Deadline: Friday 21 August, 18:30 BST. Arsenal v Coventry kicks off ninety minutes later.
This is the first of a weekly series that runs to May. Every gameweek, three days out: the fixtures and how hard they are, the model's highest-projected player in each position, the captain call, and the best value on the board. From Gameweek 2 it also opens with what we got wrong the week before, because a model that doesn't publish its misses isn't telling you anything.
If you haven't built a squad yet, start with the GW1 draft piece — two full fifteens, one with Haaland and one without, and the exact cost of that decision. This page assumes you already have eleven names and are deciding who plays.
The fixtures
Difficulty is FPL's own rating, 1 (easiest) to 5 (hardest), from each side's point of view.
| Kick-off (BST) | Home | Away | ||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Fri 21, 20:00 | Arsenal | 2 | Coventry | 5 |
| Sat 22, 12:30 | Hull | 4 | Man Utd | 2 |
| Sat 22, 15:00 | Ipswich | 2 | Sunderland | 2 |
| Sat 22, 15:00 | Nott'm Forest | 2 | Leeds | 3 |
| Sat 22, 15:00 | Everton | 3 | Crystal Palace | 3 |
| Sat 22, 17:30 | Brentford | 3 | Tottenham | 3 |
| Sun 23, 14:00 | Brighton | 3 | Aston Villa | 3 |
| Sun 23, 14:00 | Man City | 3 | Bournemouth | 5 |
| Sun 23, 16:30 | Newcastle | 4 | Liverpool | 3 |
| Mon 24, 20:00 | Fulham | 4 | Chelsea | 3 |
Three sides open against a promoted club: Arsenal host Coventry, Man Utd go to Hull, Sunderland go to Ipswich. That is where most of the model's optimism sits, and it's also the weakest part of it — see the caveat at the bottom.
One thing to plan around: Chelsea don't play until Monday night. If you captain a Chelsea player and he's benched, you can't react.
The captain call
Bruno Fernandes. The model projects him at 8.3 points in Gameweek 1, comfortably clear of everyone else, and Man Utd travel to Hull with a difficulty rating of 2.
| Player | Pos | Club | Price | Owned | GW1 projection |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Bruno Fernandes | MID | MUN | £12.0m | 48.8% | 8.3 |
| Gabriel | DEF | ARS | £8.0m | 28.7% | 6.7 |
| Bruno Guimarães | MID | ARS | £7.0m | 9.1% | 6.7 |
| Erling Haaland | FWD | MCI | £15.5m | 70.9% | 6.6 |
| Igor Thiago | FWD | BRE | £8.0m | 17.5% | 5.9 |
| Bryan Mbeumo | MID | MUN | £8.0m | 30.2% | 5.9 |
Haaland is fourth here, which will read as heresy in a week where seven in ten managers own him. It isn't a call to sell — the model has him second-highest of any player over the next eight gameweeks. It's a call about this week: City host Bournemouth, Fernandes gets Hull away, and the gap is 1.7 points.
Our squad model captains Fernandes in seven of the next eight weeks. Haaland's turn comes in Gameweek 3.
Highest projected in each position
Not a squad — you already have one. This is who the model would want in your eleven this week.
Goalkeepers
| Player | Club | Price | Owned | GW1 |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Robin Roefs | SUN | £5.0m | 4.8% | 4.3 |
| Jordan Pickford | EVE | £5.5m | 8.6% | 4.2 |
| Caoimhín Kelleher | BRE | £5.0m | 5.9% | 4.2 |
| Senne Lammens | MUN | £5.0m | 18.5% | 4.1 |
| Matz Sels | NFO | £5.0m | 1.6% | 4.0 |
The whole top five sits inside 0.3 points. If you own any of them, play him and think about something else.
Defenders
| Player | Club | Price | Owned | GW1 |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Gabriel | ARS | £8.0m | 28.7% | 6.7 |
| James Tarkowski | EVE | £6.0m | 9.5% | 5.3 |
| Michael Keane | EVE | £5.0m | 1.7% | 5.0 |
| Marc Guéhi | MCI | £6.0m | 20.4% | 4.8 |
| Nathan Collins | BRE | £5.5m | 2.0% | 4.7 |
Gabriel is the single biggest projection at the back and it's not close — Arsenal at home to a promoted side.
Midfielders
| Player | Club | Price | Owned | GW1 |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Bruno Fernandes | MUN | £12.0m | 48.8% | 8.3 |
| Bruno Guimarães | ARS | £7.0m | 9.1% | 6.7 |
| Bryan Mbeumo | MUN | £8.0m | 30.2% | 5.9 |
| Antoine Semenyo | MCI | £8.5m | 26.6% | 5.3 |
| Bukayo Saka | ARS | £9.5m | 9.8% | 5.3 |
Forwards
| Player | Club | Price | Owned | GW1 |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Erling Haaland | MCI | £15.5m | 70.9% | 6.6 |
| Igor Thiago | BRE | £8.0m | 17.5% | 5.9 |
| Viktor Gyökeres | ARS | £7.5m | 11.1% | 4.6 |
| Dominic Calvert-Lewin | LEE | £6.0m | 27.0% | 4.3 |
| William Osula | NEW | £6.0m | 1.1% | 4.3 |
Best value on the board
Projected points per £million, for anyone the model has at 3.0 points or more this week.
| Player | Pos | Club | Price | Owned | GW1 | Per £m |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Michael Keane | DEF | EVE | £5.0m | 1.7% | 5.0 | 1.00 |
| Bruno Guimarães | MID | ARS | £7.0m | 9.1% | 6.7 | 0.96 |
| Harry Maguire | DEF | MUN | £5.0m | 12.1% | 4.6 | 0.92 |
| Malick Thiaw | DEF | NEW | £5.0m | 1.9% | 4.5 | 0.89 |
| Vitalii Mykolenko | DEF | EVE | £4.5m | 1.4% | 4.0 | 0.88 |
| James Tarkowski | DEF | EVE | £6.0m | 9.5% | 5.3 | 0.88 |
| Bart Verbruggen | GKP | BHA | £4.5m | 18.8% | 3.9 | 0.87 |
| Robin Roefs | GKP | SUN | £5.0m | 4.8% | 4.3 | 0.86 |
Everton dominate this table and it's worth knowing why: they host Crystal Palace, both sides rate a 3, and Everton's cheap defence carries a real clean-sheet projection at £4.5–6.0m. Keane at 1.7% ownership is the standout — a top-five defender projection at a price nobody is paying.
Differentials
Under 5% owned, ranked by the next five gameweeks rather than one — a differential you buy for a single week is a coin toss.
| Player | Pos | Club | Price | Owned | GW1 | GW1–5 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Marcus Tavernier | MID | BOU | £6.0m | 1.8% | 3.9 | 24.5 |
| Cody Gakpo | MID | LIV | £7.0m | 3.6% | 4.5 | 24.0 |
| Malick Thiaw | DEF | NEW | £5.0m | 1.9% | 4.5 | 23.6 |
| Dango Ouattara | MID | BRE | £6.5m | 1.4% | 5.0 | 23.1 |
| Michael Keane | DEF | EVE | £5.0m | 1.7% | 5.0 | 22.5 |
| Kiernan Dewsbury-Hall | MID | EVE | £6.5m | 3.5% | 4.5 | 21.9 |
| Sven Botman | DEF | NEW | £5.0m | 0.4% | 4.1 | 21.9 |
| Kevin Schade | MID | BRE | £6.0m | 3.1% | 4.7 | 21.4 |
More of these on the Differentials page, which updates daily.
Who's flagged
Only three players owned by more than 2% of managers carry an injury flag going into the deadline, and all three are rated 75% likely to play:
| Player | Club | Owned | Note |
|---|---|---|---|
| Ryan Yates | NFO | 6.1% | Unspecified injury |
| Matheus Nunes | MCI | 3.3% | Knock |
| Nordi Mukiele | SUN | 2.9% | Knock |
That is unusually quiet for a Gameweek 1. Check again on Friday morning — press conferences land Thursday and Friday, and this list is only as fresh as the last refresh.
What this is, and what it isn't
The projections come from our model run at the season boundary: team strengths fitted on all 380 finished fixtures of 2025/26, each player's rates carried to whichever club he's at now. It has not passed our evaluation gate, because a gate needs played gameweeks and there are none.
Three things it can't see:
- Promoted clubs are a guess. Coventry, Hull and Ipswich have no top-flight record, so they inherit the average of the three clubs they replaced. Every projection above that involves one of them rests on that assumption, and Arsenal, Man Utd and Sunderland all open against one.
- Expected minutes are three months old. They come from each player's last five gameweeks of last season — before pre-season, before new managers, before the summer window.
- 185 players are invisible to it. Anyone with no Premier League record is excluded rather than handed an invented number. A further 63 are excluded as unavailable. If your differential isn't in these tables, that's usually why.
From Gameweek 2 this series opens by scoring the previous week's picks against what actually happened — hits and misses both. That's the point of publishing a number three days early.
Next: Gameweek 2 picks, Wednesday 26 August. In the meantime — Players for the full database, Fixtures for the difficulty grid, and the Team Planner to build it out.