🤐 The GW4 cheat-sheet 📈

The stuff you should know 🚨

⏰ Gameweek 4’s deadline is Friday 1st September, 18:30.

🌏 It is proceeded by an International Break.

🤝 Brighton sign Barcelona’s Ansu Fati according to Fabrizio Romano.

🪟 Transfer window closes tomorrow.

🤕 Luke Shaw is injured - not likely to be back until at least late-October.

🤦‍♂️ Phil Foden was ill with a tummy bug, but he should be fine now.

Stick around to find out why your current rank is likely much higher than it looks.

Alright?

We’ll level with you: Gameweek 4 is when a lot of FPL managers give up. They let their teams down. They run around. They desert them.

The reasons for this are numerous, and probably a symptom of some unresolved trauma from the terrible gameweeks of seasons gone by. But the main reasons are these:

• there’s an international break after Gameweek 4.

• the season can already feel irredeemable for inexperienced managers.

Of course, both of these reasons are nonsense.

And so Rick Astley’s immortal words offer us a rare example of FPL advice that is almost guaranteed to earn you a better rank: never give up on your team, never let it down, never run around and never desert it.

Because plenty of managers will. Let’s take a moment to remember them.

…

Right. Here’s everything you need to know prior to Gameweek 4.

LazyFPL Premium wins leagues

We put a lot of effort into making sure LazyFPL Premium is worth every penny.

That means:

• two extra emails from the Professor every gameweek.

• a broadcast WhatsApp group that shares essential news as it happens.

• pre-deadline team leaks when we get them.

• experts like Hall-of-Famer James Cooper hanging out in our WhatsApp chat groups, dishing out tips.

Our singular aim is to ensure you win your mini-leagues. Every premium member thinks it’s worth the money - you will too.

A note on early transfers

In news that’ll shock absolutely none of you, we don’t like early transfers.

“But what about price rises?”

There are a few occasions where an early transfer needs to be made. If you’ll be priced out of your transfer target by a predicted price increase/decrease, making the transfer early is sometimes justifiable. But only if you deem that player to be absolutely necessary (and usually, he isn’t).

Still, just like buying travel insurance for your trip to Benidorm, it’s important to read the terms and conditions clearly before you commit to your purchase. The circumstances that made a player a good acquisition earlier in the week can change faster than a Chelsea managers’ tenure.

These are the three main reasons why FPL managers often go on to regret early transfers:

• the incoming player gets injured

• the incoming player is heavily involved in a midweek game and could be rested

• another player in their squad gets injured and needs to be dealt with

European competition group stages start after Gameweek 5. Half the Premier League teams competed in the EFL Cup this week too. Midweek injuries are gunna happen.

The extra £0.1m you might gain from an early transfer is probably not worth rolling the dice.

The value of the Sterling rises

As is usually the case in FPL, Raheem Sterling’s 19-point haul in Gameweek 3 was met with a chorus of “I told you so’s” from managers who didn’t actually bring him in.

Unlike the British pound, Sterling’s rise in value suddenly feels inevitable.

We’re innately cynical of band-wagons, particularly early in the season where every haul or blank shifts the narrative back and forth with about as much inanity as a parliamentary debate.

As the Professor wrote in his excellent Gameweek 3 review, just as we shouldn’t put too much stock in a player blanking, we should be careful to put too much stock in a big return too.

So let’s stress-test this move. Is Sterling the real deal? Or is he the FPL-equivalent of being mis-sold PPI?

A caveat: this system is flawed. It’s based on a very small sample size. But we do what we can with what we’ve got.

Stats

Here’s how Raheem compares to James Maddison - another popular transfer in this week.

His stats are…alright. Sterling is over-performing at the moment, but not significantly (yet).

Fixtures 

Chelsea face Nottingham Forest (H), Bournemouth (A), Villa (H), Fulham (A) and Burnley (A) in their next five. That’s about as good as it gets.

Likelihood of playing

Barring injury, it’s highly likely Sterling will start each one of these games.

Pedigree

Raheem Sterling has proven he can be prolific in the right set up.

Value

He’s only £7.2m, a price that’d make David Dickinson proud. He doesn’t need to be scoring every week to be good value.

Conclusion

Unless you’re Gareth Southgate, you should probably want Raheem Sterling. He’s the most transferred in player this week, and for good reason. With great fixtures, passable stats and the sort of price-tag that’d get even the stingiest bastards excited, there will definitely be trickier transfer decisions to wrestle with this season.

The case against Mitoma

Kaoru Mitoma found his way into over half a million teams between Gameweeks 2 and 3.

One gameweek (and one point) later, and he’s now the fifth-most transferred out player in the league.

Though an apt illustration of the fickleness of early-season FPL management, Mitoma’s sudden fall from grace has some method behind it.

Firstly, he’s over-performing his stats. It’s a very small sample size, but Mitoma’s three attacking contributions come from 2.3 expected goal involvements.

Secondly, he has a tough few fixtures - Newcastle (H), Man United (A) - on the horizon. Aston Villa, Man City and Liverpool also await him over his next six games.

Thirdly, Brighton qualified for the Europa League last season, which was rather selfish of them. It means fixture congestion and fatigue will feature after Gameweek 5. Mitoma has been privy to tiredness in the past.

He’s the sort of player that’s hard to transfer out because of his penchant for individual brilliance. But talented though he may be, freakish solo efforts are not a reliable indicator of future FPL returns.

It’s likely you have bigger fires to fight in your current squad, but if Mitoma fails to perform in the next few fixtures, expect his 43% ownership to plummet even more.

As you’ll see below, the Professor is considering a move away.

The English Midfielder Crusade

The aforementioned Mitoma is one of several decent-enough midfielders that find themselves on the proverbial chopping block this week.

Marcus Rashford, Joao Pedro, Gabriel Martinelli and Martin Odegaard also feature in the top 10 most transferred out players.

It shows how the venom of three gameweeks’ worth of results is potent enough to topple even the sturdiest of pre-season convictions.

The reason for this exodus needn’t be over-complicated: it’s because there are new, shinier and very English models on the market.

Raheem Sterling, James Maddison, James Ward-Prowse and Jarrod Bowen are all enjoying an influx of ownership. King Charles - an avid FPL manager with a solid OR history - is rumoured to be incredibly proud.

Whilst there’s sound logic behind these transfers, it’s worth noting that the usual framework we use to determine whether a player is good or crap is itself incredibly malleable this early in the season. Stats, form - even the way we perceive fixture difficulty - can all fundamentally shift in a singular gameweek.

The only constant is a history of season-long consistency. Rashford, Odegaard and Martinelli certainly have that.

Bad taste.

Fact: Malo Gusto translates to “bad taste” in Spanish. Now when someone asks you why you’ve just spent so long in the toilet you can tell them you were brushing up on your Espanol.

But does Chelsea’s trendy new budget full-back leave a bad taste in our mouths?

A little, yeah. Malo Gusto is sort of like a Gusto Box subscription. He’s going to be exciting to own for a few weeks. Maybe you’ll evangelise to your friends about how you’ve finally taken the leap.

But with Reece James expected to be fit by as soon as Gameweek 5, it’s likely you’ll soon be on the phone to customer service trying desperately to cancel your subscription.

Teden Mengi (£4.0m) is likely to move to Luton from Man United, and Nuno Taveres (£4.0m) is also set to move from Arsenal to Nottingham Forest. We’ve never had so many budget defenders to choose from.

Approach Gusto with caution.

The Professor’s Team

Remember what we said about early transfers? Well, The Professor hasn’t made one yet.

His team currently looks like this:

He’s looking at:

Mitoma > Sterling
Colwill > Udogie/Gvardiol

He’ll reveal his final team on our Premium Broadcast WhatsApp.

[The Professor uses Fantasy Football Hub’s MyTeam - it can tell you what’s wrong with your team way better than we ever could. Sign up to Fantasy Football Hub here and unlock its monstrous power.]

The best captain for Gameweek 4

It’s Erling Haaland.

We occasionally get complaints that we don’t include enough differentials in this section.

These complaints intensify when our chosen captain does something stupid, like miss a penalty against Sheffield United.

But here’s an intimate sentiment we usually only whisper to lovers from across the pillow: we want you to do well at FPL.

That means you need to be picking the most popular captain every gameweek for most of the season. As the Professor often reiterates, your only job for now is to stick with the pack. And our only job is to help you.

Stick the armband on the Norse God and watch your captaincy stress drift away in real-time.

[Do us a favour and check out RoryPaints, who creates these excellent paintings.]

Some key stats

The robot uprising

Prior to Gameweek 3, 13 of the top 20 FPL managers were registered in Indonesia and all belonged to the same mini-league. The Watampone league (which happens to be a small town in Indonesia).

This week, 8 of the top 10 are also Indonesian - but they’re all different to last week’s leading pack.

Is there something in the water over there?

Nah, probably not. A pair of our Indonesian followers investigated this, and the overwhelming conclusion was that these teams are, in fact, bots.

One individual manager was attributed with the stewardship of 1487 FPL teams. Isn’t the misery of managing one team enough?

It’s hardly Skynet, but a bit crap nonetheless. Luckily, these accounts are unlikely to be around for long. They’ve all used their best chips already.

The best thing? You’re actually a much higher rank than you’ve been told. Once the bots have been removed, it’s an easy green arrow.

Other things we found interesting.

• Taiwo Awoniyi has scored in his last 7 consecutive Premier League matches: a club record.

• Mohamed Salah is in the midst of his second-best FPL run ever. He’s returned in his last 9 games.

• Rodri isn’t playing as far forward as everyone seems to think.

• Sven Botman could well be fit for Gameweek 4, despite initial doubt. There is “a measure of confidence” that he’ll start.

• There’s a very unsubstantiated rumour that Raheem Sterling is injured. It’s one to keep an eye on.

Sorry Astley, but this is where we say goodbye.

If you enjoyed this email, please hit “reply” and let us know. It really helps.

We’ll probably send you a quick email next weekend, just to top you up on any international break news.

Until then, stay lazy.

The LazyFPL team.