Four under-the-radar new signings to watch out for in the FPL – including Chelsea & Manchester City gems

One of the trickiest parts of building a team for a brand new Fantasy Premier League season is that it’s almost impossible to know how all of the new signings will get on. Some will flourish, others will flop, and an impressive scoring record in Belgium doesn’t always turn out to be a useful data point.

A few big names are already flying into teams, of course, and the lure of players such as Viktor Gyökeres and Florian Wirtz is going to be hard to ignore – but there are plenty of other new faces arriving on these shores a little further under the radar.

As 3 Added Minutes’ FPL expert, I’ve taken it upon myself to pick out four players that probably won’t be in my starting squad but who will certainly be on my watchlist. The odds are that some of these guys end up being serious good, cheap buys down the line – and they could be worth a gamble before you click submit next Friday.

Rayan Cherki – Manchester City

Manchester City bought the former Lyon winger for a fee that could rise to more that £35m, so it’s fair to assume that Pep Guardiola thinks that Cherki can make an instant impact at the Etihad – 12 goals and 20 assists in 44 matches last season in France suggests he may well be right.

Cherki is more than just a flair player with some fancy tricks, and he creates a huge number of chances while outscoring his expected goals himself. If he emerges from Guardiola’s infamous rotation system as a regular starter, he could be FPL gold dust at just £6.5m. He may well have the highest ceiling of any player at that price point.

Of course, few players get 90 minutes every week for City, and therein lies the element of risk. Cherki played in all four of City’s games at the Club World Cup, scoring once and providing an assist, but he only started one of those matches and was otherwise restricted to cameos. For that reason, I’m keeping an eye on him rather than throwing him straight in, but there is every chance that the Frenchman proves to be a serious bargain.

Jhon Arias – Wolves

Signed from Fluminense for £15m, the 27-year-old Colombia international Arias arrives at the Molineux as Matheus Cunha’s replacement and with an impressively consistent scoring record.

Arias hit the back of the net seven times in the league for Fluminense for three consecutive seasons, and added a total of 20 assists between 2022 and 2024 on top of that. His form this year wasn’t quite as impressive, but he did score on his ‘debut’ against Girona in a pre-season friendly.

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His stats from Brazil don’t suggest an FPL superstar in the making per se, but a price tag of just £5.5m (as a midfielder) means that he could be an excellent budget enabler during good runs of fixtures, and if Wolves continue their impressive forward progress under Vitor Pereira then he could well be in the mix as a useful FPL asset who can keep the score ticking over while freeing up funds to spend on the Cole Palmers and Bukayo Sakas of the world.

Jorrel Hato – Chelsea

When Hato first signed for Chelsea, I didn’t really think of him much in FPL terms, and a starting price of £5.0m for a player who was expected to rotate with Marc Cucurella didn’t appeal – but a serious injury to Levi Colwill, who will miss most or all of the coming season thanks to a ruptured ACL, could change things.

Hato played most of last season as a left-back at Ajax and it can be assumed that Chelsea signed him to play there, but prior to the 2024/25 campaign he played more frequently at centre-back than he did on the left and is more than proficient there. With Colwill out and the immediately obvious replacements hardly at the top of Enzo Maresca’s list of favourites, Hato could get fast-tracked towards regular starts.

Of course, maybe those minutes go to Wesley Fofana or Tosin Adarabioyo, both of whom are priced at £4.5m and – based on Hato’s stats at Ajax – may be more likely to pick up bonus defensive contribution points. With little certainty over who starts, I doubt I’ll consider putting Hato in my starting side, but he’s been a solid contributor of goals and assists in the Eredivisie, has a ton of talent, and could easily be a regular starter in a defence that will get clean sheets when the fixture difficulty is low. The way Chelsea line up post-Colwill could be worth keeping an eye on.

Thierno Barry – Everton

Everton signed Thierno Barry from Villarreal for a hefty £27m and didn’t do so to keep him on the bench behind Beto – and while it’s anyone’s guess as to which of the pair will become David Moyes’ first choice up front, Barry’s £6.0m price tag and record in Spain could make him a very appealing buy if he establishes himself.

The 22-year-old’s game has its flaws but he gets the ball in the back of the net – 11 times in La Liga last season, with four assists. Those aren’t earth-shattering numbers in FPL terms, and Everton aren’t historically noted for their ability to provide vast numbers of chances to their forwards, but at Barry’s price point there that kind of scoring volume could easily be enough to make him the budget enabler up front.

Another interesting data point is that Moyes has publicly criticised Beto in the past week, telling the media that he had been “a bit disappointed” with the forward and that Everton were “hoping to get a bit more from him”. It sound as though Barry could well have a chance of becoming the starter quite quickly.