Fantasy Premier League Strategy: Planning for Gameweeks 1-4

With player prices and fixtures now locked in for the Fantasy Premier League (FPL) season, it's the perfect time to dive into your initial drafts.

If you're juggling multiple drafts and struggling to decide which one to commit to, a great strategy is to simulate future Gameweeks in a planner. This approach helps you visualise how your squad will evolve and perform over time, providing crucial insights for making the best choices for your FPL team.

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Is this the best Salah and Haaland FPL team?

Below I’ll discuss my ‘Salah + Haaland’ draft and how it could look by FPL Gameweek 4.

Fantasy Premier League Gameweek 1

The big question on managers’ minds is whether to include history’s most expensive Fantasy Premier League player, Erling Haaland (£15.0m). A bigger question will be whether those who go down the Haaland route will also stretch to Mohamed Salah (£12.5m) even though these two players alone will use over a quarter of the full squad budget.

This obviously requires some sacrifice to pull off. In terms of this squad, that sacrifice has been made via the inclusion of uncertain players such as Christopher Nkunku (£6.5m) and João Pedro (£5.5m) as well as a weak bench. The potential imbalance of this decision is highlighted by the Algorithm’s Expert Rating of 80.3% which isn’t great but isn’t terrible either.

The Algorithm doesn’t have enough data or assurances that Nkunku or Pedro will start, hence they are only projected to score 2.4 and 6.5 points respectively in the first three Gameweeks. This is something I will need to keep an eye on in pre-season.

After the two big hitters, there is a large drop off in terms of projected points for the rest of the squad, Gabriel (£6.0m) and Alexander Isak (£8.5m) are ranked third and fourth, earning 23.5 and 22.7 respectively in the first six Gameweeks, according to the Player Points Projections tool.

FPL Gameweek 2: Rolling the Transfer

The second Gameweek sees little change from the first with no transfers made and a switch from Salah to Haaland for captaincy, ensuring both Ipswich fixtures are fully covered by the best asset.

Here Vitalii Mykolenko (£4.5m) and Joachim Andersen (£4.5m) switch places to maximise home defensive advantage, something which the Rotation Planner tool shows to be a viable option as we go deeper into the season.

Gameweek 3: Pedro Porro Out

Things get a little more interesting in Gameweek 3. Having had two decent opening fixtures in Gameweeks 1 and 2, things turn quickly sour for Spurs, who are ranked worst for defensive fixture difficulty between Gameweeks 3-6 according to the Fixture Planner.

This is where I jump off Pedro Porro (£5.5m) and onto Marc Cucurella (£5.0m), the latter having a prolonged decent run of fixtures going forward.

The rolled transfer from Gameweek 2 will be saved in reserve, although this could be spent putting out squad fires should any player not be getting game time.

Captaincy remains on Haaland, and Andersen drops back to the bench to be replaced by Mykolenko as per the above rotation analysis.

Gameweek 4: Liverpool Defender In?

As we get further away from the initial squad, many variables will come into play.

I can say with some degree of confidence that the armband will switch back to Salah for his plum fixture against Nottingham Forest, and the £4.5m defensive hokey-cokey will continue, allowing Andersen to face newly promoted Leicester.

At this juncture, Arsenal’s fixtures go through a two-Gameweek lull where they face both Tottenham and Manchester City away. A possibility here is to replace Gabriel with Virgil van Dijk (£6.0m) who will enter a tremendous run of fixtures, as highlighted by the Fixtures tab on the control panel.

What Does ChatFPL Say?

Another possibility is to avail of Fix’s brand new ChatFPL feature.

If you are not sure what the best move to make is, why not ask? This new AI-driven feature allows users to enter a simple query and receive a personalised recommendation based on all the available data.

By Matt Whelan