Locked In, Four Weeks Early

Four weeks out from the 18:30 deadline on Friday 21 August, the template is already built. Haaland is 73.1% owned, Bruno Fernandes 47.4%, João Pedro 46.4%, Szoboszlai 39.5%. Haaland and Bruno together account for £27.5m of a £100.0m budget. That convergence did not come from watching anybody play, because no 2026/27 football has been played. It came from the price list, which landed days ago.

Follow the crowd on Haaland anyway. At £15.5m he is the most expensive player in FPL history, and the only forward priced above £9.0m, with the rest of the credible options between £6.0m and £9.0m. Does he beat a £7.5m forward by enough to fund the £8.0m gap? Last season he beat the best of them, João Pedro, by 62 points, on 239 points, 27 goals and 28.17 xGI. City host Bournemouth in GW1.

Be far more careful with Bruno. He is £12.0m, up £3.0m, on the back of 235 points. To repay that price at the rate per million he managed last season, he needs roughly 313 points, which is 78 clear of what he actually delivered. His total also leaned on 24 assists against 9 goals, and assists are the noisier half of the ledger. At 47.4% he is not a differential either. In fairness, run the same test on Haaland and he comes up 26 points short, so nobody at the top escapes it. Bruno's gap is three times bigger.

None of this costs you anything yet, which is the part most managers waste. Transfers are unlimited until the deadline, so a squad picked today is a sketch, not a commitment. The fitness news is the reason to keep it that way. Saliba reinjured his back in the World Cup semi-final and Arsenal say he faces an extended absence, and Arsenal happen to draw the earliest kick-off of the round, at home to Coventry on the Friday night, while Chelsea do not start until Monday 24 August.

So the answer on timing is specific. Fix your spine now, because the £15.5m and £4.0m ends of the budget are set by price rather than news, and leave four or five slots genuinely open until the week of 17 August, when training and team news finally exist. The new Price Change Predictor, which tracks the daily 00:00 UK price changes, is a tool for the season, not for a market that has not opened.

If you want to hold three or four versions of that spine and compare them properly, build them in the Transfer Simulator on FPL Guru and let the numbers argue it out.

Salah does not appear in the 2026/27 Fantasy Premier League player list at all. He left Liverpool at the end of last season and, as things stand, has not signed for a Premier League club, so this is the first FPL season without him since 2016/17. He was in the game for nine straight seasons from 2017/18, a stretch in which he finished as FPL's top-scoring player four times. Whatever your squad looks like this year, it is being built without the one asset that shaped a generation of team structure.

Two daily puzzles are live while you wait for the season. Who Played With? #43 opens in the Bundesliga, with a Bayer Leverkusen dressing room in 2015 and Switzerland's Admir Mehmedi as your first teammate clue. Six clues, and the fewer you use the better.

Career Path #42 starts a long way from the Premier League, at Club Atlético Banfield in 2008. Follow the moves and name the player.

Both reset daily and both track streaks, so a missed day costs you more than a wrong guess. Pick one and start a run.