Should you sign Erling Haaland in FPL? Full verdict on Manchester City striker for Gameweek 36

There probably hasn’t been a single more polarising player in the 2024/25 Fantasy Premier League season than Erling Haaland. For long periods, his returns haven’t justified his monstrous price tag. At other times, he’s been frustratingly out of form or simply injured. But when he’s on song, he doesn’t stop scoring… and for all that he may be having a ‘bad’ season, he’s still a Top 5 striker with 171 points to his name.

And now, he’s back. Having missed the past six matches, Haaland is in line to play for Manchester City once more when they travel down to the south coast to play Southampton this weekend, and it’s the kind of fixture that the Norwegian often feasts on. So… should you stretch the budget and burn all the free transfers to sign him for the final few weeks of the FPL season?

So as we head into Gameweek 36, I’ve gone over the data and the broader debate to determine whether spending the resources required to get Haaland back in is a good plan or simply bound to go wrong… and whether you should even consider selling Mohamed Salah to make a deal work.

Why Erling Haaland is set to score big at the end of the season

Let’s start with the obvious opening question: Will Haaland even play against Southampton? Pep Guardiola might let us know in his pre-match press conference on Friday, but at the time of writing we don’t know for sure. Let’s assume, however, that he will.

He was, after all, on the bench against Wolves last Friday, implying that he was just about fit enough to play a role in some kind of an emergency, and while some might be concerned that Omar Marmoush could be selected ahead of him, the Egyptian’s role didn’t contradict Haaland’s before the injury and he surely hasn’t scored enough to demand the number nine role on a more permanent basis.

Which doesn’t mean that Haaland will play the full 90 minutes, of course. It’s reasonable to anticipate a limited role, whether that means being substituted on or off, especially given the frankly high chance that Manchester City beat Southampton very easily.

Given that it’s unlikely that Guardiola will reveal his plan for Haaland directly, I think it’s reasonable to guesstimate his involvement at an average of 60 minutes this weekend, before playing a full role for the remaining two matches of the campaign against Bournemouth and Fulham.

Normally, taking a third of a player’s potential points total away makes them significantly less appealing, but this is Haaland – and while you can accuse him of being a flat-track bully, he really does bully bad teams. In four games against relegated sides this season, Haaland has scored six goals (a hat-trick against Ipswich Town and one apiece the other three games), averaging 9.25 points per game – and that arguably undersells his performances.

In the home game against Southampton, for instance (a 1-0 win at what proved to be the very start of City’s rough winter run), Haaland only scored once but was offered up an xG of 2.33, which is absolutely massive – if he and his team-mates combine for a similar volume of chances against Southampton at St. Mary’s, you can realistically expect him to score two or three this weekend.

In short, his ceiling is very, very high, and even if we assume that he reverts to his ‘average’ form against Bournemouth and Fulham (still a hefty 6.1 points per game, better than every forward in the game save for Alexander Isak), then he’s on for an average of about 18 points over the last three games (60 minutes at nine points per game and then two straight sixes) with a ceiling that’s much, much higher.

In short, while perceptions about both his form and Manchester City’s over the course of the season may not be wholly favourable, the maths suggest that Haaland should have a high floor and a very high ceiling for the remaining matches. Still, there’s more to it than that…

Should you sign Haaland in the FPL - and even sell Salah?

In a vacuum, the number suggest that signing a fit-again Haaland is something of a no-brainer. But it’s hardly that simple when he costs a massive £14.8m, and almost any team will have to burn several free transfers to make a deal work.

That’s where the balancing act comes in – will the sacrifices you make elsewhere in the side balance out Haaland’s likely returns? There are good bets you can make all over the pitch, but it will depend heavily on who you have to sell and who you replace them with to make the money work.

Getting shot of Arsenal defenders is a solid start on current form, and players like William Saliba have failed to live up to their price tag over the past month or so. With tricky fixtures incoming, they can go be traded out for cheaper models with a limited risk of major losses.

Similarly, it wouldn’t be a shock if otherwise reliable forwards like Chris Wood and Isak don’t hit big over the remaining weeks given their form, their team’s form and the difficulty of the fixtures they face. Replacing them with cheaper alternatives is a viable consideration in the short term, as is trusting form and bringing in on-song enablers in midfield such as Brentford’s Kevin Schade.

Moving to Haaland using three or four free transfers will involve some gambling, in other words, but they’re very reasonable ones if you’re on the hunt for differentials to catch up in your mini-leagues or to hit your targets. Not everyone will have that many free transfers to burn, of course, and for a lot of people that will mean asking whether it’s reasonable to sell Salah to fund signing Haaland. He is, after all, the only other player so expensive that selling him can make a deal for Haaland work in two free transfers for most teams.

In the long-term, that would be a disastrous idea given the two players’ form this season – but we only have three weeks left, Liverpool looked practically hungover against Chelsea last weekend, and Manchester City are on song, winning four in a row as they battle to confirm their spot in next season’s Champions League. This is a good time to bet on City and their best assets anyway.

If you’re leading your league, I would be strongly tempted to play it safe and stick with Salah. League champion hangovers tend not to last all that long, and his reliability is through the roof. Games against Brighton and Crystal Palace in Gameweeks 37 and 38 shouldn’t stop him maintaining his points average of 9.4 per game, and Salah’s average expected return over the remaining weeks is still higher than Haaland’s. If, however you are the chasing pack, then Haaland is exactly the sort of super-high ceiling player you should be looking to gamble on.

All told, if you can get to Haaland without making major sacrifices, I would warmly recommend it, as long as Guardiola doesn’t wave any major red fitness flags at his Friday press conference – but if getting there involves selling several high-scoring players, I would only do so if you’re left chasing differentials. On average, a player like Salah will still score plenty of points this season, after all, and you should only make a change like that if you’re forced to roll the dice. That’s precisely what a lot of players need to do, however, and Haaland could so easily land as a double six.