I’m going to start by talking about cheap midfielders or “enablers.” I was thinking about this on Monday and then the ‘Who got the assist?’ podcast did it better than I can so give that a listen. The point is, people talk about these players like Bailey or Almiron or whoever as “enablers” – they’re cheap and a bit rubbish but they enable you to buy better elsewhere.

The problem is, they’re actually a lot worse than a bit rubbish. They’re shit FPL assets. Take Neto as an example. His returns for last year were okay, but he wasn’t fantasy relevant with 5 goals and 8 assists for 124 points. He plays for one of the worst attacks in the league. Oh, and he can’t score in an open goal…

Much ado about nothing – Lots of people struggling this week with the idea that they have nothing to do. They have two free transfers and no obvious way to improve. Let’s see what we can do about that!

Best five week fixture runs

Playing Fantasy Premier League by buying good players with good fixtures is a sure fire way to improve your rank. The teams are ranked in order of best fixture (just focused on the top 5 teams) with home fixtures in caps and away in lower case. 

Off the back of this, I’m interested in Brentford (more on that later) and Brighton.

Best captains

Mo Salah is my favoured captaincy shout this week. He plays against Man United look terrible and he’s usually very good in this fixture. Jesus has placed himself into the captaincy debate after a second good performance, he just misses out for me as I’m not sure Arsenal will have as good a time if Bournemouth put ten men behind the ball. They struggled to score a second against a defensive Palace team and whilst Bournemouth aren’t as good, they’re also not as much of a shambles as Man United.

I don’t like Haaland or De Bruyne, Newcastle are a solid defence and whilst I’m expecting a city win I don’t see the same upside. I’m also not a huge fan of Son or Kane against Wolves who are pretty solid defensively too. Of course, all these guys are capable of a haul but the odds are more limited.

Should I buy?

Martinelli – Yes. He’s the best midfielder for less than 10 million right now.

Brentford – Yes. Toney, Mbeumo, Mee, Henry, Raya are all good if you’re looking to make changes at forward, defence or goalkeeper (though I don’t really like wasting a transfer on a goalkeeper). They have good fixtures and look solid.

Brighton – Yes. Dunk is a good shout. Gross is a tough one. He looks great but I still don’t completely trust him because, as I say at the top, these options are usually rubbish. He could be the exception, which we have seen before, but I doubt it. I’d only bring him in if I had a free transfer to burn and money in the bank. Definitely not worth a hit.

Rodrigo – I’d wait a week (after Chelsea game) but yes.

Should I sell?

Nunez – Yes. He’s banned for 3 weeks. You can’t leave that much money on your bench.

Villa – Yes. Sell them all. They’re crap and so are they’re fixtures.

Newcastle – Yes, even Trippier. They have bad fixtures. They’re good but we don’t keep players on worse teams who play against Man City and Liverpool in two of the next three fixtures.

Ward – No. It’s a luxury transfer to make.

Rashford – Yeah, he’s got to go.

Robertson – It depends. If you can drop Robbo and enable a move elsewhere then yes. If you can move Robbo to James or Cucu and upgrade Bailey to Martinelli then I love it. If you can’t do that sort of thing then hold.

Should I wildcard?

You need to have at least 5 or 6 problems to wildcard. If you have them then I don’t mind it. I don’t see the possibility for an updside chasing wildcard right now. They’re aren’t any huge fixture swings affecting our premium assets for example. So, I would avoid if you can.

My moves

For those following us on Twitter you will see I moved Trippier, Mount and Greenwood out for James, Lavia and Toney so I’m now in a 4-3-3. Mount could smash it in the next few weeks so I don’t love selling him in isolation. But, the difference selling him makes to the rest of my team makes it a good trade off.