Gameweek 6

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Summary for the lazy.

- Gameweek 6's deadline is Friday 3rd September, 11:00 BST 🕰- A record £1.9bn spent in the latest transfer window  🤯- Rodrigo is likely to be out until after the int. break 🤕- Lots of new players added to the game 😍- Expect rotation in Gameweek 6 ♻️Stay for a Rodrigo replacement that's so good that for a very brief moment, we considered keeping it to ourselves.

Deadline day.

We know you've been worrying about it, so let us reassure you: Premier League spending has bounced back from its pre-COVID levels. If there is someone watching over us, they've answered our collective prayers.£1.9bn was spent over the summer, which dwarfs the previous record of £1.4bn spent in 2017.169 players were signed, with Nottingham Forest picking up 161 of those. Just kidding, though they did sign more players than any other British club ever. Chelsea spent more money (£270m) than any other British club ever, too.

Auboomerang returns to the Premier LeagueThe fruits of Chelsea's spending ripened with the signing of Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang, for around £10m + Marcus Alonso. So around £11m in total.We've watched All or Nothing: Arsenal, which makes us fully qualified to question the wisdom of this acquisition. Wise or not, the Gabonese's signing will likely have an impact on Raheem Sterling's impressive output. The extent of that impact is yet to be seen.Anyway, here's a picture of him contemplating the purpose of financial fair play regulations.

Liverpool, City and United make movesMan United broke the deadline day transfer record with the £86m acquisition Anthony, Ajax's exciting 22-year-old winger.Meanwhile, keen to continue the trend of signing Brazilians with English-sounding names, Liverpool signed Brazilian midfielder Arthur on loan from Juventus. He's scored 1 goal in 42 Juventus appearances and you won't be considering him anytime soon.Even Man City, who traditionally struggle to compete with the spending power of the likes of Forest, managed to grab themselves a centre-back on deadline day.City's Director of Football said new signing Manuel Akanji will be a "valuable addition to our squad", which is code for "we're excited to see what he can do in the early rounds of the EFL Cup".

Willian is an option again

Yup, you heard me. Amidst the deadline day chaos, Willian snuck through border patrol and is now a Fulham player.Here are some other fringe players that have just been added to the game (by "fringe", we mean slightly obscure. As you can see, none of them have an actual fringe).

Sky keep an excellent list of all the Premier League's ins and outs. It's here if you want to peruse.

The injury room.

Oh dear. You know things are getting bad when we have to do a whole section on injuries.Behold as we give you a tour of our medical facility.Over in that corner is Rodrigo, who nurses a dislocated shoulder. According to Leeds' manager Jesse Marsch, the Spaniard is "targeting after the international break" for a return. In regular human time, that means 1st October at the earliest.The one sneezing by the door is Reece James, who is currently being assessed after an illness.Saint-Maximin (hamstring), Odegaard (knock), Ramsdale (muscle injury) and Zinchenko (knock) are all doubts for the weekend too.@BenDinnery is your man for keeping up-to-date on the latest developments.

Rodrigone.

A few emails ago we made the case for why Rodrigo should be taken seriously, but that was when he was scoring goals and his left shoulder was firmly in its socket.These days, none of those things are true.Assuming you already own Martinelli, the safest replacement for Rodrigo is Pascal Groß. He has solid fixtures (Leicester, Bournemouth and Palace) over his next three, a growing ownership and continues to put up some great stats.

Whilst we'd usually encourage you to go boring, your cheap midfielder is an area in which you can afford to be a little bit more experimental. With that sentiment in mind, Anthony Gordon makes a great hipster pick.His immediate fixtures are more challenging than Pascal Grobbelaar's, but his underlying stats are quite remarkable so far.In fact, only Wilfred Zaha has a better xG amongst midfielders than Gordon. He's currently owned by just 2.1% of managers. We think he's going seriously under-the-radar, but he does have Liverpool next.

By the way, these stats were supplied by Fantasy Football Hub, who built a stats tool specifically for FPL managers.If you want a full suite of OPTA stats that you can filter by stuff like "midfielders that cost less than £6.0m" or "forwards who have played at least 270 minutes", you can give it a test drive for free.

Own a football CLUB.

Remember CLUB? They're the guys who are smart enough (and brave enough) to sponsor this newsletter. Our first ever sponsors, no less. Here's their website.In short, they've built a game that lets you build and run a football club (i.e. the thing you wanna do, but probably can't because you're not an oligarch). Soon we'll be giving you a VIP pass to jump the massive waiting list and start testing CLUB out. But before that, check out what the FPL General's squad looks like going into this week. We think he could be 'Sir Alex' in disguise but do you?Tell us what you'd change an we'll feature the best feedback in next week's newsletter.

The best captain.

Unless you own Harry Kane vs Fulham, Erling Haaland vs Aston Villa is the best captain for Gameweek 6.With the Champions League around the corner, rotation threat looms. Like we said last week, we're not sure whether Haaland will definitely start, but with back-to-back hat-tricks and early substitutions in both of his last two games, he has as good a chance of starting as any.

An expert's view.

Our resident expert this week is FPLNima. Nima founded @FPLMeets (a global community that spans 32 cities of FPL managers who meet up to watch football together) and also co-hosts the @NetThatHaul podcast.Last season he finished 895th in the world.Here's what he had to say ahead of Gameweek 6.

"We are entering an exciting part of the season, where ranks will start to become more stable and meaningful. At the moment I am sitting at 360k OR, 33 points from the top 10k but a 2 million rank is just 32 points away. The ranks are extremely bunched up. Across the overall

As always, we gave Nima control of our FPL team too.He's decided to remove Perisic and bring in Neco Williams.This is how we line up for Gameweek 6.

Here are your weekly stats. Remember, the "X marks the spot" section is a culmination of the last 4 gameweeks.

If you enjoy this newsletter, please consider sharing it.It does us the world of good and you get free rewards for hitting milestones, like entry to a secret VIP League and a limited edition pint glass.Here's your unique sharing link. Just copy it and send it to your mates - we'll let you know when they sign up.⚡️ by SparkLoop

Okay, that's your lot. I'm actually in Turkey at the moment and apparently there's a wild donkey that hangs out on a beach nearby, so that's today's plan sorted.I'll probably name it after whichever player scores the fewest points for me this weekend.Good luck for Gameweek 6. We'll be back next Friday.The FPL Tips team.