The best performance of the opening gameweek did not come from any of the favourites. Brighton took Aston Villa apart 4-0 at the Amex, and the game was settled before half-time — while both sides still had eleven men on the pitch.
Four goals in 31 minutes
The opener arrived on eight minutes and carried a fair slice of misfortune for the visitors: Maxim De Cuyper‘s effort came back off the post and went in off Victor Lindelöf. Ten minutes later De Cuyper needed no help, finishing left-footed from close range after Georginio Rutter carried the ball forward.
Then came the two minutes that decided everything. On 30 minutes Jack Hinshelwood headed in from Diego Gómez‘s delivery, and on 31 he added a second, this time with his right foot. A brace in two minutes, and 4-0 before the first half was even halfway through.
Villa made life harder for themselves on 40 minutes. João Gomes, already booked, kicked out at Rutter, and after a VAR review the referee upgraded the yellow to a straight red for violent conduct. The visitors played the second half a man down, and any comeback was out of the question.
It was not a good weekend for Villa off the pitch either. Ollie Watkins was left out of the matchday squad because of advanced talks with Al Hilal, so Villa opened the season without their leading striker.
What it means in FPL
This match produced the highest individual score of the entire gameweek — from a player almost nobody owns.
| Player | Price | Points | Ownership | Our rating |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| De Cuyper (defender) | £4.5 | 17 | 2.2% | 71 |
| Hinshelwood | £6.0 | 16 | 0.7% | 74 |
| Wieffer | £5.0 | 7 | 0.3% | 73 |
| Verbruggen (goalkeeper) | £4.5 | 6 | 21.7% | 72 |
De Cuyper, at £4.5m, collected a goal, an assist, a clean sheet and two bonus points — seventeen points from a bottom-price defender owned by two managers in a hundred. Hinshelwood added sixteen at 0.7% ownership. Anyone holding those two gained a weekend on the entire league.
Our model did not call this
We are saying that plainly, because we promised to be honest about our own tool: the rating did not pick Brighton as the team of the round. All four players above sit at 71–74 with a Hold verdict — solid, but nothing special. Brighton’s highest-rated players are Diego Gómez and Lewis Dunk on 77, and even they are nowhere near the top of the rankings.
The reason is the one we set out after the Community Shield: our rating measures repeatability — minutes, underlying numbers, fixtures — not what happens in a single match. No model predicts that a cheap left-back will score, assist and take bonus points in the same game. How the rating is calculated is set out in our methodology.
The practical conclusion, though, runs against the instinct. One match is not enough to rebuild a squad — but De Cuyper now goes on the watchlist: a £4.5m left-back who starts and genuinely joins the attack is exactly the profile FPL managers save money on.
Our league came out of it well
One thing from this game will please our mini league. Verbruggen is owned by 48.3% of our teams against 21.7% across FPL — we wrote about that yesterday, going through all 60 squads. A clean sheet and six points mean almost half our league is ahead of the average manager in that position today.
Current ratings for every player are in our AI rankings, and the league table with squad previews is on the mini league page.
Sources: Sky Sports, SofaScore, VAVEL. Points data: official Fantasy Premier League API. This article was produced with the help of artificial intelligence. Fantasy PL Edge is not affiliated with the Premier League or the Fantasy Premier League game.