After feeling satisfied with my initial FPL draft with Haaland and Salah for a few days, I decided it was time to shake things up. I wanted to explore how you can stretch your budget by removing the two most expensive players in the Fantasy Premier League game.
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Below I’ll discuss my ‘No Salah/No Haaland’ Fantasy Premier League draft and how it could look by Gameweek 4.
With both players facing newly promoted Ipswich in Gameweeks 1 and 2, going without Mohamed Salah (£12.5m) and Erling Haaland (£15.0m) feels like a tremendous risk to take. But it can’t be denied that the temptation to spread that money around is huge.
As you can see from the above, the removal of the premium pair allows for upgrades in pretty much every department of the squad. Two out of three premium defenders in the starting XI shore up a midfield which contains three premiums, and a front three of Alexander Isak (£8.5m), Ollie Watkins (£9.0m), and Dominik Solanke (£7.5m).
The extra funds even stretch as far as the bench, with former Arsenal midfielder, Emile Smith Rowe (£5.5m), and Everton’s Vitalii Mykolenko (£4.5m) providing deep cover should any of the starting XI get injured.
The first thing I have noted is that the Expert Rating the Algorithm has given me is 74.4%, almost 6% lower than my Haaland + Salah draft, which was rated at 80.2%. This gap can be slightly reduced by following the Algorithm’s recommendation of putting the armband on Bukayo Saka (£10.0m), but with a home game against newly promoted Southampton, I would find it hard to resist Isak for captaincy.
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With the exception of changing the armband, the squad remains the same – in terms of both personnel and formation – for Gameweek 2.
Captaincy goes to Phil Foden (£9.5m) who, aside from Kevin De Bruyne (£9.5m), is the next best Manchester City attacker to Haaland. The Predicted Points & Stats tool actually favours the Belgian, but I was badly burned by De Bruyne last season and am not sure I am ready to go there again. If nothing else, Foden’s minutes seem a lot more assured.
Gameweek 2 foretells a potential problem with this setup and that is the curse of having too strong a bench. In this scenario, I would like to play Smith-Rowe for his home fixture against Leicester, but there is no-one from my starting XI who I would be willing to bench for him.
Smith-Rowe has secured a spot in Philman's latest draft. The Elite XI: Team Reveal manager, known for nine top 10k finishes, has put together a well-balanced team featuring Alexander-Arnold, Salah, and Haaland.
In Gameweek 3, I take advantage of my banked transfer to remove my two Spurs players, thus avoiding their back-to-back fixtures against Newcastle and Arsenal.
At this point, Son Heung-min (£10.0m) makes way for Cole Palmer (£10.5m) whose fixtures are about to become very green. Replacing Pedro Porro (£5.5m) is Ezri Konsa (£4.5m) who, likewise, is about to embark on a good run of fixtures. This move also frees up £0.5m of budget for the bank.
As we can see from the Fixture Planner, Chelsea and Aston Villa are ranked 2nd and 7th, respectively between Gameweeks 3-7.
In order to capitalise on the Ipswich fixture, I am happy to bench Eberechi Eze (£7.0m) to allow Smith-Rowe his debut for my squad. Captaincy goes to Watkins, although the Algorithm once again insists that Saka is the better option.
As we get further away from the initial squad, many variables will come into play. At this juncture, player form and underlying metrics will need to be assessed in order to establish which players are performing best or worst.
For this Gameweek, I have envisaged a scenario where Saka hasn’t performed as well as expected and is about to face Tottenham and Manchester City, both away from home. Here I may look to bring in Christopher Nkunku (£6.5m) to take advantage of Chelsea’s fixtures with an attacking double-up. This is, of course, dependent on Nkunku’s game time under Enzo Maresca.
According to Live Insight, the French midfielder is the second highest owned Chelsea player at 17.5%.
This, combined with previous transfers, frees up £4.0m in the bank, which could be used to bring in Salah, should his omission turn out to be a huge mistake.
Omitting both Haaland and Salah frees up a lot of budget, but comes at great risk. Firstly, not owning either player means that you cannot captain two of the greatest FPL assets available. It can also create a scenario where your bench may be too strong.
This could favour those wishing to opt for a strategy in which transfers can be banked, thus taking advantage of the rule change, but as Elite XI manager Andrew Neave said in our latest Elite XI article, this could be a tactic which punishes in the short term.
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