Ninety Minutes Is Not a Season

After one round of matches, managers are reshaping their squads at full speed. The most-bought player of the week is De Cuyper, the £4.5m Brighton defender who top-scored Gameweek 1 with 17 points from 6.8 per cent ownership; a net 363,599 managers have added him since Saturday. Brentford's M.Sangaré (14 points, net 306,395 buys) and Kayode (13 points, 235,322) are next. All three have already risen £0.1.

One match is a small sample. The Gameweek 1 average was 50 points and the top score was 131; a gap that large after one round is mostly luck. Haaland, the most-owned and most-captained player in the game, returned two points, yet almost nobody is selling him, and that is sensible. But many of the same managers apply the opposite standard to everyone else: they forgive their own premium players for a blank while buying and selling mid-priced players on one afternoon's evidence.

FPL's price feed rates Ødegaard (£6.5m, net 201,868 new owners) most likely to rise tonight, with Palmer (220,179) and Tzolis (141,387) close behind. Context: in FPL Guru's sample of 1,000 top-ranked managers, 91 per cent already owned him before Gameweek 1, against 8.3 per cent of the overall game. The best managers bought before the season; the crowd is arriving after the price has begun to move.

Chasing price rises rarely pays. Everyone has one free transfer this week, and spending it early to beat a rise means committing before Thursday's and Friday's team news. Taking a minus-four hit to save £0.1 is worse: four certain points traded for a saving you only see if you later sell him.

Selling follows the same pattern. Pedro Porro has lost a net 270,268 owners after one quiet game. Watkins is down 168,576, though the transfer speculation around him is a fair reason for caution. The clearest sale is Gibbs-White: down 182,218, carrying a knee injury, and rated only 75 per cent to play. That is the model this week: transfer on availability and fixtures, not on last Saturday's score.

The Engine's Gameweek 2 captain is still Haaland. He scored two points last week, but he remains top of the projections for Friday night's trip to Crystal Palace; one blank did not change the underlying numbers. Chips come in two sets this season and the first set can be played any time up to Gameweek 19, so there is no hurry. Keep your plan, spend the free transfer on a player who will be on the pitch, and run your squad through Squad Report before you confirm. The deadline is Friday at 18:30 BST.

Last week's issue made four sets of calls. Here is how they scored in Gameweek 1:

Captain, Haaland: 2 points (4 with the armband). The most-captained player in the game blanked, so almost everyone blanked together. No damage to rank, but no reward either.

The Guru XI: 56 points against the game average of 50. Hughes did not play and Diop came on from the bench, but the core picks delivered: João Pedro 11, Calafiori 9, Szoboszlai 8, Raya 6, Slater 6. Beating the average with a blanking captain is a solid start.

Last-call picks: Semenyo 2, Kinsky 2, Mbeumo 2. All three started; none did more than the basics.

Differentials: Welbeck 0, Richarlison 2, Strand Larsen 1. The week's worst call. Welbeck, our top differential pick, did not get off Chelsea's bench. These results are published every week, good or bad.

Deadline: Friday 28 August, 18:30 BST. Crystal Palace v Man City kicks off at 20:00; ten fixtures run to Monday's Villa v Arsenal.

Team news: Gibbs-White (knee, 75 per cent) is the only widely-owned doubt. Final press conferences run Thursday and Friday; wait for them before moving.

Chip watch: no chip this week. The first chip set is playable up to Gameweek 19; nothing forces an early play.

Price watch: Ødegaard is rated most likely to rise tonight, with Palmer and Tzolis close behind. Pedro Porro, Gibbs-White and Watkins are the week's most-sold players.

Captain: Haaland (£15.5m, Man City, away to Crystal Palace on Friday night). He scored only two points last week, but he is still the highest-projected captain option in this squad. The projection is built on expected minutes, role and fixture, and none of those changed last weekend.

Vice: Bruno Fernandes (£12.0m, Man Utd, home to Ipswich on Sunday). He is next in the projections with the easiest-looking fixture of the round, and he plays two days after Haaland, so the vice-captaincy is genuine cover if Friday brings a late surprise.

The Guru squad has one free transfer, and Squad Report flags its weakness: players not getting minutes.

• Our move: Hughes to Reed (£4.5m, Fulham): Hughes played no minutes in Gameweek 1; Reed starts every week. Same price, projected +4.2 points over the next five gameweeks.
• If you own Calvert-Lewin (29.2 per cent do): the Engine prefers Wissa (£6.0m, Newcastle) at the same price, projected +2.0 over five gameweeks.
• If you own Rogers (25.8 per cent): Cherki (£7.5m, Man City) projects +1.5. Rogers is close to a price rise, but the numbers still favour the swap. No hits needed.

The Engine's three highest-scored Gameweek 2 picks owned by fewer than 8 per cent of managers:

• Mateta (Crystal Palace, £6.5m, 5.4% owned): the Engine's joint-highest-scored forward this week alongside Haaland, despite a hard home fixture against Man City on Friday. Cheap and certain to start, which is what drives his score.
• Havertz (Arsenal, £7.5m, 7.2%): scored six points in week one and carries the next-best projection. Away at Villa on Monday.
• Kostoulas (Brighton, £5.5m, 0.2%): the boldest pick of the three, owned by almost nobody. Away at Chelsea on Sunday.

One change from last week's squad, made with our free transfer: Reed comes in for Hughes at the same £4.5m price, fixing the minutes problem flagged above. The other fourteen players stay, and Haaland keeps the armband.


Squad Report rates this as a high-risk, high-reward build: it shares only 31 per cent of its picks with the elite template, and its weakest area is the bench. This transfer is the first step in fixing that.

Those eight were De Cuyper 17, Hinshelwood 16, Mendy 15, Ajayi 14, M.Sangaré 14, Kayode 13, Palmer 13 and Stach 13. Only Palmer is owned by more than 8 per cent of managers, and all eight together sit in 44.3 per cent of squads, less than Haaland alone at 68.1 per cent. Nobody can predict where next week's big scores come from, so pick players who start and score consistently instead of chasing last week's one-off hauls.

Two daily puzzles, fresh at midnight UTC. Today's first clues:

• Who Played With? No. 76: the mystery player shared a dressing room at Borussia Dortmund (2018) with Belgium's Axel Witsel.
• Career Path No. 75: a career that begins at Bayern Munich (1999 to 2007).

A new puzzle arrives every day. Play today's and keep your streak going into September.