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FPL Gameweek 1 is one of the most interesting times to look back instead of forward. We have gone from having very little information to one whole gameweek’s worth of information. At no other point in the season will the information volume change quite so much.
So what did we find out from FPL Gameweek 1? Let’s find out together!
The clear caveat is that this is still only one week’s worth of information.
I am going to do some conjecture with it. We will likely see in a couple of weeks what is the “truth.”
I’m writing this at the top so that I don’t have to say “we will see” after every statement.
One of the best bits of advice we can give you going into gameweek 2 is to not make transfers.
You have just spent a long time thinking about the best team you can make for the opening run of fixtures. Don’t panic after one week when your team hasn’t exploded into a tonne of points and kneejerk into a guy who did score a goal. Think about this if it makes you feel better: 615,000 managers played a chip in GW1.
If you are as much of a nerd as we are, you have heard this advice above before. And you will probably hear it from every content creator you follow this week. And whilst it is good advice, it is not without flaws.
If you have an injury, or a player has transferred or he just didn’t start then you may be better off just dealing with that now. One of the things we will say to you throughout the year is to look at your team, identify any problems and fix them – that’s a great way to play FPL.
So, if you need to fix it, then do it.
I suspect that Reijnders will be the most bought player ahead of FPL gameweek 2. But you shouldn’t buy him for three reasons.
Firstly, Wolves are shit. I am a West Brom fan so maybe you expect me to say that but I genuinely take no pleasure in saying that. I would rather Wolves beat Man City. I would be happy with that outcome because I don’t really like City.
Secondly, Reijnders ain’t that good. Yes, I did watch the game where he destroyed a Premier League team pretty much single-handed. But I like long-term trends so I would draw your attention to his stats on FBRef:
Reijnders is 27 and has had one good season for attacking returns. In his three full seasons of football in the Eredivisie and Serie A he has 16 goals and 13 assists across 103 starts. He basically got an attacking return every 310 minutes.
Thirdly, we don’t know if he is nailed. When I wrote the midfielders preview I didn’t even cover him because it was before that pre-season game where he scored a goal and everyone lost their minds. I did say this though:
“This Man City squad is now fucking enormous. And this is the manager that loves to rotate and destroy FPL managers dreams. If you go into the season conscious of this fact, then I still think you can make a “good decision” and include one of them. You just need to make the rest of your team pretty safe and be happy to make a transfer in GW2 to potentially fix it.”
In an alternate universe, Reijnders didn’t start (like Marmoush or Cherki). And I think there is every possibility that he doesn’t start next week. Before you come at me and say ‘but James, Rodri is injured’ – how many of you had Oscar Fucking Bobb down to start right wing in this game?
To be clear. I am not 100% saying that Reijnders is NOT a good pick (because based on that performance he is fucking great). What I am saying is that I don’t believe any of it yet. AND I will wait to buy him because if he is as good as some of you think and he goes up in price five times then he will be 6.0 and still ludicrously cheap.
You also should not buy a Palace player before their midweek game in the conference league.
We’ll go game-by-game soon enough. For now, here are the general takeaways and musings from gameweek 1.
It is still a bit early to tell, but I feel like DefCons made a small but noticeable difference to FPL this week.
Breaking down the numbers, I think you can see why:
Odegaard was the only other midfielder to get defensive contributions.
At least one 4.5 midfielder emerged as a possibility this week, but I think we will probably be best off grabbing one of these 5.0s as 5th midfielder/bench spot. That means it will be more like forward, where the cheap options (excluding Guiu) will still be costly.
After all the pre-season chat about NFO assets as DefCon monsters, it was Aina who was the only one to get DefCon points.
I think the key reason for that was that Forest didn’t play at all like we expected them to. Rather than a low-block counter-attacking team, we saw a high-press, high intensity team. That didn’t leave much room for clearances which is the bread and butter for a centre-back.
I (James) didn’t actually bench boost in gameweek 1, after making a big deal about it…
I instead committed to bench boost in gameweek 2, thanks to the Burnley-Sunderland game. I am now panicked, because if I had bench boosted in gameweek 1 I would have got 12 points, and been delighted with it. I have to beat that now… and I probably won’t.
Tom at Who Got The Assist smashed his with 15 points (if I can count), so it definitely can work.
After watching both Liverpool and Man City play, I feel much better about Liverpool’s attack and therefore Salah. They just go for it.
On the other hand, Haaland only needs a couple of shots to get a couple of goals.
I think the real winners this week are those who have both, particularly if you swerved Palmer. This is how we should have started last season, and it’s probably just as true this year based on what we have seen so far.
Raya, Pope, Roefs and Vicario all got bonus points and save points. That’s four out of the ten keepers that got save points, and everyone of those got more than the three saves required. So, saves may be even more valuable this year.
Good job so many of us got Kelleher…
Yeah, I don’t think that subtitle makes sense either okay?
If you have him, you probably hold him. Use your bench (at least for this week) and just get more information before making moves.
Unless! You are planning a GW2 bench boost. If you want to do that, then move him to someone else.
We – James and Joe – watched a lot of football this weekend. We’re now going to look at each game for its FPL implications, and clarify whether we actually watched it in full or are relying on Match of the Day and stats.
James’ Take (Watched The Game) – You may have already read this on Reddit
Both of these teams are excellent in attack. Liverpool’s attack was so dangerous all game. They looked it, and the stats show it. But, Bournemouth were also very, very good.
In terms of defence, I think what we saw from Liverpool was everything we expected.
They are solid but they are at risk of being caught on the break because of how ludicrously attacking their wing backs are. They also didn’t have Gravenberch this game which may shore them up as without him they didn’t have a designated player to be breaking up attacks so much. Semenyo’s second goal was a great example of this – Rodri would have been there and just fouled him. Maybe that’s just teething problems but it could be a sign of things to come.
Bournemouth’s defence was, believe it or not, surprisingly good.
They were a tad unfortunate to concede 4 goals and the first one in particular was just a ridiculous deflection. I didn’t think the defence would be awful but I think we all expected the defence to be a bit more shaky given the changes and the fact that Diakite just strolled into the team a couple of days ago.
Now, turning to the most relevant FPL assets.
Let’s start with Salah. Sofascore has him at 3 shots (he normally hits between 3 and 4 shots per 90) for a total of 0.26 xG and 0.11 xA. I don’t own Salah so maybe I am looking to justify that but I did think he looked to be playing a bit wider than last season. His first two shots were Arjen Robben style cutting in from the wing and not high xG chances.
In contrast, Ekitike had 4 shots for an xG of 1.05. We could be looking at a different type of Liverpool attack where chances are shared more with an actually good finisher at centre-forward. Or, this could just be one of those games where Salah doesn’t score loads of goals.
Gakpo was a little lucky to get his goal too (3 shots; xG 0.18) but he looked lively and was good at creating opportunities too.
Wirtz, for his part, was involved in everything. He is often compared to De Bruyne and I am going to stick with that analogy. De Bruyne at his absolute worst of an FPL asset was when he assisting the assister and getting no FPL points. Based on solely this performance, I think there is a risk of that with Wirtz too.
It was odd that Gakpo, Ekitike and Wirtz were all taken off before 90, but there is a decent amount of depth here so Slot may look to exploit it. We don’t like that. Weirdly we like 90 mins at Full90FPL.com.
At the back, and I use that term loosely, we had Kerkez, Virgil, Konate and Frimpong.
Frimpong was bombing up the wing past Salah but, today at least, that was used by Salah to create space for him to cut in rather than for Frimpong to attack. Kerkez was similarly attacking.
Frustratingly for their owners, Kerkez and Frimpong went off on 59 mins. Slot just said that was because Frimpong’s hamstring was a bit tight and he wanted to protect Kerkez from getting sent off, because he always goes in hard. The result was worse defending,, and Robertson is just not fast enough in my opinion to play like this, so we should try and exploit that if Kerkez ever gets injured.
Virgil was the guy I hoped he would be.
He got two headed chances and 20 (!) defensive contributions according to FPL gameweek. He got 10 somewhere between 55 and 69 minutes. He could be a Def Con beast. Konate looked shaky but he may have a groin issue.
I’m not going to go into huge detail on Bournemouth defence, but a couple of things jump out to me:
Looking at the more highly owned Bournemouth stars of Semenyo and Evanilson – one of these guys clearly had a productive night. I’d say a good night but he was also racially abused (allegedly being inserted here to stop me from getting sued).
Despite that horrible distraction, Semenyo made a mockery of the Liverpool defence which was far too easily caught on the break/Robertson is too old. Semenyo finished the game with three shots for an xG of 0.89 and despite what Carra said – it was not a ridiculous miss in the first half of the game. To add to Semenyo’s appeal he was also hauling in some long-throws in, which I loved to see.
Evanilson also had 3 shots but only had an xG of 0.27. I think he struggled to make an impact but he was up against the best bit of Liverpool’s defence so I think we can give him a bit of a break.
Interestingly, Tavernier and Adams got 20 and 18 DefCons respectively. Something to watch going forward. Brooks appears to be playing in Kluivert’s absence. Tavernier was on free kicks and Scott seemed to be on corners.
Joe’s Take (Watched The Game)
I couldn’t watch Liverpool vs Bournemouth, so I’d been looking forward to this as my first game of the season. It looked promising on paper. God, was it awful.
Aston Villa’s attack was incredibly bad. They didn’t have an attempt on goal in the first half. They took three shots total. Per the TV broadcast I was watching, their collective xG was 0.13. For the whole team, across the entire match. That’s actually quite impressive.
I know it’s only one game, but I feel pretty bad about picking Rogers over Semenyo as my 7.0 right now. He was anonymous. Better days are surely ahead for Watkins, but he also did nothing in this game.
Tielemans started at the 10, as we’d expected. Which sounds very exciting, since he’s only 6.0… but he was rubbish. I know it’s only one game, but he just didn’t seem to have the mobility to play there, he felt slow on the ball, and he created absolutely nothing.
McGinn was also poor. Every time he tried anything he got dispossessed. He’s not FPL-relevant anyway, but Malen – at 5.5 – certainly could be. He came on for McGinn after 84mins, and I could see him taking that spot going forward. Or, Rogers could move to the 10 and Malen could start LW.
Either way, Emery tried something different here, and it failed completely.
Villa did look fine defensively. Konsa got sent off, and deservedly so – it was a stonewall red. We obviously couldn’t predict that though, and – in the sense Villa cleaned in a potentially tricky fixture – he was still a decent pick.
Cash was excellent defensively, and I wasn’t surprised to see him collect DefCon points. Wish I hadn’t swapped him out for Konsa just before the deadline…
Newcastle were also excellent defensively – another reason I wouldn’t completely panic about Watkins and Rogers after this game. Burn was a beast, and both he and Schar got DefCon points.
They also didn’t do much going forward, and didn’t look super-threatening even after the red card.
Gordon started down the middle, and worked hard but had little service. Again, tough fixture against a good defensive performance, but I wouldn’t rush to get him or any of the other Newcastle mids right now.
I know they’ve got good fixtures after Liverpool, but after they get Wissa in they’re going to have so many forwards that A) we won’t know who’s actually going to start, and B) how they’re going to look when they do.
James’ Take (Match of the day) and Joe’s Take (Watched the game)
Before the game we saw Welbeck on the bench and Rutter staring up top instead, and were both pleased we didn’t really consider him an option for our teams. Hurzeler loves to rotate so I don’t think we can be confident telling you which one will start next week.
It could be both if they drop O’Riley to the bench, so I wouldn’t go there either – even though he took the penalty.
Baleba was a beast for DefCons. He got 11 in 69 minutes and then was promptly subbed because Hurzeler hates us all. Mats Wiefer played right back (reverse out of position) and did manage to get the DefCon points too.
To the 6.5% of FPL managers with De Cuyper, he was fine, and worth his 4.5 price tag.
Pre-season darling Harry Wilson racked up a whole 0.06 xG and 0.02 xA but is still walking away with 5 points thanks to an assist.
Josh King (insert ‘not that one’ joke here) is probably the most interesting thing about Fulham right now, as he started and played 76 mins for only 4.5. It could have been because Smith-Rowe lacked fitness, but that is often true…
Jimenez wasn’t very good, and in classic Jimenez fashion got benched after 66 mins. Muniz came on and scored in the last minute. The bastard. If he could nail down the starting striker spot then he is an option at 5.5… but I think I said the same thing last year, and then he just disappeared after a while. We wouldn’t consider either of them right now.
Fulham looked typically solid defensively. We liked them heading into the season on that end, and they’re a good bet for cleans and defcons in most fixtures.
James’s Take (Match of the Day)
If this is all West Ham can muster against a newly promoted team then I dread to think how it will look after 38 games for them.
Obviously you can see from the xG that the scoreline flattered Sunderland, but West Ham should be able to put up at least 1 xG against this lot.
That said, I am not too panicked if you own any of the West Ham defenders, as they do have a couple of not dreadful fixtures coming up.
Diouf was attacking and racked up 0.25 xGI. Wan Bissaka could only muster 0.07 xA and he took no shots. Diouf looks the better pick right now.
Areola didn’t start. I assume Hermansen is now the number one keeper, but he was fucking woeful, so maybe not.
I worry for Bowen owners. At least he had four shots, I suppose. Fullkrug only managed two shots before getting subbed for another injury-prone striker – Callum Wilson.
On Sunderland, I think they probably still stink as a team. They just came up against someone that also stinks.
But, of course, Ballard should remain on our radar after scoring, cleaning, defcon-ing and getting three bonus from one game.
It was nice to see Reinildo and Xhaka start, although the former may be in trouble when Cirkin returns from injury.
Le Fee did not start, but came off the bench for Adingra (who looked very sharp himself).
Joe’s Take (Watched The Game)
I’m reading very little into this game.
We all knew Spurs were going to score a few goals here, and so they did. Regardless of what they did in the Championship, we still have to treat Burnley as one of the worst defences in the league for now.
So, don’t rush out to get Richarlison. Both his finishes were excellent, but A) it was Burnley, B) he still got subbed-off on a hat trick for Solanke, and C) they play City away next.
(Obviously, Solanke is also off the menu for now).
Bearing the Burnley caveat in mind, I do feel very slightly more confident in Kudus. He was relentless, and made a point in his post-game interview about saying how Frank was letting him play with freedom (i.e. he was not allowed to at West Ham). It also looks like he’s on corners, giving us another potential route to assists.
(With all that said, don’t get him just before they play City away).
I love Brennan Johnson, and am more confident in him long-term than Kudus. Frank has already said he’ll switch to 5 at the back in tougher games though, and Johnson (or Kudus) will probably be the odd man out – let’s see against City.
I thought Spurs were rubbish defensively. They looked just as disorganised as usual.
MotD made it look like a dominant performance. It was not. After Spurs’ early goal, Burnley were all over them for the rest of the first half. They cut through them time and again, and kept getting in good positions (then completely screwing them up).
I still think they’re a very good team to attack. I’ll be captaining Haaland against them with confidence next week.
Ironically, considering their reputation, Burnley actually looked good going forward and poor defensively.
Ekdal, Hartman, Sonne and Esteve are all 4.0 and all started. Esteve missed defcons by two.
Everyone’s favourite backup keeper Dubravka started, after never playing during pre-season. We’re not starting him any time soon based on this evidence, though.
James’ Take (Watched The Game)
I had forgotten how boring City are to watch. Even in this game with this huge advantage they were dull.
As a Haaland owner I found the first 30 minutes incredibly frustrating as City just lofted balls into a guy that is not great at aerial duels and doesn’t score that many headers. Of course, I stopped whinging when Rico Lewis made the first pass to Haaland on the floor in the box which Erling casually slotted. And then I was even less pissed when he found the net again.
As Joe reminded me, this is City and Haaland. This is how they play.
I had forgotten that Oscar Bobb existed but here he is. Did anyone have him to start over say Cherki or Marmoush?
This whole thing just reinforced my view that you should just steer clear of City midfielders. You never know who will start. Of course, if you had Cherki he scored anyway… you jammy bastards.
That’s why I avoided Reijnders too. Maybe that was a mistake, because he looked insanely good against Wolves.
He had an air of “assisting the assister” to him during the game, but he walked away with a goal and an assist. That came off an xGI of 0.33 and he has never been a prolific scorer or assister in his career, so perhaps we can expect him to return to the mean. Or, perhaps I am just bitter.
Emma on BlueSky has tried to crowdsource lineups to get better results to figure out who will play. For the most part it seems to work but City are an enigma. Look at this:
None of these guys got all eleven. NONE. And that’s not a criticism of them. It’s a reason not to trust Pep or City assets.
Ait-Nouri looked fine but he didn’t seem to me like a rampaging wing-back a la Frimpong. Maybe that’s because Doku was playing in front of him and the only thing he brings is dribbling skill, so there wasn’t space for Ait-Nouri to shine, but I still wasn’t blown away by his first performance for the Citizens.
Wolves didn’t look great but I didn’t really expect anything more from them in this game.
Strand Larsen was his typically aggressive self, and is fine to hold if you have him.
Joe’s Take (Watched the Game)
This wasn’t quite as bad as the Villa Newcastle game, but it wasn’t far off.
Chelsea’s attack looked just as toothless as it did last season. I don’t know if their summer goalscoring spree was just a flash in the pan, or this was just a tough game against a very well-organised Palace defence.
Either way, Palmer was worryingly anonymous, as he was for the whole second of 24/25. Obviously, I’m not panicking after one game… but I was hoping he’d be back to his old self, and he definitely wasn’t.
Joao Pedro was also anonymous. Delap did (slightly) more after he came on, and at least offered them something different in attack. I assume JP will still start the next game, but I’d be slightly more concerned about minutes/rotation than before.
At the risk of sounding like a broken record, nobody else did anything for Chelsea either. Estevao provided a bit of a spark off the bench, and looked more dangerous than Gittens, but it’s far too soon to consider him.
Chelsea’s defence did look solid. Hold and start all of them, and definitely keep an eye on Acheampong at 4.0.
I thought Palace’s defence was also very good. This seemed a potentially tricky fixture, but it looks like you can start them in all but the toughest matchups right now.
Their attack also looked fine, particularly on the counter. I just think it’ll look significantly worse if Eze does leave, though – they combine so well as a trio – so I wouldn’t want Mateta or Sarr just yet until we see what happens there.
James’ Take (Watched The Game)
When Joe and I decided to each watch one of the 2pm Sunday Kick-Offs, I was a little worried I had got the dud. But boy was I wrong.
The most striking thing about this game was how good Forest looked.
It was as impressive as City’s win over Wolves. They absolutely dominated Brentford.
I was already worried about Brentford’s defence coming into this season, and this performance is solidifying that view. This could be a very targetable fixture.
Of course, I have to discuss the man who defies xG first: Chirs Wood.
His first goal is off an Anderson corner after a poor bit of clearing from Brentford. That’s pretty shocking, because they were so good under former set piece coach Keith Andrews that they only conceded twice from set pieces last year. To add insult to injury, Andrews is now the manager…
His second goal was (actually) assisted by Anderson who put an excellent through ball that caught Collins out and allowed Wood to round the keeper and score an easy tap-in. Two shots for 0.95 xG (0.89 of which was the second shot in an open net), and Wood has two goals. So glad I dropped him for Mateta…
Wood was eventually subbed on 79 mins for Igor Jesus which I expect to happen more and more as Europa League football kicks in.
The other forward in the game was Thiago. Brentford were so shit that he only managed one shot from open play in the game. His second shot was a 0.79 xG shot. For the non-nerds among you, that is the xG Opta attributes to a penalty kick. So, he is on pens for 6.0 – good news. Go grab him in your draft league now.
Brentford’s attacking makeup included Lewis-Potter as starting left winger. A 5.0 defender playing in a front three, is it too good to miss?
Schade presumably wasn’t fit enough so Milambo started as the AM but Schade came on at half time.
Carvalho was on the right wing and he took corners. I assume one of the wingers will get benched when O. Douattara joins, but I don’t know which one.
Back to Forest, I said this above, but in case you missed it:
“After all the pre-season chat about NFO assets as DefCon monsters it was Aina who was the only one to get DefCon points. I think the key reason for that was that Forest didn’t play at all like we expected them to. Rather than a low-block counter-attacking team, we saw a high-press, high intensity team. That didn’t leave much room for clearances which is the bread and butter for a centre-back.”
Still, at least both N. Williams and Aina were very far forward. I’m not too panicked yet. Maybe it was just a match-up thing.
James’ Take (Watched Most Of The Game) and Joe’s Take (Watched The Whole Game)
Man United looked surprisingly good.
I didn’t ever expect them to win. And, I thought it funny that no matter who the manager is they love to chuck Maguire into attack. But, there were things to be positive about the attack in particular.
Mbeumo was outstanding, Cunha looked lively and aggressive, and Amad was really good when he came on. I am definitely feeling positive about owning someone later in the season when their fixtures turn.
Dalot and Dorgu started at wingback for Man U. Steer clear of Amad for now, but he did come on pretty early for Dalot, and – as noted – played well.
Their whole defence actually looked surprisingly solid. Again though, let’s wait for their fixtures to get better before diving in.
Bruno played pretty deep, which allowed Cunha and Mbeumo to keep getting forward. He wasn’t really involved in any of the attacks, which doesn’t make him particularly appealing right now.
Sesko didn’t really do much after he came on. If Amorim can figure out how to make him the tip of the spear with Cunha and Mbeumo supporting him, however, it’s easy to see how he could rack up goals.
Arsenal were their typically strong selves in defence. As expected, you can start either CB and be confident of a clean sheet most weeks.
There’s a bit of a logjam at full-back.
Timber and Lewis-Skelley seemed to have the spots nailed down for the second half of last season… so of course Mik started White and Calafiori this weekend.
I wouldn’t go near any of them right now, until we’ve got a clearer picture.
Rice was a more popular pick than usual, for his defcon potential, and we know how good he is at set piece deliveries. Of course he immediately got a corner assist here.
Arsenal didn’t look great going forward.
Saka was shut down completely. Odegaard played well in the first half, and poorly in the second. Martinelli screwed-up every opportunity he was given… but Madueke also did nothing after replacing him. Gyokores was physical and aggressive, but didn’t get a sniff in front of goal, and was subbed after 59 minutes.
Hold them all for the Leeds fixture, obviously… but based on this performance, you should swap them out for the tougher games after that.
James’ Take – To be added here when he watches the game
The caveat, again, as always – it’s only one week.
We probably can learn a bit about starters and rotations, at least for the immediate future. In terms of how any team or player actually player, however… let’s not read too much into it quite yet.
We’ll be back with our full FPL gameweek 2 preview soon enough. For now, try not to overreact to what you just saw, and hold those transfers if you can possibly help it!
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