Fantasy Premier League Gameweek 3: Tips, who to captain and price changes as Newcastle face Liverpool

Welcome back to our weekly strategy guide to help you navigate your way through this year’s Fantasy Premier League – and after a fairly low-scoring week in which Erling Haaland didn’t register for once, it’s time to get back to the drawing board and figure out how we’re lining up for the coming weeks. And for the most part, that means worrying about transfers.

Speaking of which, this week’s deadline is 18:30 BST on Friday, ahead of Chelsea’s game against Luton Town – the first in a very presentable run of fixtures for the Blues, not that we’re any closer to knowing whether they’re any good or not at this point…

Keeping up with price changes

One of the big challenges we run into in the first weeks of the season is the speed at which prices rise and fall as players around the world panic and make kneejerk reactions. The fallout from the first gameweek was remarkably minor, all things considered, but on Wednesday night no fewer than 29 players had their price drop, while seven went up. One player, João Pedro, is even on the verge of having his price go up and down again already.

Until players start getting bored, and people calm down a little and feel more settled with their teams, quickly-fluctuating price changes are the norm, and a fact of life. But it’s still good to know when to roll with a price change and when it makes more sense to sell and maintain your squad’s value.

The key is to decide whether a player whose price is dropping because of poor form is going to be in your team for the long haul anyway – and that involves some guesswork. Bruno Fernandes and Marcus Rashford, both widely-owned players, have had bad starts, but is this the start of an extended dry spell? Will Manchester United come good? Or is it best to jettison before you lose value?

There’s no guarantees, of course, but generally speaking it’s a good idea to check the stats. Bruno, for instance, hasn’t registered a goal or assist yet but has 0.9xG and 1.3xA from his first two games – and we know from years of data that he typically slight overperforms those numbers. So even if United are playing badly (which they are) he’s still getting his chances in, and history suggests that he’ll come good based on that – so we’d lean towards holding on to Bruno unless transferring him out teed up an even better transfer.

One thing you do need to be across is when prices change, and to react accordingly. For instance, our own example team, 3 Added Minutes FC, had Gabriel, whose price dropped last night from £5.0m to £4.9m. Given that Mikel Arteta seems inclined to keep him warming the bench for the foreseeable future, we transferred him out before a change happened, cunningly avoiding a £0.1m value loss.

How do you keep track of when price changes happen? Well, go to www.fplstatistics.co.uk – perhaps one of the most important FPL resources on the internet – which keeps track of when players’ ownership hits the thresholds for their price to go up or down. It isn’t absolutely accurate in the early stages of the season as it needs more data to calibrate, but it’s usually pretty close and gets to exact accuracy later in the season. Anyway, when a player hits 100% on their tracker, they’re moving. We saw Gabriel was going down so after two disappointing returns, we swapped him out. It’s nice to wait and see, but sometimes you simply don’t have the luxury.

This week’s price rises and captaincy picks

Going through all of the players whose prices have gone up or down would be a laborious task, but so you’re aware of some of the key ones from the last couple of days – well, let’s start in defence, where stocks in Manchester United defenders are unexpectedly rising, with Aaron Wan-Bissaka and Raphaël Varane both going up. Gabriel, as mentioned earlier, has finally gone down with William Saliba going the other way up to £5.2m.

Oleksandr Zinchenko, who isn’t fully fit, has already dropped to £4.9m, which makes him a possible value pickup later. The same is true of John Stones, out for a few weeks and already down £0.2m on his starting price. Manuel Akanji, Kyle Walker and Nathan Aké have all gone up ahead of a good run of games for Manchester City.

In midfield, Bryan Mbeumo has soared in value to £6.7m while Liverpool’s Luis Díaz has also gone up twice – and Phil Foden has gone up by £0.1m too after a nine-point haul against Newcastle. Leandro Trossard, Youri Tielemans, Eberechi Eze, Michael Olise, Harvey Elliott, Jadon Sancho and Miguel Almirón have all gone down, all worth keeping an eye on as possible cheap bolters in coming weeks and months.

Up front, Eddie Nketiah and Julian Álvarez have both gone up in response to unexpected early gametime, and Yoan Wissa is shooting up as well after a great start to the campaign. Dominic Calvert-Lewin is on the downswing, meanwhile, and Darwin Nuñez may have shed a bit of value by the time you read this, with Cody Gakpo following.

Phew. I promise that not all of our updates will be quite so long-winded, and things will settle down as the season goes on – but people panic, make needless transfers and react to every last game as thought it was a cast-iron indicator of form, and prices change accordingly. Don’t get swept up in panic yourself, and hold on to players who are likely to come good. Just remember to know when to move if you are selling.

As for the captaincy this week… it’s Erling Haaland. Stop overthinking it. They’re playing Sheffield United. If you’re one of the 9% of people who still don’t have Haaland in their team… you’re probably well beyond help at this point, but Bukayo Saka will be your best bet.

3 Added Minutes FC

Another decent week means we’re comfortably ahead of mediocrity after a fortnight, with several players registering decent hauls. Sadly, our captaincy of Mohamed Salah didn’t lead to a huge score, but as he outscored Haaland (who had been skippered by about two-thirds of players) we’re not complaining at all.

One change this week – Gabriel out, Joško Gvardiol in. The Croatian has started the last two games for City and we reckon he’s the best bet for points out of their £5.0m defenders both in the short-term and in the long. He may well end up being a set and forget player.

We’re rolling over a spare transfer because we don’t have too many urgent changes to make (we’re giving Marcus Rashford one more week as he plays Nottingham Forest) and because anything could happen in the transfer window. And often does.

Mark Flekken will come back into the starting line-up next week, Haaland will be passed the armband – and that’s about it. Sorry, no wild gambles just yet. Running a good FPL team often means being drearily sensible…

Good luck until next time, and may all your players’ prices go in the right direction.