Having earlier examined the transfer trends among the top Fantasy Premier League managers during the downtime, we now switch our attention back to our regular round-up of the weekly ins and outs.
The deadline for what should have been Gameweek 35 passed on Saturday morning, with an ever-diminishing group of FPL bosses opting to use one or two of their allotted free transfers.
We now have just three ’empty’ Gameweeks of the season remaining and it remains to be seen what Fantasy Premier League do beyond that point, should the top tier of English football be in a position to belatedly resume in the summer.
The Premier League’s next video conference will take place this Friday, although any plans for a restart will hinge on ongoing progress in the fight against coronavirus and a subsequent green light from the UK government.
Arsenal players were back on the training ground for the first time since mid-March on Monday, although were kept apart in order to observe social distancing rules.
West Ham United and Brighton and Hove Albion are also set to re-open their training centres, albeit with severe restrictions in place.
FPL’s policy to leave the deadlines as originally scheduled means that Fantasy managers have been presented with a fresh transfer every Gameweek and we’ll now look at who the most popular purchases and sales of the last week were.
TRANSFERS
There were 50,471 transfers made ahead of the Gameweek 35 deadline, a drop of around 16,000 on the previous week.
The ten most-bought assets of Gameweek 35 are listed below, with their respective positions in the Gameweek 34 ‘transfers in’ table listed in the final column to see how trends are changing.
The top seven in the below table remained unchanged, with the market continuing to slow down, and Bruno Fernandes (£8.6m) topped the pile yet again.
Marcus Rashford (£8.8m) squeezed into the list, with FPL’s updating of the flags on Friday – the United striker moving from a red to a yellow – perhaps aiding his cause.
Over 4,000 FPL managers have recruited the England international over the last five blank Gameweeks.
| Player | Club | GW35 Transfers In | GW34 Position |
| Fernandes | Man Utd | 2,093 | (1) |
| Calvert-Lewin | Everton | 2,068 | (2) |
| Pope | Burnley | 1,513 | (3) |
| Vardy | Leicester | 1,301 | (4) |
| De Bruyne | Man City | 1,266 | (5) |
| Wan-Bissaka | Man Utd | 1,202 | (6) |
| Martial | Man Utd | 1,140 | (7) |
| Cantwell | Wolves | 1,116 | (9) |
| Grealish | Aston Villa | 1,115 | (11) |
| Rashford | Man Utd | 989 | (17) |
Danny Ings (£7.1m) was the most-sold asset for the fourth Gameweek in a row.
The top four for Gameweek sales, indeed, remained unchanged.
Wolves’ front three were among the six most-sold assets of Gameweek 35, with Raul Jimenez (£8.1m) and Diogo Jota (£6.4m) moving in the wrong direction in the below table – although the Mexican did offset that with 925 transfers in.
| Player | Club | GW35 Transfers Out | GW34 Position |
| Ings | Southampton | 2,447 | (1) |
| Aubameyang | Arsenal | 1,877 | (2) |
| Traore | Wolves | 1,435 | (3) |
| Soyuncu | Leicester | 1,070 | (4) |
| Jota | Wolves | 980 | (10) |
| Jimenez | Wolves | 871 | (12) |
| Cantwell | Norwich | 847 | (8) |
| Rico | Bournemouth | 767 | (6) |
| Stephens | Southampton | 752 | (16) |
| Mahrez | Man City | 746 | (7) |
Yet another week passed without a single price change – it’s now a full three weeks since we saw any movement in the FPL transfer market.
DEADLINES
The deadlines for the remaining ‘blank’ Gameweeks are as follows:
GW36 – Sat 2 May 14:00 GMT
GW37 – Sat 9 May 14:00 BST
GW38 – Sun 17 May 14:00 BST
3 years, 11 months agoMany weeks before premier league returns? Four maybe?