Fantasy Premier League Gameweek 6: tips, price changes and captaincy picks as Arsenal face Spurs

Fantasy Premier League is back for yet another week of fun, frustration, and arguments over the captaincy, and 3 Added Minutes is of course here with another guide to the gameweek ahead.

There’s neither a Friday match nor an early kick-off on Saturday this time around, meaning that the deadline by which you need to have made all your transfers and selection calls is a positively leisurely 13:30 BST. You can even have a lie-in.

We’ll keep you up-to-date on all the latest price changes and team news later, as well as telling you who to captain (a clue – he’s big, blonde and speaks Norwegian), but first up we’ll look at form, ask whether it’s time to bail on Brighton and Spurs assets, and check out whether it’s time to go big on Newcastle players.

Form and fixture difficulty thoughts

Let’s start on Tyneside, where Newcastle’s 1-0 win over Brentford suggested at least a partial return to form after a tough few weeks in which the Magpies found themselves picking up three straight defeats, albeit against some of the better sides in the league.

They now start a pretty gentle-looking five-match run, starting with games against Sheffield United and Burnley – so is it time to start loading up on Newcastle players? We reckon so, but we’re more interested in defenders than forwards. Sven Botman and Kieran Trippier are great pick-ups right now, with the former already edging towards a price rise.

Attackers are trickier. Harvey Barnes and Anthony Gordon are sharing minutes, as are Callum Wilson and Alexander Isak, both of whom are great players to have on your team one week and a nightmare the next. Wilson looks to be on good form, but after two straight clean sheets we’d look at the defence first and foremost.

On the other end of the fixture difficulty spectrum, Spurs have two toughies coming up - away to Arsenal and then at home to Liverpool. So should you ditch players like James Maddison and Son Heung-Min? The answer is a cautious yes, but only if you’re content with the rest of your team, and are prepared to buy them right back in a fortnight’s time when they face Luton Town followed by Fulham. Neither Liverpool’s defence nor Arsenal’s have been completely watertight so far, so if there are more pressing concerns to address than a couple of bad games for your Spurs players, we’d stick it out.

The other team with an interesting set of forthcoming games is Brighton. The Seagulls have been on song lately and face Bournemouth at home this week – hardly the harshest of fixtures – but then go on a pretty worrying run of matches against Aston Villa, Liverpool and Manchester City before things get a little kinder from the end of October.

While we’d hardly advise you to rush to drop Brighton players ahead of the game against the Cherries given how well they played against Manchester United, it’s certainly a sensible time to start thinking about moving the likes of Kaoru Mitoma and Pervis Estupiñán on before too long. If doing either would help to tee up a double transfer, don’t hesitate too much – and in particular, Estupiñán can be a good makeweight in a move to bring Trippier in. While you need some players who simply stay in the squad week in, week out, your non-premium but slightly more expensive assets are the best ones to move around according to form and fixture difficulty.

Team news and captain picks

Most of the injury news is focused on defenders this week – Aaron Wan-Bissaka and Ivan Perišić are both out for the long haul, while Ben Mee is a doubt. Futher up the field, Bernardo Silva’s injury from the Champions League win over Red Star Belgrade will keep him on the sidelines for a little while. Gabriel Martinelli is also a serious doubt for the North London Derby.

Better news for Liverpool fans – Trent Alexander-Arnold is on the road to recovery, although he too is very much a question mark for the game against West Ham, while Virgil van Dijk is back from suspension, just in case anybody still has him…

On the price change front, Julián Álvarez and James Ward-Prowse are among recent risers, with Destiny Udogie, Alphonse Areola and Rasmus Højlund potentially joining them by Saturday morning – there’s clearly some hype for the young Danish forward at a relatively budget-friendly £7.0m, but we’re steering clear for now simply because United are fundamentally still on fire just now. In the “burning building” sense, that is.

Ben Chilwell will likely be dropping before Friday morning comes around, so if you’re concerned by his being benched against Bournemouth last week then you’d best move him on now. Luis Díaz, William Osula, Dominic Solanke and Alejandro Garnacho are among the players at risk of losing £0.1m from their price, with Mee and Alexander-Arnold likely joining them due to their injuries.

As for your captain? Manchester City are at home to Nottingham Forest and it’s essentially impossible to make a case for giving the armband to anyone else. If you’re truly desperate to demonstrate some individualism, Mohamed Salah will probably do just fine against West Ham but honestly, this is an open and shut case for the week.

3 Added Minutes FC

Finally, we turn once more to our own Fantasy Premier League team, who are mercifully still making us look good after another comfortably above-average week bumped us up to around 50,000^th place. Which doesn’t sound that great but when you consider there are nearly ten million players in the game and a countless thousands of people who have burned their chips already just to be able to brag about their placements to their mates, it’s really rather handy.

We will, of course, wait until the manager’s press conferences before confirming our transfers to keep abreast of any unexpected injuries, but our current plan is to follow our own advice and move Estupiñán to Trippier, changing out Maddison for Bryan Mbeumo to make up for it. We’ll plan to trade the latter two right back in a fortnight when Spurs’ fixtures get easier and Brentford’s trickier. Hopefully that won’t get stuffed by someone getting sent off…

That’s all for this week – the very best of luck to all of you, and may all of the players you sell have a truly terrible weekend, just to make you feel vindicated.