Cast your minds back to 5th July. The game finally launched, all the prices were revealed and all anyone could talk about was how easy it was to make a team thanks to the insane value in defence. Trent at £7.5m? Robbo and Cancelo at £7m? James and Chilwell at £6m? “They’re making it too easy for us!” we cried. It seemed like ‘big at the back’ was primed for another good season.

Cut to GW3. This tweet from @FPLMate sums it up nicely:

It poses a bit of a conundrum for FPL managers. Players like Trent and Cancelo (and their respective teams) have performed consistently well for the last few seasons, so it wouldn’t be at all surprising to see their names at the top of the defender points chart at the end of this season. That doesn’t stop us having kittens over these kinds of performances in the short term though. Watching your premium defenders getting massively outscored by players costing £5m or less can get those knees feeling a bit jerky.

Let’s try and put a positive spin on this though. This is exactly the kind of template-busting gameweek that makes FPL so addictively frustrating and exciting in equal measure! Wildcards start flying, players that were considered essential in preseason are cast aside and we start to see a bit of diversification in people’s teams. Watching teams like Chelsea, City and Liverpool struggle in games that they were expected to breeze through certainly helps to shake things up. You realise that these teams aren’t invincible and that your attacking assets might have a chance of returning against them after all!

With all that said, how did I get on this week…

GW3 points: 55pts

Overall Rank: 1,356,117 -> 1,390,554

Feels Good Man

Captain Salah

I came into last night’s game against Man Utd with an OR of around 2 million, but I had absolutely no doubt in my mind that Liverpool were going to run riot. 80 mins of sweating later and Salah finally nicks a goal to spare me my blushes. Jesus was the most captained player this week, and I already felt pretty lucky that he only came away with an assist against Bournemouth. On another day, where Jesus hauls and Salah doesn’t score his lucky header, my gameweek could have looked vastly different.

Sanchez

In a world where so many managers were tempted by the Leicester £8m goalkeeper pairing, I feel so thankful to have good ol’ dependable Sanchez at the back. Brighton are currently sitting joint-3rd on NPxGA (2.8) and joint 1st on big chances allowed (2), which makes me feel good about having him as a set-and-forget for the foreseeable future.

Feels Bad Man

Chelsea Defence

I already had James and got Cucurella in on a -4 hit this GW. I figured they both looked fairly lively against Spurs and that we might start seeing more points hauls from Tuchel’s wingbacks. Unfortunately, Chelsea are looking far from defensively solid at the moment and James keeps finding himself at RCB, limiting his attacking potential. I was close to taking a punt on Perisic instead of Cucurella but figured the latter was more likely to start. Perisic of course went on to punish me with a 12 point haul.

Saka

Another GW where Saka goes invisible and Martinelli returns. Even with Arsenal’s continued run of good fixtures, it feels like transferring him out needs to be a priority at this point.

The Watchlist

Zaha (£7.1m)

Despite having a decent pre-season, the Palace talisman was largely overlooked when managers were making their first draft. Zaha’s good run of form continues with three goals and the highest xG (2.73) of any mid! While his upcoming fixtures are a bit of a mixed bag, I’ll be interested to see how he looks against City. If he can put a shift in, it will certainly broaden his appeal as a fixture-proof asset

Mitrovic (£6.6m)

Newly-promoted Fulham have looked a lot stronger than most people expected, and the big Serb up front has had a large part to play in that. He has bagged three goals already and his underlying stats are very similar to Haaland! His rough run of short-term fixtures (ars | BHA | tot | CHE) make him a risky buy right now, but he may well end up being a popular wildcard pick in a few weeks time.

Gündogan (£7.6m)

He seems to be playing in a similar role to KDB, but for a serious price discount. Apart from the aforementioned Belgian, he feels like the City mid to go for right now. With an eagerness to get in the box, I imagine he’ll be adding to his two goal tally sooner rather than later.

Stats taken from Fantasy Football Hub