 and that weird Gameweek sandwiched between Christmas and New Year. They all count the same, even if some feel distinctly more grandiose than others.

It’s a key thing to remember. Those who have a bad Gameweek 1 can be quickly seduced by the siren’s song of panic transfers, experimental captains and dodgy benching decisions.

But the temptress of a good Gameweek 1 can be equally as perilous.

Regardless of how good or bad last weekend was for you, it doesn’t matter anymore. The only thing that matters now is what happens next. That’s where we come in.

Let’s dance to the fun little ditty that is Gameweek 2.

Gameweek 2’s fixtures.

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Five things we learned from Gameweek 1.

Mauricio Sarri once said that “August football is lying”.

We love this quote because it regularly proves true for FPL managers. It’s easy to draw conclusions from the opening gameweeks that end up being wrong. It’s a deceptive time of the season.

With that in mind, we’ve tried to pick five learnings that should hold true even beyond August’s duplicitous parameters.

1) Budget defenders are not a myth. And there’s a few £4.5m midfielders in the mix too.

Whilst Donnie Barco (we’ll talk about him a little more shortly) failed to register a single minute in Gameweek 1, plenty of bargain bucket players did play.

And legendary Redditor u/WEAluka compiled all of Gameweek 1’s budget stars into a table, complete with their underlying stats. Here’s the post.

TL;DR - plenty of £4.0m defenders from the promoted clubs and Romeo Lavia (£4.5m MID) at Chelsea are the highlights.

2) The new bonus points system probably won’t make a huge difference to your decision making.

Nothing mental happened with the bonus points, despite the new system.

3) Quansah might not be the £4.5m Liverpool starter we hoped for.

Partly because he now costs £4.4m. Jarell Quansah was subbed at half-time against Ipswich, and Liverpool went on to win the game comfortably. Coincidence? Probably. But it doesn’t help his chances of a Gameweek 2 start, nor does the “bit of an injury” he’s apparently picked up.

4) No team looked particularly terrible.

It’s early, but nobody looked woeful in Gameweek 1. Even Everton. That game could’ve been very different had they been more clinical in the opening stages.

The worst 45 minutes of football were played by Leicester vs Spurs, but they promptly turned it around in the second half.

5) Some players are still returning to fitness.

Phil Foden didn’t start, Ollie Watkins was subbed after failing to register a single attempt on goal, Cole Palmer’s game looked about as peaky as he usually does. They may need more time before they’re back to their best.

What’s happening with Barco then?

Summary for the Lazy: he’s leaving, but probably won’t drop in price. Get rid at your own leisure.

Oh, Barco. You just couldn’t be our Valentin, could you?

Despite the hype, Barco clearly isn’t as integral to Brighton’s plans as we had hoped.

He’s now off to Sevilla for the season. Not a bad outcome for him, but one that leaves his owners in a £4.0m purgatory.

Miraculously he hasn’t dropped in price yet, despite being owned by so many (22.2% at the time of writing) FPL managers. And for the less-experienced amongst you, there’s a bit of FPL lore you should know.

FPL lore: players who leave the league don’t drop in price.

Once he’s red-flagged (i.e. he’s been officially ruled out of playing future games), he won’t move up or down in price. This was a phenomenon recently illustrated by FFScout Neale, who went through the last 50 players loaned outside of the Premier League to see what happened to their price. None moved.

This is a blessing for his owners. A final parting gift from their budget prince. At the time of writing, he isn’t close to dropping in price. Assuming he’s red-flagged soon, it’ll mean owners can swap him for another £4.0m defender (preferably one who lives in England) when they’re ready to do so.

What are the top managers doing this week?

Summary for the Lazy: not panicking.

Every team is different, so there’s no “one transfer” that we’re going to recommend here.

Instead, we’ll tell you what the best FPL managers aren’t doing: flapping.

That’s right. They might be sat with Quansah (now £4.4m), Barco and Fabian Schar and they still won’t be panicking.

That’s because:

1) They’re experienced enough to know that panic transfers only bring about pain.

2) They only have one gameweek’s worth of data to base their decisions on.

It’s likely, therefore, that most top managers will be looking to roll a transfer unless there’s an issue that might jeopardise their ability to field 11 players.

They certainly won’t be amongst the 280k+ managers who have already gotten rid of Ollie Watkins, or the ~155k managers who have decided to ditch Eberechi Eze.

Don’t be an ejit. You picked your Gameweek 1 team for a reason - one gameweek is not enough to reverse those decisions without good cause.

The best captain for Gameweek 2.

Summary for the Lazy: it’s Haaland. If you don’t have him, Salah. Probs don’t TC unless you’re feeling lucky.

Yup, it’s Erling Haaland this week at home to Ipswich. As we’ve said before and will say again, we don’t deal in differentials this early.

If you don’t own him, Mohamed Salah at home to Brentford is probably the next-best option. Alexander Isak away at Bournemouth might tempt some, but we tend to prefer home fixtures if there isn’t much in it.

The bigger question this week is about whether or not to use your Triple Captain.

Should you Triple Captain Haaland in Gameweek 2?

No. Probably not.

Listen, the Triple Captain (like a lot of chips) is mostly pot-luck. In the same way that a roulette player might fancy sticking a tenner on their favourite number “for the vibes”, so too might the FPL manager be tempted into using their Triple Captain on a single gameweek.

And it might just work out. The xVibes are strong this week, after all.

But thanks to some quantum fixture planning from Ben Crellin, it looks likely that Man City will have at least one Double Gameweek this season.

Without wanting to get into the weeds of this, if Man City reaches the final of the EFL Cup or the semi-finals of the FA Cup, they’ll be given a Double Gameweek for their troubles. The same principle applies to every Premier League team.

If you want to see Crellin’s workings, the full breakdown is here.

The Prof managed a respectable 71 points to kick-off his 24/25 campaign.

He doesn’t really care.

It’s all about learning at this point. Last season he was ranked 4.8m in Gameweek 7 and he still didn’t really care. The first part of the season is for learning, not for scoring points.

Erling Haaland gets the armband and he’s rolling a transfer.

Btw, if you’re that way inclined, the Professor sends two extra emails per Gameweek where he gets into the gory details of his decision-making. It’s one of the many benefits of LazyFPL Premium.

The key stats.

The LazyFPL stats table is back.

A few quick notes:

1) Obviously the current xStats aren’t “the last 4” because we haven’t had four games yet.

2) Take the xStats with a pinch of salt. They won’t look like this next week.

Predict results with us and win stuff.

The LazyFPL results prediction league on Sleeper is underway, and it’s not too late to join.

As a reminder, we’re giving away £500 worth of stuff every month this season to you lot, with a £3k prize at the end. It’s totally free.

Btw, we managed to predict 6/10 results correctly last week, including the draw between Leicester and Spurs:

Click here to join us.

Other stuff we found interesting.

1. Christopher Nkunku started and scored a penalty in Chelsea’s Conference League qualifier on Thursday night. He played 57 mins.

2. Bruno Fernandes acknowledged that FPL managers exist on Instagram. It was quite the thrill.

3. Midfielder Mikel Merino moves to Arsenal.

4. Pedro Porro trains as normal following an early substitution on Monday.

5. Cole Palmer picked up a “painful knock” in Thursday night’s European fixture. Initial prognosis is that he’s fine.

6. There’s an emerging rumour that Dominic Solanke missed Thursday’s training, but it’s just a rumour at the moment.

Okay, we’re out. All eyes on the press conferences.

Same time next week? It’s a date.

Stay lazy.

The LazyFPL Team.