GAMEWEEK 3

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Summary for the lazy

- The Gameweek 3 deadline is Saturday at 11:00am BST ⏰- Protest planned by Man United fans prior to Monday's Liverpool game 🪧- Nottingham Forest sign Morgan Gibbs-White (£5.5m) and Emmanuel Dennis (£6.0m) 💰- We sacked off Slack and started a Discord instead. It's better and it's still totally free. Join it here 🤝- Casemiro signs for Man United 🔴- "Some players have some niggles" - Pep Guardiola 🤦‍♂️- Read on for a Gameweek 2 score that'll make you feel loads better about yours.

Here's a comment one of our subscribers posted to kick-start the #FPL_Rant thread.

Transfer news

Cheikhou Kouyate (£4.5m), Emmanuel Dennis (£6.0m) and, most recently, Morgan Gibbs-White (£5.5m), have all signed for Nottingham Forest, who continue their mission to own every single player that has ever played for a top-flight team.Any of those tempt you?Nope, us neither.

Due to the Premier League's new rule that there must always be a player called Nunes competing each gameweek, Wolves have been forced into paying £42.2m for Sporting Lisbon midfielder, Matheus Nunes.Guardiola called this guy "one of the best players in the world" back in February, and if we know anything about Pep, it's that he's never prone to hyperbole. He's not a prolific goalscorer (3 goals from 33 appearances last season) but is versatile enough to contribute to Wolves' attacking efforts.Which, based on their attacking numbers last season, they could probably do with.

In the last few hours, Casemiro has reportedly signed for Manchester United. He's a defensive midfielder, so you won't be buying him anytime soon.Still, it's probably a better acquisition than Arnautovic.

Leon Bailey (£4.9m) has not calcified into the diamond-in-the-rough that this very newsletter suggested he might. You might say - we wouldn't - but you might say, that he's been a Leon Failey. Your words, not ours.Listen, we're not necessarily saying he's a must-go. You might have bigger fish to fry, like the bloke whose dressing room chair I briefly perched on last weekend. Plus, a good cameo from Bailey in Gameweek 3 could yet shift the narrative back in his favour.If you are looking for replacements, it's pretty slim pickings.Granit Xhaka, Joe Willock and - believe it or not - Solly March all have strong stats from the first two games, but all cost £0.1m more than the Villa man after he dropped in price during the week.The smart move? Downgrade to one of the several £4.5m playing midfielders and save the spare cash for a rainy day. Whilst we backed him in pre-season, maybe give Josh Dasilva (£4.6m) a swerve for now.

Oh yeah, that's our Twitter by the way. Give us a follow if you like.

Were you one of the unfortunates who sacked off your old Harry Kane in favour of a sleek, Norwegian model?You weren't alone. In fact, nearly a million managers were left fuming after Kane somehow managed to salvage 8 FPL points from the dying embers of extra time at the Bridge, whilst Haaland could only score 1 more point than City's goal tally.But @FPL_Heisenberg took a more positive view. And as we all know, in FPL, positive = correct.

Feel better now? Didn't think so...

Pep being Pep

You might be curious about any injuries to the City squad. After all, apparently their players can make for pretty decent FPL assets.Don't worry: Pep is here to help.

Chilwell vs Cucurella

Plenty of top managers are tempted by Marc Cucurella, the lusciously-haired £5.0m fullback that Chelsea have just nabbed from Brighton.The problem? He competes for a place with Ben Chilwell. Tuchel was asked about who gets preference.

Translation: Cucurella is more versatile, and will probably play more. But yes, there will be rotation.

V for Manchester

For some reason, Manchester United fans are disgruntled. Search us.There's a plan to protest outside Old Trafford prior to Monday night's match against Liverpool, and as we all know, there's nothing quite like the power of galvanised football fans to postpone a football match.

That's exactly what happened in May 2021.

Incidentally, that Athletic article pictured above was written by Carl Anka, among others. He happens to subscribe to this newsletter. Hey Carl.We think it's unlikely that the match will be postponed again. That article goes on to explain that the stadium was breached by fans, a feat that should be much harder the second time around.With that said, it does make captaining a Liverpool asset a little riskier than usual. Speaking of captaincy...

It's a tough one this week.There are three popular options. Mohamed Salah (away vs Manchester United), Gabriel Jesus (away vs Bournemouth) and Erling Haaland (away vs Newcastle).Salah will be the most popular by some distance, mark our words. If the game goes ahead - and again, we should stress that it almost certainly will - it could be a feast for a the Egyptian. Last season he scored 5 of Liverpool's 9 goals across their two matches against the Red Devils.

The fact he'll be the "safe" pick against Man United, despite Man City visiting Newcastle, is a true sign of the times. Still, we shouldn't forget that City also managed to score 9 goals last season against their opponents on Sunday.It turns out even a defence as resolute as Newcastle's is powerless to stop a determined City attack.

And let's not rule out Jesus. Arsenal's new signing was last week's top scorer and plays a traditionally leaky Bournemouth side.Having said that, only seven teams can better Bournemouth's xGC (expected goals conceded) so far, and they've had to play Man City already. They might not be the pushovers we expect them to be this season.Harry Kane has also weighed in on the captaincy discussion.No, seriously.

Nah Harry, good managers subscribe to the FPLTips.com newsletter.We'd recommend you play it boring and stick with Mo.

Here's every important stat you need ahead of Gameweek 3. The stats you see here are the sum of the first two gameweeks.

@BakerFPL343 is one half of the excellent Above Average FPL pod. He's had three top 51k finishes in his last three seasons, with the last two in the top 30k. He knows what he's doing, does Baker:"Gameweek 3 - Have you got a problem?If you have gone without any of Jesus, Cancelo, Haaland, Martinelli, James, or Salah for either gameweek then it’s hard to keep up with the crowd. That should be the first priority for all managers this week.There was a split prior to Gameweek 1 between Robertson and Diaz for the third Liverpool spot. Many who backed the Scotsman are now making the switch to Diaz. This is not just because of the goal Diaz scored on Monday. It’s about team structure.Having an £8.0m mid gives you the platform to move between explosive assets like Diaz, Maddison, Kulusevski, Mount and Foden.

Losing a £7m defender is sweetened by some great £5m options. Many top managers are bringing in Chelsea's Cucurella. He could be incredible value at £5m, but he has two tough fixtures coming up. After that, Chelsea will have to juggle the Champions League group stages too.I’ll likely be captaining Salah this week, but keep an eye on the #EmptyOldTrafford hashtag for the protest on Monday. If you do captain Salah, make sure your vice-captaincy is on a player competing in a different match.It’s time to stay with the pack. We’re one week away from fixture congestion, and that’ll bring plenty of hurdles.Keep up to date with this newsletter as it will be so valuable over the busy period! Good luck all.

We slipped him a cheeky fiver for that last sentence.As is tradition in these parts, we also handed Baker the reigns to our team this week. He's decided to use both of our free transfers.He's removed Phil Foden and Sam Greenwood and bought in Gabriel Jesus and Fulham's Harrison Reed (£4.5m). He's also captaining Mo Salah.Here's how we're looking:

Fantasy Football Hub's new My Team tool gives us a predicted points of 63.1. We'd probably take that. By the way, if you want to give this tool a spin for free, check it out here. Enter your team's ID and it'll spit out predicted points, fixture difficulties and a team rating. It's pretty bloody good.

You could've had a bad Gameweek 2. It might've even been dreadful. Perhaps it was even catastrophic.But it wasn't as bad as this team we found on Reddit.