The Gameweek 2 deadline is 6.30pm on Friday 28 August. It is a standard gameweek — no doubles, no blanks — but the first one where we have real match data to work with. And plenty has changed in a week.
Prices have finally moved. For exactly four players
For three weeks we kept saying the “buy him before he rises” panic had no basis, because prices were frozen. After the opening round there has been a first move — and it is still small enough that nobody should be rushed.
Maxim De Cuyper (Brighton, up to £4.6m) and Mohamed Sangaré (Brentford, up to £5.6m) both rose by £0.1m. Viktor Gyökeres (Arsenal, down to £7.4m) and Gabriel Martinelli fell. That is the lot: four changes across more than 600 players.
De Cuyper is the hero of our Gameweek 1 review — a £4.5m defender who scored 17 points, the highest individual haul of the round. He is now the most-bought player of the week.
The model has reshuffled the top
Our ratings now factor in the current season, and it shows immediately. Dominik Szoboszlai (Liverpool, £7.0m) at 90 is the only Strong Buy in the entire game.
Right behind him are the weekend’s winners: Cody Gakpo (12 points) and Kiernan Dewsbury-Hall (11 points) are both on 89, level with Morgan Rogers and Bruno Fernandes. Moving the other way: Haaland dropped to 88 after two points on opening weekend, though 68.3% of managers still own him.
Captaincy
| Player | Price | Rating | Risk | Upside | Owned | Fixture |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Szoboszlai (LIV) | £7.0m | 90 | 44 | 79 | 42.8% | Forest (H) |
| Rogers (CHE) | £7.5m | 89 | 37 | 88 | 25.6% | Brighton (H) |
| B. Fernandes (MUN) | £12.0m | 89 | 37 | 85 | 49.3% | Ipswich (H) |
| João Pedro (CHE) | £7.5m | 88 | 37 | 87 | 66.4% | Brighton (H) |
| Dewsbury-Hall (EVE) | £6.5m | 89 | 44 | 76 | 4.3% | Bournemouth (A) |
Szoboszlai leads the ranking because he has the highest rating. But look at the two numbers beside it — risk and upside — and the best profile belongs to Rogers: lower risk (37 against 44) and a clearly higher ceiling (88 against 79). The reason is in the fixtures: Chelsea host Brighton, while Liverpool face Forest, which our model reads as the harder game.
Risk comes from availability, minutes security and fixture difficulty; upside from attacking output and how easy the opponent is. The full five, with our notes, is in Captain Picks.
Differentials the crowd has not found
- Dewsbury-Hall (Everton, £6.5m) — rating 89, owned by 4.3%, 11 points in GW1
- Gakpo (Liverpool, £7.0m) — rating 89, owned by 5.3%, 12 points
- Anton Stach (Leeds, £6.0m) — rating 85, owned by 1.8%, 13 points
- Enzo Fernández (Chelsea, £7.0m) — rating 88, owned by 4.8%, but only 25 minutes in GW1
We flagged Stach as a differential before the first deadline and he returned 13 points at under two percent ownership. One honest caveat: Enzo rates highly but played a quarter of the opening game — that is a risk buy.
Cheap and good
Michael Kayode (Brentford, £4.5m) is the best rating-per-pound in the game right now: 85 and 13 points in Gameweek 1 at 6.3% ownership. Next come Malick Thiaw (Newcastle, £5.0m, rating 85, owned by just 1.7%) and three £6.0m options: Ndiaye (88), Guéhi (88) and Tarkowski (87).
In goal, Jordan Pickford (Everton, £5.5m, rating 74, 7 points) is top-rated, just ahead of Caoimhín Kelleher (Brentford, £5.0m, 73).
Check these flags before Friday
Six players carry a “75% chance of playing” note. Two of them affect a meaningful number of squads:
- Morgan Gibbs-White (Forest, 9.7% ownership) — knee
- Elliot Anderson (City, 6.5% ownership) — knock
The others are Moisés Caicedo, Ismaïla Sarr, Bruno Guimarães and Ferdi Kadıoğlu. The full list is in our Injury Centre, which updates automatically.
What the crowd is doing
Most bought this week: De Cuyper, Sangaré, João Pedro, Calafiori, Kayode and Ødegaard. Most sold: Pedro Porro, Ezri Konsa, Gibbs-White, Gyökeres, Ollie Watkins and Bruno Fernandes.
Two notes. First, before the opening deadline we warned about Porro, owned by 13.9% and yet to play a minute — he is now the most-sold player in the game. Second, Konsa is already listed as an Arsenal player in the game, so the transfer we covered before the last deadline has gone through.
Our recommended squad for Gameweek 2
The model has settled on a 3-5-2: Pickford in goal; Guéhi, Tarkowski and van Dijk at the back; Szoboszlai, Gakpo, Dewsbury-Hall, Rogers and Enzo in midfield; Haaland and João Pedro up front.
That is five changes from Gameweek 1, with Pickford, Tarkowski, Gakpo, Dewsbury-Hall and Rogers coming in. The full squad, bench and chip radar are in Recommended Squad, refreshed every gameweek.
The Gameweek 2 fixtures
| Fixture | Kick-off (UK) | Home difficulty |
|---|---|---|
| Crystal Palace v Manchester City | Friday 8pm | 4 |
| Liverpool v Nottingham Forest | Saturday 12.30pm | 3 |
| Bournemouth v Everton | Saturday 3pm | 3 |
| Coventry v Hull | Saturday 3pm | 2 |
| Tottenham v Newcastle | Saturday 5.30pm | 2 |
| Sunderland v Fulham | Sunday 2pm | 2 |
| Leeds v Brentford | Sunday 2pm | 3 |
| Chelsea v Brighton | Sunday 2pm | 2 |
| Manchester United v Ipswich | Sunday 4.30pm | 2 |
| Aston Villa v Arsenal | Monday 8pm | 4 |
Two things to watch. City’s trip to Selhurst Park kicks off at 8pm on Friday, ninety minutes after the deadline — you decide on City players without seeing the line-up. And Monday’s Aston Villa v Arsenal is the only fixture of the round rated 4 for both sides.
The transfer window is still working
There is a week left before the window shuts at 11pm on 1 September. Over the last two days we covered two moves that touch FPL squads: Liam Delap to Nottingham Forest (Igor Jesus’s minutes now at risk) and Omar Marmoush to Tottenham.
The rule is the same for both: do not buy a player who has not played a minute this season the day before a match. You do not know whether he starts, and the game will not tell you before the deadline.
Five minutes before the deadline
- Check the flags in your own squad — Gibbs-White and Anderson in particular.
- Make sure you are not holding someone who changed club or left the league.
- Set your captain and vice-captain from different fixtures.
- Check your bench order — auto-subs only rescue a gameweek if there is someone to bring on.
- Do not make a transfer just because someone rose by £0.1m.
Build the rest of your team with our tools: AI Player Rankings, Recommended Squad, Captain Picks and the Fixture Ticker. You can also join our mini-league — code 3ix1cw.
Our ratings are generated by an AI model from official FPL data and refreshed hourly. The numbers here are from Wednesday 26 August — ownership and flags change daily, so check again closer to the deadline.