Fantasy Premier League Gameweek 7: Tips, price rises and captain picks as Liverpool take on Spurs

Welcome back to 3 Added Minutes’ weekly guide to Fantasy Premier League, and this time out we’ll be giving you all the hints and tips you need to get as many points as possible out of gameweek 7 of the new FPL season.

We’ll keep you up-to-date with all the latest price changes and injury news a little further down the piece – and with the likes of James Maddison and Bukayo Saka listed as doubts, a lot of you will want to keep across that side of things – and give you some advice for your captaincy pick, but first let’s take a look at some of the burning questions of the gameweek, including whether it’s worth buying into Luton Town and Burnley players ahead of their double gameweek…

Oh, and before we get going, there’s no Friday game again this week but there is an early kick-off between Aston Villa and Brighton & Hove Albion, so you’ll need to get all your transfers done by 11:00 BST on Saturday. Try not to sleep in…

Double trouble for basement boys

The postponement of Luton’s match against Burnley on the second week of the season, due to the renovation of Kenilworth Road, means that we get a very unusual early double gameweek – and that’s got a lot of players wondering whether they should invest in players from either team when they’d normally be pretty low on the shopping list.

Luton players seem to be more in demand, largely because their “other” game of the week is against Everton while the Clarets face Newcastle at St. James’ Park – and besides, no Burnley players have exactly put their hands up and begged for selection so far. Luton at least have 26-point striker Carlton Morris, who has scored two of their three goals from the penalty spot. It’s not much, but it’s honest early-season work.

Morris is playing off an xG of 2.5 so far, which, as he’s played five games, makes for some nice and easy maths – over the course of two games, he is tracking to score exactly one goal. That gives you a reasonable expectation of 8 points or so, which is entirely respectable but not the sort of number worth bringing a forward in over the long term for, especially at £5.5m. Luton face Spurs immediately after their double gameweek, and have Villa, Liverpool and Manchester United in their next five matches.

Which is the crux of the problem – none of the Luton players are especially likely to bring huge hauls, and the points they can be expected to bring in are unlikely to continue coming over the coming weeks. What that means is that you can only easily justify bringing Morris in if you are either so happy with all other elements of your team that you’re happy to transfer him straight back out, or that the make-up of your team is such that you don’t mind his rotting on the bench for a few weeks in a row down the road.

Other players exist in this double gameweek, of course, and defensive assets like Issa Kaboré, Amari’I Bell and Jordan Beyer are fairly popular choices already as they fill the traditional £4.0m hole on the teamsheet. If you’ve got these guys, absolutely play them – but we can’t recommend bringing them in. Burnley have a few attacking assets who could well come good based on previous Championship form like Manuel Benson and Anass Zaroury, but Burnley have a glut of new players in midfield and attack and haven’t settled the teamsheet down yet, less still had any of their assets hit their straps. We’d advise avoiding any Luton or Burnley signing except perhaps Morris, under the circumstances outlined above.

Away from those two likely relegation candidates, it’s worth being aware that Liverpool have two toughies coming up with visits to the Tottenham Hotspur Stadium and the Amex on the horizon, Manchester City are one game away from a much trickier run of fixtures, and Spurs are one game off what should be a pretty gentle string of matches, so bear all those in mind when considering which players to bring in or drop.

Injury updates, price changes and captain picks

There are quite a few important players with those horrible yellow flags next to their names this week – Bukayo Saka has been managing an Achilles issue and rumour has it he may be rested for the game against Bournemouth, James Maddison has apparently been unwell, and Sven Botman took a knock to the knee.

Come to that, Newcastle United are practically the walking wounded at this point – Harvey Barnes is out for the foreseeable future, while Alexander Isak, Callum Wilson, Dan Burn and Bruno Guimarães are all doubts to some degree.

Ben Chilwell, Dominic Solanke and Leon Bailey are marked down with the even-less-desirable orange flags, meaning there’s a big chance that they miss out, while Evan Ferguson is a doubt for Brighton too. Phew. Sufficed to say, almost every player in the game will have at least some stake in the managers’ pre-match press conferences on Friday, so make sure you keep across all the latest news before making your transfer decisions.

As for price changes, James Ward-Prowse (now £6.3m) and Matty Cash (£4.8m) are among the players on an upward curve who have already had their prices go up this week, while Nicolas Jackson’s tag (£6.9m) dropped before he netted the winner against Brighton in the EFL Cup. If he turns his form around, he has all-but guaranteed minutes so could be a possible bargain based on his performances for Villarreal last year. Given how Chelsea are playing, we’d hold fire for now.

Mohamed Salah’s price could go up by the time Saturday comes around, so if you’re thinking about a wildcard to bring the Liverpool man in (one of the better reasons to wildcard early, although we’d still advise waiting until December unless things are really bad), this could be the time. Aston Villa’s Moussa Diaby and the aforementioned Carlton Morris could go up too, although neither are certain.

As for fallers, the suspended Malo Gusto will likely shed some of his inflated fee very soon, and Ben Mee could drop again too. Luis Díaz (another future bargain?), Trent Alexander-Arnold and Richarlison also teeter towards a decrease.

Finally, it’s a trickier decision than usual as to who should get the captain’s armband this week, especially with fringe candidates like Saka and Maddison down as doubts. Most of the big teams are either away from home, playing a tougher game, or are Manchester United, not exactly a proven mark of quality at the moment.

The usual candidates like Mohamed Salah and Erling Haaland are absolutely great shouts, and we suspect the latter is simply the way to go as a matter of course – but if you want a wildcard shout, Jarrod Bowen and Anthony Gordon could be worth consideration, with the latter a player we have pegged as one to watch over the coming weeks given Newcastle’s fixtures and the unfortunate Barnes’ injury.

3 Added Minutes FC

Finally, we finish once again with a quick update on our own example team, the mighty 3 Added Minutes FC, who continue to generously not embarrass us and, following a meaty 91-point week, now sit just outside the top 13,000. Pretty good going, even if our decision to switch Maddison out for Bryan Mbeumo rather backfired for now.

The original plan had been to stand pat this week but we are getting tempted to switch Mbeumo out for Gordon and change things up a little – but ultimately, with a couple of yellow flags dangling worrying next to players, we’ll probably wait until the pressers before making any rash decisions.

That’s it for this week – best of luck to all of you, and may all of the Luton players you buy against our advice end up registering anyway.