Fifteen players, £100m, Mohamed Salah. It’s the familiar setup that football fans have come to love and loathe in equal measure.
The 2022-23 season kicks off this weekend with 6.30pm BST on Friday August 5, your deadline to build a squad.
So tinker, restart your leagues, learn your chips, and get ready for the long slog to a glorious victory (or, just as likely, a loss).
Here are our FPL tips for GW1…
Gabriel Jesus – Arsenal – £8m
Where to start? Well, how about the first game of the season, as Arsenal travel to Crystal Palace, and the most-capped player from afar. Almost 73% of players have chosen the Brazilian at the time of writing and, with seven goals in pre-season, who can really blame them?
Mohamed Salah – Liverpool – £13m
The fear with FPL heavy hitters like Salah is that ignoring the likelihood of his imperiousness just makes you look a little silly. Still, bold moves can pay off big in this game – but against newly promoted Fulham in GW1 can you really afford not to take it?
Erling Haaland – Manchester City – £11.5m
The FPL strikers are noticeably cheaper this year, given their continued reduction in goals and clean sheet points compared to midfielders, and so a Golden Boot challenger like Haaland is a bit more valuable than expected. In short, this guy scores goals, and the goals equal the points.
Son Heung-min – Tottenham – £12m
These tips will soon become less obvious – as you can’t sign all the best players – but the question of how to handle Spurs in fantasy football has been a tricky one for decades. Son is more expensive than Harry Kane but outclassed him last season when the alternatives are not guaranteed to play (Dejan Kulusevski, Ivan Perisic) or suspended (Richarlison).
Lucas Digne – Aston Vila – £5m
The great thing about opening weekend is that the results are predictable. Bournemouth against Aston Villa is a great example of this, but Digne is a good option as an attacking side’s first-choice left-back and set-piece taker against a potentially nervous newly-promoted host. There are, however, questions over Villa’s aerial presence for completing set plays.
Dean Henderson – Nottingham Forest – £4.5m
Strong defending was a key aspect of promoting Forest and Steve Cooper added to that with a top goalkeeper who thrived in not too dissimilar circumstances at Sheffield United. All the pressure is on Newcastle in their opener, a scenario in which the Toon rarely thrive.
Mount Mason – Chelsea – £8m
With 11 goals and 11 assists last season, Mount is a bit of a steal at this price and Chelsea’s trip to Everton on Saturday night is guaranteed to cause something of an implosion – most likely for the home side.
