🚨 This week's essential news 👀

The Stuff You Should Know

👀 The 24/25 fixtures have been released.

🤝 Steve Cooper joins Leicester City, Brighton appoint Fabian Hurzeler.

👋 Michael Olise moves to Bayern Munich.

⚽️ Aston Villa reach agreement with Chelsea to sign left-back Ian Maatsen.

Alright?

“Water, water, every where, nor any drop to drink.”

When Samuel Taylor Coleridge - or “Big Sam” as he was known to his contemporaries - wrote that iconic line in his 1798 epic The Rime of the Ancient Mariner, he was surely alluding to the unquenchable thirst that FPL managers must endure during major international football tournaments.

Sure, there’s a lot of football happening and sure, much of it is entertaining. But none of it is particularly FPL-relevant.

Still, the summer admin of domestic football has been quietly ticking away in the background. Today we’ll discuss some of that.

This one will be another short entry. You can understand.

The fixtures have been released.

We don’t get as excited about the fixture release as some FPL commentators.

That’s mostly because we already know the 24/25 fixtures way in advance of their official release: every team has to play every other team twice. When the fixture schedule is released, it merely confirms the order in which these fixtures will happen.

Nonetheless, the fixture release is the first step towards forming what will eventually become a near-universally-agreed-upon Gameweek 1 template. Here are the decent teams that have the best opening five fixtures for us:

Liverpool - Ipswich (A), Brentford (H), Man United (A), Nottingham Forest (H) and Bournemouth (H).

Newcastle - Southampton (H), Bournemouth (A), Spurs (H), Wolves (A) and Fulham (A).

Crystal Palace - Brentford (A), West Ham (H), Chelsea (A), Leicester (H), Man United (H).

Leicester and Southampton have pretty decent opening fixtures too, but the other promoted team, Ipswich, start with Liverpool and Man City.

Early signs indicate a Liverpool and Newcastle-heavy Gameweek 1 template, littered with Arsenal, Man City and Crystal Palace heavy-hitters. The decent opening fixtures for Leicester and Southampton could yield some interesting enablers too.

Ben Crellin has put together a spreadsheet showing every fixture. Course he has.

It’s a zoomer.

Two new managerial appointments.

Brighton and Leicester have appointed new managers.

Leicester have appointed Steve Cooper. He’s the former manager of Nottingham Forest who looks like a cross between Shane McGowan and Pete Davidson.

The response to Cooper’s appointment has been somewhere between lukewarm and hostile. Then again, so was the appointment of Ranieri, and that didn’t turn out too badly did it?

Meanwhile, subject to a work permit, Brighton have appointed Fabian Hürzeler. At the tender age of 31, he becomes the Premier League’s youngest ever manager.

He’s just guided St Pauli - the hipster’s team of choice - to promotion to the Bundesliga.

Hürzeler fits Brighton. He’s progressive, passionate and likes a 3-5-2. But can he do it in the Premier League? Time will tell.

Ian Maatsen to Villa.

Ian Maatsen is a pretty exciting left-back. Like a lot of Chelsea players, he’s spent most of his career out on loan, notably at Burnley for their promotion-winning season, then at Borussia Dortmund last season (where he was named in the UCL’s team of the tournament).

In other words, he looks the sort of player that most big Premier League teams would love to sign.

It’s surprising, then, that Chelsea are prepared to let the 22-year-old go to Aston Villa for “just north” of €35m. Terms have been agreed, it’s a done deal subject to a medical.

Lucas Digne and Alex Moreno currently compete for Aston Villa’s LB position, and the general consensus is that one of them will be released this summer.

Right, that’s all for today. We’ll be back next Sunday for another service. Enjoy this week’s international football!

Stay lazy,

The LazyFPL Team.