Let’s rewind to 30 August 2026. You might want a tissue for this.
The first goal got a little chuckle out of me, because fine, everyone’s allowed one. By the second, the chuckle had quietly left the building. Once a third went in, the phone went face down on the bed and I went into full ceiling-staring mode, lying there late at night and replaying every decision since July like a VAR check that kept going against me.
During Manchester United 5-2 Ipswich Town, Bruno Fernandes (£11.8m) bagged a hat-trick and added an assist. That’s 23 points, captained by roughly everyone, their dog, and their dog’s mini-league. My team was Bruno-free, which is a bit like nasi lemak with no sambal (this national dish is very tasty).
How we got here
For the record, leaving Fernandes out of the Gameweek 1 squad was never about him. He’s a great player and probably still is. It was a money problem. I also wanted Gabriel Magalhaes (£7.9m) and Erling Haaland (£15.7m), so something had to give.
What makes it worse is that the risk was obvious. Man United opened against two promoted sides, and I even said it out loud to actual people: “It’s a huge, huge risk not having him for those two games.” Then I went and did it anyway, with all the confidence of a man reversing into a parking spot without checking his mirrors.
Gameweek 1 rewarded the arrogance, as the Red Devils lost 2-0 to Hull City, so I spent the weekend feeling very smug. Too smug, looking back, and the FPL gods were clearly taking notes. It lasted exactly seven days.
The week from hell
Here’s the bit that still stings. My team actually did well in Gameweek 2, totalling an above-average 78 points. In a normal week, that earns you a pat on the back and a nice dinner.
The next morning, my rank dropped 1.6 million places. I read it three times, then closed the app and opened it again in case it was a bug. It wasn’t. Everyone knows rank doesn’t matter in August, but try telling that to your stomach.
If you’ve played this game for a while, you know what the week after looks like. X becomes the Bruno Fernandes Appreciation Society, full of celebration clips, his ownership climbing, and that 23 in bright green under every team screenshot (oh wait, it’s actually 46). There are rank-jump posts everywhere, and somebody, somewhere, posts “imagine not having Bruno” as if they’d personally looked up your team ID.
I opened the transfer screen more times than any adult should admit. I’d put Bruno in, stare at it, feel slightly better, cancel, and then do the whole thing again an hour later, like going back to the fridge when you already know there’s nothing new in there. The voice in my head kept it simple: “Just get him. Everyone has him. The pain stops.”
Part of me genuinely wanted to, and not because another haul looked likely. I just wanted the bad feeling to go away, which, if we’re honest, is how most bad decisions start, whether it’s an FPL transfer or a full online shopping cart at 2am.
The button that never got pressed
In the end, there was one thought I couldn’t shake: those 23 points were gone, as gone as a parking spot at famous mall Gurney Plaza on a Saturday night. Buying him on Tuesday wasn’t going to bring a single one of them back.
I couldn’t even afford him without a hit, so the plan would have been to take a points hit for a player who’d just had his best week of the season and hope he did it again. That’s like buying a lottery ticket from the guy who just won the lottery. Nobody can see the future, and anyone who could would have had him in Gameweek 2 anyway.
There was also a plan already in motion, with the Free Hit in Gameweek 3 and a Triple Captain later going on Haaland. Bringing Bruno in would have meant blowing all of that up to chase a week that was already lost.
So I closed the app, properly this time. I’d made the call in pre-season with my eyes open and the risk in full view, so when it went wrong, that was on me rather than on Bruno or bad luck. It didn’t feel brave. It felt like walking out of a buffet still hungry, but it felt right.
Meanwhile, at Old Trafford…
I want to be careful here, because this isn’t a victory lap and a lot of what came next was pure luck. That 5-2 against Ipswich is still United’s only league win of the season. They’re currently 13th and experiencing their worst top-flight start in 40 years. Bruno hasn’t returned since the hat-trick, and most weeks he’s been about as visible as a ninja in a blackout.
Now picture the rage-buy timeline. You take the -4, bring him in, and watch him blank, then blank again, until five weeks later that -4 is still sitting in the corner of your points history laughing at you. I’m not mocking anyone who did it, because it could easily have been me. One bad night’s sleep and I’d have pressed confirm too.
It could still turn, of course. Man United won’t stay this bad forever, and when they finally click, or change manager again (give it a few weeks), Bruno will be right in the middle of it. I’m not writing him off. It’s just nice not to have spent a transfer chasing him.
And it’s only October, so nobody’s won anything yet. He could score a hat-trick this weekend, and the ceiling-staring would be back on the schedule, although with half the people who bought him having already sold him, it wouldn’t hurt nearly as much.
Still, skipping the rage buy was the right call. Buy him then and the chase never ends. First it’s Bruno, then whoever hauls the week after, then whoever hauls the week after that, and before you know it, it’s Gameweek 20, you’ve taken -28 in hits, and you own a museum of past hauls: eleven players who all scored last week and none who’ll score next week.
What Bruno taught us (the hard way)
If you’ve made it this far without dozing off during grandpa’s story time, thank you. This part isn’t really about me, it’s about what came out of it. I’m no expert and I’ve got plenty of terrible seasons on my CV, so treat these as things I’m still learning rather than rules carved in stone.
- The points you missed are already gone. This is the big one. When someone hauls and you don’t have them, it feels like something needs fixing, but it can’t be fixed. Buying him on Tuesday won’t time-travel Saturday’s points into your team, because FPL doesn’t do backdating. The only question that matters is whether he’s the best pick for the next few weeks, and after Gameweek 2, if I was honest with myself, he wasn’t.
- Make the risky call early, then own it. I knew skipping Bruno for two promoted teams was a gamble, and I called it one before a ball was kicked. Weirdly, that helped when it went wrong, because there was nobody to blame and no point pretending it came as a shock. Make your gambles calmly in July over a coffee, not angrily on a Monday morning with your blood pressure up.
- Scoring well and ranking well are different things. In Gameweek 2, I scored 78 points and still dropped 1.6 million places. Your points are your business, but your rank is everyone else’s. You control your team, and nobody controls the template, except apparently Bruno.
- Bad feelings make bad transfers. Looking back, the temptation was never really Bruno the player. It was the dream of opening Twitter without feeling sick, which is a terrible reason to spend a transfer, a bit like buying a sports car because you had a bad day at work. Waiting even a few hours made everything clearer.
- Results don’t prove you right. United’s slump makes the decision look clever, but that’s mostly luck. If Bruno had banged in five more goals since, the exact same reasoning would look stupid. So judge the reasons rather than the result. Some weeks that’s easy, and some weeks you want to throw your phone into the Straits of Malacca.
Before you press confirm
So if you’re sitting there tonight with your thumb hovering over the confirm button after someone’s big haul, just wait. Close the app, sleep on it, and have some breakfast. You might still buy him in the morning, and that’s completely fine, as long as you’re buying him for next gameweek and not for last week.
And Bruno, if you ever read this (you won’t), no hard feelings. You gave me one of the worst nights of my FPL life, and I probably had it coming. We’ll meet again one day, when the timing is right, ideally the week before your next hat-trick rather than afterwards.
