Gameweek 7 gave this desk its best single call of the season and then handed us the bill for the rest of the page.
The good part first. We captained Erling Haaland and told you Manchester City would score three at home to Ipswich. City scored three, Haaland scored two of them, and he returned 13 points with maximum bonus — 26 with the armband. 724,286 managers played Triple Captain on him and collected 39. For scale: 88,051 managers triple-captained in Gameweek 6. The armband was the easiest decision of the autumn and, for once, the obvious thing was also the correct thing.
The other good part: we wrote that Brighton were the form team in the game and that their cheap spine was the value on the board. Brighton beat Crystal Palace 5-0. Eleven Brighton players returned five points or more.
And then the bill. The four transfers this desk actually recommended — Cherki, Semenyo, Gvardiol and João Pedro — cost £30.0m and returned three points between them. One played zero minutes. One lasted 13 before his knee went. One played 29. The fourth played 90 and did nothing.
Here is Gameweek 7, scored honestly.
The round in one number: 13 of the top 20 scorers cost £6.2m or less
| Player | Club | Pos | Price | GW7 pts | Owned |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Neto | CHE | MID | £6.5m | 15 | 2.5% |
| Haaland | MCI | FWD | £15.7m | 13 | 76.8% |
| Ayari | BHA | MID | £5.4m | 13 | 0.5% |
| Evanilson | BOU | FWD | £6.1m | 12 | 4.4% |
| Kostoulas | BHA | FWD | £5.7m | 12 | 9.8% |
| Iwobi | FUL | MID | £5.4m | 11 | 1.1% |
| Vuskovic | BHA | DEF | £5.1m | 11 | 5.6% |
| Manzambi | AVL | MID | £6.0m | 11 | 2.8% |
| Hato | CHE | DEF | £4.5m | 11 | 0.7% |
| Boscagli | BHA | DEF | £4.5m | 10 | 0.4% |
| Tavernier | BOU | MID | £6.2m | 10 | 9.3% |
| Marmoush | TOT | FWD | £7.0m | 9 | 2.0% |
| Foden | MCI | MID | £6.8m | 9 | 1.7% |
| Maddison | TOT | MID | £6.2m | 9 | 0.4% |
| Isak | LIV | FWD | £9.0m | 9 | 13.0% |
| Lewis-Potter | BRE | MID | £5.5m | 9 | 1.7% |
| Raya | ARS | GKP | £6.1m | 9 | 44.3% |
| Rice | ARS | MID | £7.3m | 9 | 11.2% |
| Konsa | ARS | DEF | £4.6m | 9 | 17.8% |
| Calvert-Lewin | LEE | FWD | £6.0m | 9 | 23.3% |
Only two of the round’s twenty best scores cost more than £7.5m: Haaland at £15.7m and Isak at £9.0m. Thirteen of the twenty cost £6.2m or less. The round’s single top score was a £6.5m Chelsea midfielder owned by one manager in forty.
The round averaged 59 points and the top score in the entire game was 122. That is a friendlier average than Gameweek 5’s 48 — but the shape of the scoring has not changed at all. The points are still at the cheap end, and the expensive end is still paying for last season’s reputation.
Brighton 5-0: the explosion we called, and the £5.4m midfielder nobody owned
We said Brighton were the form team in FPL and named their cheap assets as the value on the board. Palace arrived at the Amex and were dismantled 5-0. Look at what the Brighton squad returned:
| Player | Pos | Price | GW7 pts | Owned | Returns |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Ayari | MID | £5.4m | 13 | 0.5% | 1 goal, 1 assist, 2 bonus |
| Kostoulas | FWD | £5.7m | 12 | 9.8% | 1 goal, 1 assist, 3 bonus |
| Vuskovic | DEF | £5.1m | 11 | 5.6% | 1 assist, clean sheet |
| Boscagli | DEF | £4.5m | 10 | 0.4% | 1 assist, clean sheet, 1 bonus |
| Gómez | MID | £5.0m | 8 | 3.8% | Clean sheet |
| Verbruggen | GKP | £4.6m | 6 | 22.6% | Clean sheet |
| De Cuyper | DEF | £5.3m | 6 | 41.0% | Clean sheet |
| Dunk | DEF | £4.5m | 6 | 1.5% | Clean sheet |
| F.Kadıoğlu | DEF | £4.4m | 6 | 1.7% | Clean sheet |
| Hinshelwood | MID | £5.9m | 6 | 0.6% | 19 minutes off the bench |
| Groß | MID | £6.2m | 5 | 45.3% | 1 assist |
Ayari (£5.4m, 0.5% owned) was the round’s joint-second-highest scorer and almost nobody in the game owns him. Kostoulas — our named cheap route up front — returned 12 at 9.8%. Vuskovic, the differential this desk called “the pick of the table” a week ago, returned 11 and now sits on 51 points for the season at £5.1m, which is more than Gabriel has managed at £7.9m.
Brighton have now scored 23 goals in seven games, the most in the division, with a goal difference of +18. They are third. And the remarkable thing about the 5-0 is how flat the points distribution was: no Brighton player took maximum bonus in a five-goal win, because the returns were spread across ten different players. That is what a cheap, well-coached, set-piece-heavy side looks like in the new bonus system.
The caveat is immediate and it is in Gameweek 8: Brighton travel to Liverpool, a difficulty of 4. Own what you own. Do not add.
Rewinding the tape: our Gameweek 7 calls, scored
This desk did not publish a round-up for Gameweek 6, so the ledger below audits the Gameweek 7 picks article on its own — seventeen named buys, one captaincy call and four fades.
What we got right.
| Call | Player | GW7 pts | What happened |
|---|---|---|---|
| Captain | Haaland (£15.7m) | 13 (26 as C) | Two goals, three bonus, City scored the three we predicted |
| Form team | Brighton’s spine | — | 5-0, eleven players on five points or more |
| Cheap forward | Kostoulas (£5.7m) | 12 | Goal, assist, maximum bonus |
| Differential | Vuskovic (£5.1m) | 11 | Assist and a clean sheet at 5.6% owned |
| Sub-£7m midfield | Tavernier (£6.2m) | 10 | Scored in Bournemouth’s 2-0 win over Sunderland |
| Premium keeper | Raya (£6.1m) | 9 | Clean sheet at Forest, three bonus |
| Cheap keeper | Verbruggen (£4.6m) | 6 | Clean sheet in the 5-0 |
| Champions’ defence | Calafiori (£6.0m) | 6 | Clean sheet in Arsenal’s 1-0 win at Forest |
What we got wrong. This is the longer table, and it is the one that decided the week.
| Call | Player | GW7 pts | Minutes | What happened |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| “The City upgrade on any £6m midfielder” | Cherki (£8.0m, 37.8%) | 0 | 0 | Did not play in a 3-2 home win |
| “The cut-price version of the same fixture” | Semenyo (£8.3m, 12.3%) | 1 | 13 | Knee injury, unknown return date |
| “The City route at a difficulty of 2” | Gvardiol (£5.8m, 28.3%) | 0 | 29 | Hooked before the hour, no clean sheet |
| “The obvious second forward” | João Pedro (£7.9m, 72.8%) | 2 | 90 | Played the whole game, returned nothing |
| Cheap forward | Brobbey (£5.7m, 5.5%) | 0 | 0 | Hamstring, did not feature |
| United’s form carrier | Cunha (£7.9m, 6.7%) | 1 | 6 | Six minutes at Elland Road |
| City keeper | Donnarumma (£5.5m, 7.7%) | 1 | 90 | City conceded twice to Ipswich |
| Hull’s cheap mid | Belloumi (£5.2m, 9.1%) | 2 | 90 | Fulham won 1-0 |
| Cheap keeper | Tzolakis (£4.7m, 14.0%) | 3 | 90 | Hull lost at Fulham |
Seventeen named buys returned 75 points between them — an average of 4.4 in a round where the average manager scored 59, or roughly 5.4 per starting slot. Seven of the seventeen returned six or more. Ten returned five or fewer.
And the pattern inside the misses is not random. Five of them — Cherki, Gvardiol, Semenyo, Cunha and Brobbey — played 48 minutes between them and returned two points. The other five played full games and simply did not produce. That is the difference between a pick that is wrong about a player and a pick that is wrong about a team sheet, and the second kind is the kind you can actually avoid by reading the press conference.
Our seven hit buys averaged 85 minutes on the pitch. Our ten misses averaged 48, dragged down by five players who barely kicked a ball.
The fades we got wrong
We told you to shop Gabriel (£7.9m, 21.1% owned) out of your defence, on the reasoning that the rebuilt bonus system punishes centre-backs who earn their points from clearances and blocks. He kept a clean sheet at Nottingham Forest and returned 8 points — his second-best score of the season, behind the 9 he took in Gameweek 4. Arsenal have now conceded five goals in seven games. On the numbers this season, the fade was wrong.
We also flagged Calvert-Lewin (£6.0m, 23.3%) as “the most-owned forward nobody is talking about” ahead of a difficulty-4 trip to Elland Road, and implied he was not worth the trouble. He scored, took maximum bonus and returned 9. Two fades, 17 points between them, in the same article that recommended four players who barely featured.
The wider caution about Everton’s defence was right, at least: Everton lost 2-0 at home to Chelsea and Tarkowski (£6.2m, 18.4%) returned zero. And Emersonn, the Ipswich forward we said was walking into a difficulty of 5 at the Etihad, returned 2 — though Ipswich scored twice there, which is more than most sides will manage.
The blankers
| Player | Club | Pos | Price | GW7 pts | Owned | Note |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| João Pedro | CHE | FWD | £7.9m | 2 | 72.8% | 90 minutes, no return, in a 2-0 win |
| Rogers | CHE | MID | £8.0m | 2 | 48.0% | 90 minutes, no return |
| Cherki | MCI | MID | £8.0m | 0 | 37.8% | Zero minutes |
| B. Fernandes | MUN | MID | £11.8m | 1 | 29.2% | 1-1 draw at Leeds |
| Gvardiol | MCI | DEF | £5.8m | 0 | 28.3% | 29 minutes |
| Palmer | CHE | MID | £9.7m | 2 | 26.4% | 90 minutes, no return |
| Szoboszlai | LIV | MID | £6.8m | 1 | 19.2% | Hamstring, 31 minutes |
| Ødegaard | ARS | MID | £6.8m | 3 | 18.6% | Clean sheet only |
| Tarkowski | EVE | DEF | £6.2m | 0 | 18.4% | Everton lost 2-0 at home |
| Guéhi | MCI | DEF | £6.0m | 1 | 17.8% | City conceded twice |
| Saka | ARS | MID | £9.6m | 3 | 16.7% | Clean sheet only |
| Schade | BRE | MID | £6.2m | 0 | 14.0% | 45 minutes |
| Semenyo | MCI | MID | £8.3m | 1 | 12.3% | Knee, 13 minutes |
| Gibbs-White | NFO | MID | £7.9m | 0 | 11.4% | Did not play |
Read Chelsea’s column and then read the top of the other one. Chelsea won 2-0 at Everton, kept a clean sheet, and the three most-owned Chelsea attackers — João Pedro, Rogers and Palmer, 147% of ownership between them — returned six points collectively. The man who scored both goals, Neto (£6.5m, 2.5% owned), returned 15 — nine more than those three combined. In a victory where the template attackers did nothing, the cheapest attacker on the pitch took everything.
That is Gameweek 7 in a single club. It is also the third time this season the desk has had to write the same sentence: ownership is not information, and price is not a plan.
The week’s best XI cost £71.1m
Raya (9); Konsa (9), Vuskovic (11), Hato (11); Neto (15), Ayari (13), Iwobi (11), Manzambi (11); Haaland (13), Evanilson (12), Kostoulas (12).
127 points. £71.1m. A legal 3-4-3 with no more than three players from any one club, and it would have beaten the top score in the entire game — 122 — without even counting a captain.
Eight of those eleven are owned by fewer than 10% of managers. Only Raya (44.3%) and Haaland (76.8%) are template assets, and Haaland is on the list because he is the one premium in the game who still justifies his price: 58 points, eight goals, 8.3 points per match.
The other £28.9m of your budget buys you nothing this week. That is not a slogan, it is the arithmetic of the round.
Where that leaves the league
| # | Team | P | W | D | L | GF | GA | GD | Pts |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Man City | 7 | 7 | 0 | 0 | 19 | 7 | +12 | 21 |
| 2 | Arsenal | 7 | 6 | 0 | 1 | 11 | 5 | +6 | 18 |
| 3 | Brighton | 7 | 5 | 1 | 1 | 23 | 5 | +18 | 16 |
| 4 | Chelsea | 7 | 4 | 1 | 2 | 17 | 13 | +4 | 13 |
| 5 | Liverpool | 7 | 3 | 3 | 1 | 9 | 8 | +1 | 12 |
| 6 | Brentford | 7 | 2 | 4 | 1 | 13 | 8 | +5 | 10 |
| 7 | Leeds | 7 | 2 | 4 | 1 | 9 | 6 | +3 | 10 |
| 8 | Everton | 7 | 2 | 4 | 1 | 8 | 7 | +1 | 10 |
| 9 | Hull City | 7 | 2 | 3 | 2 | 8 | 7 | +1 | 9 |
| 10 | Ipswich Town | 7 | 3 | 0 | 4 | 11 | 15 | −4 | 9 |
| 11 | Newcastle | 7 | 2 | 2 | 3 | 10 | 14 | −4 | 8 |
| 12 | Aston Villa | 7 | 2 | 2 | 3 | 7 | 11 | −4 | 8 |
| 13 | Man Utd | 7 | 1 | 4 | 2 | 10 | 10 | 0 | 7 |
| 14 | Crystal Palace | 7 | 2 | 1 | 4 | 9 | 17 | −8 | 7 |
| 15 | Bournemouth | 7 | 1 | 3 | 3 | 9 | 13 | −4 | 6 |
| 16 | Spurs | 7 | 1 | 3 | 3 | 6 | 10 | −4 | 6 |
| 17 | Coventry City | 7 | 2 | 0 | 5 | 6 | 14 | −8 | 6 |
| 18 | Fulham | 7 | 1 | 2 | 4 | 7 | 10 | −3 | 5 |
| 19 | Nott’m Forest | 7 | 1 | 2 | 4 | 5 | 9 | −4 | 5 |
| 20 | Sunderland | 7 | 1 | 1 | 5 | 6 | 14 | −8 | 4 |
City have won all seven, but they have now conceded twice at home to the bottom-half Ipswich and their clean-sheet premium has stopped paying: Donnarumma returned 1, Guéhi 1, O’Reilly 2. Arsenal have conceded five in seven — joint-best in the league with Brighton — and are quietly the most reliable defence in the game. Brighton have the best goal difference in the division by six clear goals. And Coventry, the side whose cheap defenders won Gameweek 5 for anyone who ignored us, are 17th with the joint-worst goal difference in the league — which is the honest argument for treating one 35-point afternoon as variance rather than a template.
Gameweek 8: hold, sell, and bring in
The deadline is Friday 23 October, 17:30 UTC — the early fixture is Ipswich against Forest at 19:00 the same evening, so there is no Saturday morning to think in.
Hold — do not sell into Gameweek 8:
| Player | Why hold |
|---|---|
| Haaland (£15.7m, MCI) | Eight goals, 58 points, and he scored twice again. City go to Villa (3) — the hardest of their next four — but you do not sell a man averaging 8.3 points a match on a difficulty of 3. |
| João Pedro (£7.9m, CHE) | Two points at 72.8% ownership is a bad afternoon, not a bad player: 47 season points, five goals, three assists. Chelsea host Spurs (2) — the softest fixture of the round. |
| Chelsea’s midfield | Rogers and Palmer returned two each in a 2-0 win. The same fixture — Spurs at home — is a difficulty of 2 and Spurs have conceded 10 in seven. Hold both. |
| Raya (£6.1m, ARS) | Nine points, clean sheet, and Everton at home (3) next. The best defence in the league against a side that has scored eight goals in seven. |
| Brighton’s assets | Own them, don’t add them. Liverpool away (4) is the fixture that ends the run, and Vuskovic, De Cuyper and Kostoulas have all made you money. |
| Tzolakis (£4.7m, HUL) | Three points but a home game with Brentford (3). There is no better £4.7m keeper on the board. |
Sell — genuine transfer-out candidates:
| Player | Why sell |
|---|---|
| Cherki (£8.0m, 37.8%) | Zero minutes in a home win over Ipswich. Whatever the reason, an £8.0m midfielder who cannot get on the pitch in the easiest fixture of the season is £8.0m you cannot spend. |
| Semenyo (£8.3m, 12.3%) | Knee injury, unknown return date, 13 minutes and one point. The price is still £8.3m because the season was good; the season from here is uncertain. |
| Gvardiol (£5.8m, 28.3%) | 29 minutes, zero points, and City have conceded five goals across their last three games. The clean-sheet premium was the whole investment case. |
| B. Fernandes (£11.8m, 29.2%) | One point at Leeds. He has now produced 2, 23, 2, 2, 1 across his last five — a £11.8m asset with a £5m floor and a coin-flip ceiling. United host Bournemouth (3), which is not the problem. The price is. |
| Tarkowski (£6.2m, 18.4%) | Zero points, and Everton go to Arsenal (5) — the hardest fixture on the board for a centre-back. |
| Szoboszlai (£6.8m, 19.2%) | Hamstring, unknown return, 31 minutes. |
Bring in — the shortlist for Gameweek 8:
- Neto (CHE, £6.5m, 2.5%) — the round’s top scorer at 15 points, in a side that hosts Spurs at a difficulty of 2. The Chelsea attack is the best-priced route into the softest fixture of the week and he is the cheapest way in.
- Hato (CHE, £4.5m, 0.7%) — an £4.5m defender who assisted and kept a clean sheet at Everton, in the same soft home fixture. Bench money with a real case.
- Iwobi (FUL, £5.4m, 1.1%) — scored and kept a clean sheet in Fulham’s 1-0 win, and Fulham go to Coventry (2), who have conceded 14 in seven.
- Lewis-Potter (BRE, £5.5m, 1.7%) — nine points, and Brentford travel to Hull (2), a promoted side that has scored eight.
- Evanilson (BOU, £6.1m, 4.4%) — 12 points at the weekend after 7 the week before, and Bournemouth’s most consistent attacking outlet. Bournemouth go to Old Trafford (4), so this is a two-week buy, not a one-week punt.
- Isak (LIV, £9.0m, 13.0%) — nine points, and Liverpool host Brighton (3). If you are selling Fernandes and want the money spent on a forward rather than a midfielder, this is the upgrade.
One to watch rather than buy: Gabriel (£7.9m, 21.1%). We faded him and he returned eight with a clean sheet, and Arsenal’s defensive record is the best in the league. If you sold him on our advice, the honest instruction is not to panic-buy him back at £7.9m — but do not fade Arsenal’s defence as a unit. Raya and Calafiori are the cheaper way to own the same clean sheets, and Konsa at £4.6m is the cheapest of Arsenal’s defenders.
The lesson: minutes are the price of a pick
The desk has spent this season arguing that cheap beats expensive. Gameweek 7 did not change that — thirteen of the top twenty scorers cost £6.2m or less, and the best possible eleven cost £71.1m and beat the highest score in the game.
But Gameweek 7 did expose the flaw in how we have been applying it. We bought the thesis and not the team sheet. Cherki was a good idea for a City midfield that creates chances; he was not on the pitch. Gvardiol was a good idea for a City clean sheet that never came. Semenyo was the best-value midfielder in the game until his knee gave out in the thirteenth minute. None of those were bad analysis. All three were bad verification, and verification is free — it is the press conference, the injury flag, and the confirmation that a player is actually in the manager’s plans.
The £5.4m names who scored 13 this week — Ayari, Iwobi at £5.4m, Hato at £4.5m, Boscagli at £4.5m — were not cleverer picks than Cherki. They were picks whose players were on the grass.
So the rule going forward is a qualification on everything else in this article: a cheap player at a soft fixture is the edge, but only if he starts. Check the minutes column before you check the fixture column. It is the cheapest filter in the game and it is the one this desk got wrong four times in a single week.
Bottom line
Gameweek 7 paid the armband, paid the Brighton call, and punished the buy list. Haaland returned 26 as captain for the 724,286 managers who triple-captained him; Brighton returned 5-0 for anyone who followed us into their cheap spine; and the four transfers we actually recommended returned three points for £30.0m.
That is the ledger, and it cuts both ways. The structural read — cheap, starting, set-piece-involved players at soft fixtures — was right for the fifth time in seven weeks. The execution was careless, because we recommended three players who did not play.
Gameweek 8 is a Friday deadline, Chelsea host Spurs at a difficulty of 2, and the cheapest way into that fixture is a £6.5m midfielder owned by 2.5% of the game. Start there. Then check the team sheet.
That’s the way the commentary desk calls it — and this week, the bill came with it.
Methodology & credit: All results, player points, minutes, bonus points, BPS, prices, ownership figures, injury flags and fixture difficulties are taken from the official FPL API (bootstrap-static, fixtures and event/7/live endpoints), snapshot 20 October 2026, after the Gameweek 7 scoring lockdown. The league table is computed from official fixture results across Gameweeks 1–7, not from the API’s team records. Fixture difficulties are the official FPL 1-5 team values for Gameweek 8. The best XI is a legal 3-4-3 with a maximum of three players per club, selected on Gameweek 7 points only, with no captain. Chip usage, the round’s average score and its top score come from bootstrap-static events[]; 11,138,474 managers are registered in the game. No price, ownership figure or injury flag in this article is estimated. This is editorial analysis, not a guarantee — verify prices and press conferences before you transfer, because both move.