Fantasy Premier League Gameweek 4: tips, captain picks and why it's time to sell Arsenal's Bukayo Saka

The international break is finally done and dusted, so it’s time to welcome you all back to our weekly Fantasy Premier League advice column – and with Gameweek 4 looming on the horizon, we’re going to take a look at how to handle your transfers over the next few weeks with some big fixture difficulty changes in the near future.

Before I crack on, remember that the first game of the weekend is a Saturday lunchtime showdown between Southampton and Manchester United, and that means that your transfer deadline is 11:00 BST on 14 September. Don’t forget!

Time to sell Saka?

Regardless of what decisions you’ve made so far this season – good or bad – the single biggest factor influencing your transfers over the coming fortnight should be the big fixture difficulty flip heading our way in GW6, and specifically whether or not you decide to play your wildcard.

For a while now, FPL pundits have been looking at week six as a crunch point, with several team’s games quickly becoming easier or harder on paper. Liverpool, for instance, go from hosting Nottingham Forest and Bournemouth to away games at Wolves and Crystal Palace before they travel to Arsenal. The Gunners, meanwhile, put away trips to Tottenham Hotspur and Manchester City aside and get back-to-back home games against newly-promoted teams.

Manchester City themselves getting easier games, as do West Ham United, and so on. As a result, many are looking at week six as the perfect time to either wildcard or spend a large number of saved transfers – a chance to iron out the kinks in your initial team selection while adjusting to the fixtures at hand. But is that the right way to go?

Generally speaking, holding wildcards for as long as possible has generally been a sound FPL strategy, but the new rules this season, which allow for transfers to roll over in greater volume, mean that the cost of burning a wildcard is somewhat reduced. That doesn’t mean it’s a decision to take lightly, however.

It’s also worth thinking about whether the week six changes are so great that they now demand a wildcard. Liverpool’s fixtures, for instance, don’t flip that hard. Moving Diogo Jota to Jarrod Bowen looked like an easy change for a lot of teams at first glance, but is Wolves and Crystal Palace away really so tough on current form? West Ham, meanwhile, playing Ipswich Town at home and have good long-term fixtures, but a trip to Spurs is in there in GW7.

My take, for now, is that unless you need to make really sweeping structural changes to your team to make it viable, there’s actually a bigger shake-up in GW9 – that’s when Arsenal run into some really tough games after theoretically easy ones, Brighton and Newcastle’s fixtures get much trickier, West Ham and Wolves’ really ease off, and so on. Right now, my take is that GW9 is a better time to wildcard if you can hold off for now.

But there are still more immediate decisions to be made based on what you’re doing for these forthcoming break points in the fixture list. For instance, Arsenal have been good so far but face tough trips to Spurs and Manchester City, the latter of which was a low-scoring affair last season. So should you jettison your Arsenal players now?

If you’re wildcarding in GW6, then almost certainly. Bukayo Saka’s likely hauls drop considerably over the next two weeks, Martin Ødegaard may not be fit anyway, and while the Gunners did keep two clean sheets against Pep Guardiola’s City last season that’s hardly a guarantee that the likes of Ben White and William Saliba will be worth six points again. Selling to sign players with easier games before buying back in for week six is a smart move.

And even if you’re not wildcarding, I’d move Saka for someone like Cole Palmer if finances allow it. Saka has shifted up to £10.1m, which means that as it stands you can only sell and buy him back at a loss, but with a lot of player selling him this week there is a very good chance that his price drops back again, making the move more or less ‘free’. If you finagle your transfers to get Mohamed Salah in, even better – Liverpool’s next two games are very tempting targets.

I’d be in less of a hurry to move defenders on, as they may well keep another clean sheet in there anyway and unless you’re buying into Trent Alexander-Arnold, say, the points ceiling on short-term defender transfers is usually quite low. If you’re wildcarding GW6, however, it’s still a solid plan, but I’d advise hanging fire if you plan to keep your wildcard, whether that’s for GW9 or later still.

Having mentioned Bowen earlier, he’s another player I like quite a lot right now. He’s a reliable returner who may be slightly underpriced and while the Hammers’ fixtures aren’t necessarily super-soft in the next four or five weeks, they aren’t playing any defences which have proven to be all that impenetrable. If moves for Palmer or Salah are off the menu for price reasons, then Saka to Bowen could enable switching Saliba to Alexander-Arnold, for instance, for the short-term gains.

The key is to make sure that, however you do it and whether or not you plan to use chips, you’re in a position to max out on Arsenal players between weeks six and eight. If you can’t see a path back to Saka, for instance, if his price holds at £10.1m, then just hold him. He’s still Bukayo Saka, and may well score goals in the tough games.

For this week, the other big decision to make is over your captain – and it’s really a straight choice between Salah (Forest at home) and Erling Haaland (Brentford at the Etihad). Most players only have one or the other and probably shouldn’t overthink their play. If you have both, then on current form I can’t look past Haaland. Two hat-tricks on the bounce tells its own tale.

3 Added Minutes FC

It’s time for a quick check-in on my example team, 3 Added Minutes FC, so you can see where I am and what my plans are. I toyed with switching Saka to Palmer last week but decided to ride it out and get another week’s info, a decision I have no real reason to regret, although I did have quite a few blanks this time around. Thank God for that big blond Norwegian bloke with the armband, who single-handedly hauled me up to a very solid 70 points.

One thing missing from the screenshot (blame the formatting on the website, sorry!) is my bench, which still contains Dominic Solanke, Jarell Quansah (ugh) and Marc Guéhi, the latter two of which I am strongly regretting and need to find ways to move on from – but I think I’m holding for one more week, in case Quansah gets a recall, and because Crystal Palace’s home game against Leicester City makes him a solid inclusion in the first team.

If I do switch things around then, I don’t want to burn too many of my three free transfers so that I’m able to fix my defence soon, which may well require quite a lot of players to be shuffled about. I’ll consider selling Saka to sign Palmer with a corresponding move to free up the necessary funds, but if I can’t find a deal I like then I may go Saka to Bowen and roll the money over to give me wiggle room the following week, or to upgrade Morgan Rogers, who passes the eye test with ease but doesn’t seem to score points.

Anyway, that’s it for this week – I’ll be back ahead of Gameweek 5 but until then, best of luck and may those of you that do sell Saka not get burned too hard.