Fantasy Premier League: Gameweek 8 hints and transfer tips before Liverpool take on Chelsea
Our resident FPL expert returns with his hints and tips and explains why you probably shouldn’t sell Bukayo Saka ahead of Gameweek 8.
We made it – another international break is in the books and, more importantly, the rear-view mirror, and now we can get back to worrying about more important matters. Like our Fantasy Premier League teams.
Yes, Gameweek 8 is finally here, and as 3 Added Minutes’ resident FPL expert (and owner of a Top 2,000 worldwide finish from last season) I’m here to offer up some hints and tips for the week – and some notes on the subtle art of doing absolutely nothing with your team, which may well be relevant as we head towards Saturday’s 11:00 BST deadline. Let’s crack on…
When the easy way is the best way
One of the biggest changes to FPL this season was, of course, the ability to roll more than two free transfer over from week to week. That created a big shift in the dynamics of the ways we play the game – and a lot of players still don’t seem to have got the memo. We simply don’t need to do anything every week any more.
That’s a relevant statement ahead of GW8 for two reasons. Firstly, a couple of important players like Bukayo Saka are injury doubts, and that’s making a lot of players second guess whether they should trade them in for the likes of a Cole Palmer. Secondly, because this is one of those occasional weeks where there are relatively few big shifts in fixture difficulty – and others coming up which could well be more important for your team.
In previous years, a lot of us would be compelled to use or lose a free transfer in this situation, as is the case with my example team (which we’ll get to a little later), and judging by the volume of price changes still occurring, quite a few players haven’t got the message that we simply don’t need to make knee-jerk changes anymore. More than that – we almost certainly shouldn’t.
Allowing us to roll over more transfers means their value goes up. It’s now easier to save them up and orchestrate wider changes to our team, making three or four at a time to allow us to, for instance, completely rethink which premium players we have in our team down the line, something which used to sometimes require us to go a week with a ton of dead money sat in our bank account while we waited to make our move a week later – or face up to a painful -4 or -8. Those days are gone, at least so long as we keep transfers back whenever possible. Frankly, paying four for an extra transfer isn’t something we should ever have to do again outside of freak injury crises.
So for anyone who has Saka right now, the answer as to whether you should sell him or not while that scary yellow triangle sits next to his name is almost certainly ‘no’ – at least, not until Mikel Arteta tells us that he’s out for a few weeks, not that the Spaniard is particularly open or honest with injury news. If you make that move when you didn’t have to, you open yourself up to a tricky situation if a key player gets crocked or sent off in the next week or two. If, say, Erling Haaland suddenly goes down with a serious injury, then you will want as many transfers as possible to be able to make the appropriate changes without sitting on a ton of cash for no gain.
That doesn’t mean that we should never make transfers, of course, but the reasoning needs to be a little better than it used to be, and the best reason to make changes is to catch currents of form and fixture difficulty as they pass – and this week sees relatively few teams clearly slide into a more challenging run, with only Chelsea and Liverpool really drifting towards tougher fixtures, starting with a game against each other.
So if you have a player you want to move on from either of those sides, then that’s a reasonable plan. If you think it’s time to trade Luis Díaz in, you have the beginning of a perfectly reasonable plan at hand. If your only consideration is selling Saka, then better to hold fire – partly because he’s one of the most reliable week-in, week-out points scorers in the game, and partly because Arsenal’s fixtures get considerably tougher for a few weeks from GW9. Although we’d probably want to lose a defender or two before we sold Saka.
Those are the kind of changes of fixture difficulty we want to save transfers up for. Arsenal’s games get tougher in GW9 when Newcastle United find themselves with a couple of harder games, Aston Villa run into a trickier spell from GW10 while West Ham United’s get easier, and so on.
The importance of any given change in fixture difficulty – which go hand in hand with players’ form – will depend on the make-up of your team. If you happen to have a ton of Chelsea and Liverpool players, then this week is very important and a sensible time to start making moves. If, like me, your team has triple Arsenal and a sprinkling of Villa, then best to wait a week to start shipping players out.
That’s the kind of forward planning which goes into a successful season anyway, of course, but as transfers become more valuable and more important, my advice is to err on the side of caution and avoid making the kind of impulsive and instinctive transfers that were almost compulsory in previous seasons. Patience is going to be rewarded much more often now.
Captain picks and 3 Added Minutes FC
This is one of those weeks where there genuinely isn’t a clear-cut captaincy choice. Erling Haaland has blanked twice on the bounce and plays away, albeit against the bottom side. Mohamed Salah has a relatively tough game, as does Cole Palmer, not least because they’re up against each other. Saka may or may not be fit.
All things taken into consideration, however, it’s really hard to look past Haaland. Two blanks doesn’t beget a third, and Wolverhampton Wanderers, while probably better than their league position suggests, aren’t having an easy ride right now. And when in doubt, always go with Haaland. He and Palmer and the two highest-scoring players in the game, but the Chelsea man tends to score in big bursts while the big blonde Norwegian death robot is Mr. Consistent. He’s always a safe and smart choice.
Finally, as always, it’s time for a quick check-in on my example team, which had a frustrating start to the season but had a solid GW7, picking up a respectable and above-average 54 points. Sadly, I’m still way down in the three millions in terms of position, but I feel I’ve corrected a lot of the mistakes I made in earlier weeks and I like where I’m at right now.
The plan is to make no changes this week, although I may well be forced to if Matz Sels turns out to be properly injured. If Saka is definitely not going to play a full part, I’ll trade him out too, but I’d rather avoid any moves – as it stands, I have three free transfers and I will want to drop at least one and perhaps both Arsenal defenders next week, and maybe Ollie Watkins as well. The more transfers I can hang on to, the happier I’ll be, so if I can stand still, I will, and hopefully my only meaningful choice will be between Emile Smith Rowe and Morgan Rogers to start. I’m leaning towards the former. Just.
That’s all for this week – best of luck in Gameweek 8 and may all of you who do nothing be rewarded for it. If only that worked in life more broadly…