Fantasy Premier League Gameweek 4: tips, captain picks and price changes as Arsenal face Man Utd

Welcome back to our weekly Fantasy Premier League strategy column, where we help you maximise your points, get the most of your transfers and, with any luck, crush your work leagues as well. And thanks to another good week for 3 Added Minutes FC, we can even prove that we know what we’re talking about, to some extent...

But before we get to the gloating, we’ll take a look over how to handle your transfers with deadline day on top of us, price changes going all over the place and an international break looming as well – and then we’ll see who we’d recommend as captain for gameweek four, as Arsenal take on Manchester United in the pick of the weekend fixtures.

Transfer chaos and price change craziness

Trying to keep track of price changes right now is a thankless and all but impossible task – dozens of players’ values have been shooting up and down as people kneejerk their way into new players off the back of a good gameweek, or panic sell because they were benched on Saturday. Unfortunately, there are simply too many people who do this to make any of it avoidable.

It’s a headache at the best of times, but made even more complicated by the fact that the Premier League’s transfer deadline is 11pm on Friday – just a few hours after the FPL deadline, ahead of Luton Town v West Ham United. So we’re all put into a difficult position. Do we use our transfers early to stay ahead of possible price rises? Or do we roll a transfer over until next week to allow us to course correct when last-minute deals derail our plans?

It’s very tempting to jump on every bandwagon rolling in the early season, but it’s generally smart not to make too many rash decisions. Many of the players who have been hot so far will regress, many who have started slowly will pick up pace. Will Rodri really go at a goal every other game all season after years scoring a couple a season? Unlikely. Is it really worth bailing on one mid-price midfielder for another who’s doing slightly better? Unless they’re injured or seem unlikely to pick up minutes, it probably isn’t a major priority.

That doesn’t mean that you shouldn’t be quick on the trigger when a sensible transfer comes up. By way of an example, a staff member at 3AM Towers moved Gabriel Martinelli to Raheem Sterling on Saturday, after Sterling had proven his form but before his price started rising rapidly. That’s a pretty smart move under the circumstances, given that they’re almost certain to get a “free” £0.1m out of the deal as they switch to a player with more apparent points potential over the next few weeks.

But they’ve also kept one transfer back, and unless you’re desperate we’d advise doing the same. Players you’re leaning on now will suddenly find their minutes squeezed by unexpected new arrivals, some may be transferred away to new clubs entirely. Anything could happen, and with an international break coming there will be plenty of time to figure out the ramifications of any big deals.

It’s also worth contemplating what impact possible incomings will have on your current players. A lot of people are moving towards Chelsea’s Nicolas Jackson after an impressive showing against Luton, but what if the Blues buy another striker, something that’s been possible all summer? You could pay over the odds for a play whose gametime is suddenly cut down to size. And what if you’re a Mohamed Salah owner and his transfer to Saudi Arabia actually materialises? You’d want an extra transfer to help with what would amount to a complete restructure of your team. Think about all the options before your knee starts jerking like crazy.

It’s also worth remembering that injuries and international breaks go hand in hand – whether it’s club managers moaning about the knocks picked up in various qualifying games, or players who develop sudden sprains which magically clear up as soon as domestic football returns. If a big-name player is injured in a fortnight’s time, you’ll need the transfer you’ve just spent on a hyped player to sort it all out.

You can see what our advice is – make good moves, but play it safe. Don’t spend a transfer unless you really need to, either because of an unfortunate price change or because a player is injured or has nosedived in form. If you can roll a free transfer to gameweek five, do so!

Captaincy conundrums

Look, the problem with the current format of the FPL is that everyone has Erling Haaland. And if that means that the correct captain, nine times out of ten, is Erling Haaland. Manchester City are playing at home to Fulham – you should captain Haaland.

There really aren’t any great arguments against that, to be honest – if you really must captain Sterling against Nottingham Forest, knock yourself out, but the regular high scorers are all playing reasonably tough fixtures save for Haaland, and he should have the armband. Any other choice flies in the face of basic logic, and even if you’re behind in your work league for now, it’s a bit early to go looking for big differentials. Just captain Haaland. Be sensible.

3 Added Minutes FC

So we can lead by example and show you our working, we’ve been putting together our own team this season based on the ideas and tactical principles that we’ve been expounding on so far. And, happily for our credibility, it’s going rather swimmingly well.

A well-above-average 70-point week sees us into the top 20,000 in the world, which isn’t bad at all when you consider nearly ten million accounts are registered. Let’s hope we can keep it up…

As it stands, we don’t see the need to make major changes with most of our biggest and best players having good runs of games for the coming weeks – but one thing we do need to change is our back-up striker, Divin Mubama, who is not only not seeing action but is going to drop in price soon. Our plan is to monitor the situation and switch him over at the latest possible moment. We’ll expect to sign Antoine Semenyo or Cameron Archer, who’s likely to be a starter at Sheffield United, but will hold out just on the tiny off chance that something unexpected happens – an injury, Folarin Balogun suddenly going to Fulham, Salah actually leaving, something like that.

Not an exciting change, but things are good just now and as we said – we want to keep our powder dry on transfers while we can, just in case things go crazy. Anyway, we hope this has been helpful again – good luck to you all, and may all Mohamed Salah owners still have their player in place come Saturday.