As the Fantasy Premier League (FPL) deadline looms closer, it is time to decide what to do with our precious free transfer(s). Aside from playing chips or selecting a captain, our transfers are the single most important aspect of our FPL campaign.

Are you looking for your best ever FPL rank? Join the thousands of managers we’ve helped achieve their personal best. You can learn from the greatest managers by clicking here and viewing their live team reveals for just £1.

In this article we crunch the numbers, analyse the fixtures, take advice from the Algorithm, and decide which player to buy, which player to sell, and which player to keep for Gameweek 10.

Caveat: this article was written on Friday 27th October prior to some of the Premier League press conferences

BUY: Bukayo Saka

• Cost: £8.6m
• Selected by: 49.0%
• Projected Points (next 6 GWs): 34.7%

Not wishing to repeat ourselves, this article will assume that you took our advice and brought in Mohamed Salah (£12.8m) last Gameweek. If that is the case, we believe there is probably no better asset to target than Arsenal’s Bukayo Saka (£8.6m), who is a genuine captaincy candidate for Gameweek 10.

The joint-third top scoring midfielder in the game, Saka – and Arsenal – face two of the newly promoted teams in the next three Gameweeks. Even if you expand the fixture horizon to six Gameweeks, Arsenal is still ranked second best in terms of attacking fixture difficulty, which makes the English winger a great long-term pick.

Looking at the Opta Stats Sandbox we can see Saka’s expected data is roughly where we would expect him to be in terms of his output, meaning the current returns are sustainable. The only word of caution is that a big part of Saka’s appeal is the fact that he is Arsenal’s nominated penalty taker. This is somewhat mitigated by the fact that he has handed a number of awarded penalties to team mates; there appears to be no way of predicting when this will happen.

SELL: Marcus Rashford

• Cost: £8.7m
• Selected by: 17.0%
• Projected Points (next 6 GWs): 22.6

There is a fine line between patience and stubbornness, particularly in FPL. Sometimes unconscious biases can lead us to continue a course of action (or inaction), simply because we have invested heavily in it already (known as ‘sunk-cost fallacy’).

I would say to the 17% of managers who still own Marcus Rashford (£8.7m), now is perhaps the best time to part ways with the Manchester United midfielder.

With 5 back-to-back blanks – two of which were against newly promoted teams – accompanied by lacklustre underlying data, it definitely feels like something is wrong with Rashford and, by extension, his club.

With a tough fixture against Manchester City, there has probably never been a better time to part ways with the English winger. What’s more, after the City game, it will be harder to get shut of him, as Manchester United then embark on a good (albeit short) run of fixtures, which could make managers reluctant (once again) to sell.

KEEP: Erling Haaland

• Cost: £14.0m
• Selected by: 85.1%
• Projected Points (next 6 GWs): 38.5

With around a quarter of a million managers already having parted ways with the big Norwegian, Erling Haaland (£14.0m) is currently the fourth most sold player ahead of Gameweek 10. But doing so comes with a major health warning.

The arguments in favour of selling Haaland are two-fold. Firstly, Manchester City’s fixtures are still poor. In fact, over the next six Gameweeks, City is ranked fourth from bottom in terms of attacking difficulty (Fixture Planner). Secondly, the £14.0m price tag could be well spent elsewhere.

There are, however, just as many good reasons (and possibly more) to keep him. Firstly, his underlying data is still very strong. He is second (only to Salah) in terms of xFPL Points (63.37). While it could be argued that players such as Ollie Watkins (£8.3m) and Son Heung-min (£9.5m) are earning more points for much less coin, it must be noted that these players are doing so with much weaker expected data.

Haaland remains top for xG (8.26), top for shots on target (20), and top for big chances (14). At any moment, Haaland could start putting away these chances. When this happens, those who don’t own him are going to be punished by the 85% of managers who do.

Finally, a closer look at the fixtures is required. Up next is an out-of-sorts Manchester United who have conceded 82 shots in the box (ranked 11th) this season. After that it is an easy fixture against Bournemouth, followed by Chelsea who, it must be said, have decent defensive statistics so far this season, although these must be viewed through the lens of having had very generous fixtures up until now,

By Matt Whelan

You can access all of our Premium features and more for just £1 by clicking HERE.