Fantasy Premier League Gameweek 2: Tips, captain picks and transfer plans as Aston Villa face Arsenal

Welcome back to 3 Added Minutes’ weekly Fantasy Premier League advice column – this week, after an intriguing first gameweek of the season, I’m going to be looking at the players who looked good and bad and offer some advice about how to navigate transfers in the early stages of the season.

Getting my moves right in the early part of 2023/24 was hugely influential in my eventual Top 2,000 finish and I’ll be adopting the same philosophy this time around too, but before I explain how I believe you should go about things, a reminder that this week’s deadline is 11:00 BST on Saturday 24 August ahead of Manchester United’s visit to the Amex Stadium.

Panic buying and savvy selling

The same thing happens pretty much every year in this game – after just one match, thousands upon thousands of players will start panic selling the players who under-performed and will begin to bulk buy the players who did well. A combination of trigger-happy wildcards, rushed decisions and, annoyingly, bot accounts chasing high weekly points totals mean that there is far more transfer activity than there reasonably should be, and that means immediate price changes.

Getting stuck on the wrong side of an early price change is hugely frustrating but not always a huge deal – and it’s important not to overreact to early setbacks. Players like Ollie Watkins, Cole Palmer and Anthony Gordon have not suddenly become terrible footballers overnight, but they are all among the most heavily sold players in the game so far. Nearly 250,000 people have already jettisoned Watkins, and his price may well drop as a result.

But it’s almost always better to hold. In part, that’s because there isn’t always a sensible sale to make which doesn’t hurt you in other ways. With Watkins, for instance, you can switch to Alexander Isak or Kai Havertz without doing much harm to your team, but if you’re one of the players who has Jarell Quansah (whose price has fallen to £4.4m already after he was hauled off at half-time against Ipswich Town) then you can only go to a £4.0m defender (usually not ideal) or take a -4 to make the numbers work.

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Nine times out of ten, it’s best just to hang on. Watkins will score goals, and we don’t know yet if one off day indicates a downturn for the rest of the season (probably not), while Quansah isn’t suddenly going to be bench-riding for another 37 matches. If the former scores against Arsenal this weekend, a lot of people are going to feel very stupid, as they will if Quansah plays against Brentford. Ultimately, most of the good players will come good to some extent, and there is far too little information available to make informed transfer decisions.

The only time a ‘panic sale’ can be justified is if your player suddenly gets injured or looks likely to be transferred out. If you gambled on Ivan Toney, for instance, he’s already dropped in price and there’s a fair chance that he ends up in Saudi Arabia and you’ve made an unfortunate mistake. Similarly, a lot of players had Brighton’s Valentín Barco in as a £4.0m defender, and now it looks likely that he’ll head off on loan – in this instance, selling can be justified to avoid losing money, but even then, given that Barco was presumably a bench player anyway, it’s worth thinking ahead and looking at whether you would have a better use for that free transfer among your actual starting players. Losing £0.1m in defence on a player who would rarely be involved anyway isn’t perfect but it’s not a big deal, either.

So all in all, I’m very much against selling week one and now that we can roll more than two transfers over from week to week, there’s a strong case for holding fire until you’re really confident you’re making the right moves. But while I dislike panic selling, I am far more interested in buying high-performance players quickly, especially when they’re cheap.

Last season, a big part of my success was jumping on Gordon and Palmer quickly, before many other players did. There will always be a bit of guesswork, but if you recognise that cheap players (especially midfielders and forwards) look set to start regularly and score frequently, you want them in your team as fast as possible. Sure, they might end up being a flash in the pan, but getting the players who are unexpectedly good in before their prices start rising will free up more money down the line and get you more points.

There wasn’t necessarily an obvious Palmer or Gordon analogue from week one, although I’m very interested now in Leicester City’s Abdul Fatawu, who is priced at £5.5m. If he looks good again, I’m likely getting him in. He was excellent in the Championship last year and looks nice and dangerous, and could easily be a better option at that price point than Emile Smith Rowe, who’s in my current team. That’s an example of the kind of player you need to look out for and move fast on, because if he keeps scoring points then everyone will sign him - a few Brighton players, like Yankuba Minteh, could easily be in the same category.

There haven’t been any price rises yet, so nobody has missed any boats, but Manchester United new boy Nouassir Mazraoui has already been signed by over 350,000 players and could easily rise before the next match. That’s not a ship I’m convinced is worth jumping on (he won’t necessarily play every week and Manchester United’s defence wasn’t all that convincing on the opening day), but if that’s a move you’re sold on, go for it quickly.

Basically – only sell early if you are absolutely certain that you’ve made a mistake or if you’re doing it to pick up a player who is likely to become one of the season’s bolters, and don’t just start getting rid of perfectly good players for the sake of it. Plenty of players who scored in week one will fail to do so this weekend, and vice versa. One game’s worth of ‘form’ proves absolutely nothing, and you’re very likely to hurt your chances selling a player like Watkins early.

Captain picks and example team update

With all that out of the way, it’s worth looking at your captaincy pick for this weekend. If you’re one of the 53.1% of players who have Erling Haaland, then it’s pretty hard to look past him given that he’ll be playing a home game against newly-promoted Ipswich, while Liverpool’s home game against Brentford means that Mohamed Salah is almost certainly the next best option.

If you don’t have either of the FPL’s most reliable goalscorers in your side then there aren’t any other glaringly lopsided fixtures to target. Tottenham Hotspur are at home to Everton, which probably put Son Heung-Min as the third best option alongside players like Diogo Jota who could shine instead of Salah. Past that, it’s always best to play it safe and go for a player like Bukayo Saka or Alexander Isak, as they tend to score more often that they don’t regardless of the fixture difficulty. Applying all of that logic to my team, here’s how I’ll be lining up for Gameweek Two:

No transfers, even if I am a little sad that I didn’t gamble on Fatawu and that Quansah has dropped in price. If he plays against Brentford he’s a rock solid clean sheet candidate. Otherwise, Smith Rowe comes in for Rogers. No further changes necessary, and absolutely no panic despite a slightly below-par first week score of 54 points. That’s a little underwhelming but hardly a reason to believe that I’ve gotten everything wrong all of a sudden.

That’s all for this week – the very best of luck to all of you, and may all of the players you sensibly decide not to sell score some points for you.