Gameweek 9

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Summary for the lazy.

- Gameweek 9's deadline is 11:00 BST, Saturday 1st October ⏰- Mitrovic, Isak, Rashford and Kulusevski among injury doubts 🤕- Patterson, Robertson and Stones among those ruled out 🚫- Jesus the most transferred out player so far 🤯- Rejoice! The next international break is the World Cup 🏆Stay for our favourite differential and an exploration of a new (and perhaps baffling) FPL trend.

The injury room.

Blimey, our injury room is packed to the rafters this week folks.It's so busy, in fact, that we've ran out of bandages. Aleksandar Mitrovic has been forced to use a nappy to aid his ankle recovery instead:

Times are hard. Here's a full list of all the doubts and ruled-outs going into Gameweek 9 (well, the ones you might care about, at least).

The doubts

Aleksandar Mitrovic - the Serbian scored four goals whilst on international duty, but a video of him (pictured above) doing a lap of honour with the world's biggest bandage around his ankle has since surfaced.Whilst it looks like his ankle has ballooned, it's probably just an icepack held in place. Or a bag of garden peas. Either way, we reckon he plays this weekend.Alexander Isak - because one injured Alexander just isn't enough, the Swede went and got himself injured too.Eddie Howe has said it "doesn't look too bad", but we still think he'll probably be out for Gameweek 9 at the very least.

Dejan Kulusevski - what are they doing to these men in the Sweden camp?According to Conte's statements on Thursday, the Swede is being assessed. Our verdict? Don't transfer out, but don't transfer in either.

Marcus Rashford - he's pretty much 50/50 to start against City, so not worth getting rid of if you're one of the 15% of managers that still own him. You'd probably have benched him anyway.Here's a really helpful screenshot from the Times which provides further clarity 🙄

The ruled-outsAndy Robertson - not that many of you still own him, but Andy Robertson is ruled out against Brighton. He'll probably be ready for Gameweek 10.

Nathan Patterson - felling one hard-bastard Scotsman is impressive, but two? This international break really has been brutal. The budget hero has an ankle injury and looks to be out for at least the whole of October.If that wasn't bad enough, they're not even taking him to a hospital for treatment...

Elsewhere, John Stones was absent from Thursday's training after a suspected hamstring pull, and whilst Lucas Digne's ankle injury isn't as bad as first feared, he's not expected to be back until mid-October at the earliest.

Why So Lanke?

Two weeks of no FPL will do strange things to a man(ager).

In the summer of 1897, one FPL manager named William Bennett started assigning fantasy points to his own children for completing menial household tasks.

And during COVID, fantasy enthusiast Lucy Spence tried to Triple Captain her own dog. The Springer Spaniel, like all triple captains, performed poorly.

But the emerging popularity of Dominic Solanke feels, to many, like the strangest form of boredom-induced delirium yet.

So...what's going on? @FPLSigurd summarises the main reasons why it's suddenly SoSwanke to own the forward.

This rather compelling list, combined with the fact that plenty of managers are shopping around for an Isak replacement, means that Solanke's stock is on the opposite trajectory to the UK's economy.The thing is, everything in that tweet is based on stuff that either hasn't happened yet or that happened last season. In his five Premier League games this season, he's scored one and assisted one. Both against Nottingham Forest.

We'd recommend you keep an eye on him in Gameweek 9 before pulling the trigger. He's still an unproven asset this season.If he drops in price following a SoBlanke this weekend, it might be hard to find a like-for-like replacement. SoThankme later.I'll see myself out.

The key stats.

Here are all the important stats ahead of Gameweek 9.

The best captain.

Plus, in 10 games against Brighton, he's scored 6 and assisted 5. Haaland won't outscore him every week. Right?

But Haaland is owned by 81.1% of managers. Despite having the "harder" fixture against an in-form Man United, he's also a Norse God, and thus transcends petty human concerns like fixture difficulty.It's a testament to his imperiousness that Salah at home to Brighton is the risky captain, but that's the truth of the matter. If you do captain the Liverpool man, know that you're going against the grain.Haaland's record-breaking form and the attacking potency that surrounds him is just too compelling for us.

That Zaha moment.

We like the look of Wilfred Zaha. There, we said it.Ahead of Gameweek 8 we talked about fixture swings, and how some teams who started the season with rubbish fixtures now have some pretty tasty ones.Well, after Gameweek 9, Palace have Leeds, Leicester, Wolves, Everton, Southampton, West Ham and Forest. And then it's the World Cup.To the surprise of absolutely nobody, Zaha has been their standout player despite their tricky start.

He's on penalties, he's looking sharp and last season he scored 14 goals. He also uses his armpits to warm his hands.Can we buy two of him?

Expert analysis.

We're delighted to welcome back Sky Sports FPL pundit and absolute baller Holly Shand.For those who aren't familiar, Holly is one of the most well known and well respected FPL creators in the world. Which is why she works with institutions like Sky Sports, the Athletic, Wolves football club and even the FPLTips.com newsletter.Here's what she told us ahead of Gameweek 9:

The international break provides a good opportunity to use the first Wildcard, with eight weeks for it to pay off ahead of the World Cup break and unlimited transfers. The other logical time to play it would be Gameweek 13, moving out Arsenal and Manchester City assets for their Blank Gameweek 12.If, like me, you used the Wildcard in Gameweek 8 then rolling the transfer this week should be the top priority if you have no other issues. It's a tricky week to call fixture wise with the North London and Manchester derbies.

Maddison is among my top transfer picks for this week. He's managed to deliver four attacking returns in seven games, despite a very poor start to the season for Leicester.With a nice run of upcoming fixtures for the Foxes, we should see an upturn in form, with the mid-priced midfielder bracket coming to life. Here's my unchanged team going into Gameweek 9.

WIth this in mind, it's no surprise that Holly has chosen to roll the transfer on the FPLTips.com team too. Here's how we look this weekend:

Btw, the tool we've used to display our team is the Fantasy Football Hub MyTeam tool. It's much smarter than we are.The Hub is also where we got all of our slick player graphics too. You should check 'em out.

Hey, what's the one thing you least want to happen in Gameweek 9? Tell us and, if it happens, we'll give you a shoutout in next week's email.See you at 13:30 next Friday.The FPL Tips team.