Sam from FPL Family’s Gameweek 1 team reveal: Solanke in, Salah out

With Fantasy Premier League (FPL) live for 2024/25, we are welcoming back our team of Hall of Famers and guest writers for the new campaign. Here, FPL Family’s Sam discusses her Gameweek 1 draft.

We’re 10 days away from the start of the season.

Mohamed Salah (£12.5m). Erling Haaland (£15.0m). Both locked.

That has been my message all summer. But then this happened…

Now the Spurs fan in me was very excited about this. But the FPL manager in me was maybe even more excited. Playing as the number nine for a team likely to be competing for the top four means Solanke feels very appealing.

When the ‘Here. We. Go.’ Romano tweet appeared I immediately sold Rodrigo Muniz (£6.0m) and Dejan Kulusevski (£6.5m) and brought in Emile Smith-Rowe (£5.5m) and Solanke using the £0.5m that I had saved as rainy day money to bridge the gap.

This is the team I took on Sky Sports News with me on Saturday morning. There’s a lot to like. It has both Salah and Haaland. It has the optimal second and third forwards in Alexander Isak (£8.5m) and Solanke. Josko Gvardiol (£6.0m) is there, as is some defensive Arsenal coverage with David Raya (£5.5m). But the more I looked at it, the more I didn’t like it.

The team felt unbalanced. It felt too dependent on the most premium players, whilst also lacking a number of the key tried and tested ones. Having read Tom’s Moving Target article about Solanke where he looked at his underlying stats, I was even more convinced I needed him. That was all made final when I wrote the Spurs Team Preview for the new season. So the question was how to make this team feel more balanced.

If in doubt keep redrafting

On Sunday afternoon, I spent some quality time with the new Fantasy Football Scout app. I made multiple different drafts until eventually, I settled on a budget layout that I was happy with. Setting up with £8.5m spent on goalies, £26m on defenders, £34.5m on midfielders and £31m on forwards felt about right. Knowing this I then had a few players who definitely felt like ones I was certain I wanted.

These six players took up 53% of the FPL budget. It was at this stage that compromises began. Knowing I couldn’t lose these six and that having Salah in the team above left the team unbalanced meant creating a team without the Egyptian.

Outside of these players, there were a number of others that I felt I wanted to have for the opening weeks of the season. In the continued absence of Pervis Estupinan (£5.0m), Valentin Barco (£4.0m) feels like a gift in the early weeks. He has been on corners during pre-season too and therefore has a good route to points. His £4.0m price tag also means that he will allow me to have other, more expensive assets in other areas.

Chance on Eze?

Lots of big decisions still to come. I suspect I will still be making them while on the stage at Fantasy Football Fest on Friday.

Good luck and green arrows all!

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