Arsenal beat Chelsea 2:1 to close Gameweek 3 — and with it, a round in which almost nothing came off for anyone. The global average fell from 81 points to 36. The highest score in the world was 107, against 161 a week earlier.
As always, we account for what we wrote before the deadline. This time the record is clearly worse than last week, and we are not going to smooth that over.
Where we were right: all five warnings
In Thursday’s article and Friday’s update we flagged five players to avoid. Not one of them played a single minute.
| Player | What we wrote | Minutes |
|---|---|---|
| Ollie Watkins | joined Al Hilal, guaranteed zero | 0 |
| Richarlison | not in the matchday squad | 0 |
| Joe Rodon | injured until 21 November | 0 |
| Cristhian Mosquera | new flag, 75% | 0 |
| Bruno Guimarães | knock, 75% | 0 |
This is the part of our work that performs best: catching the players who will not appear, before you are left with a zero in your eleven.
Where we got it wrong: captaincy
Here it is worse. In Friday’s captaincy piece we argued that Haaland did not make our top five, because at £15.5m the model rated the ceiling of four cheaper players more highly. Here is how it went:
| Our rank | Player | Points |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Szoboszlai | 3 |
| 2 | Semenyo | 6 |
| 3 | Ndiaye | 3 |
| 4 | Gakpo | 11 |
| 5 | Guéhi | 8 |
| outside the five | Haaland | 9 |
Haaland outscored three of our five. Only Gakpo beat him, and we had him fourth. The argument did not hold, and that needs saying plainly.
The reason is simple: Manchester City beat Coventry only 1:0, and we had three of our five picks in that match. When the expected goal rush does not arrive, the whole group sinks with it — a risk we actually warned about on Friday, when we flagged the danger of concentrating picks in one fixture. Except we built the ranking on it anyway.
Isak: against us for the second week running
Alexander Isak scored 13 points — two goals in 63 minutes. Since August we have described him as a premium trap, rated 60 with a “risky” verdict. That is now two weeks in a row where he has returned despite our low rating.
The model sees a lack of regular minutes and weak underlying numbers from the start of the season. If he keeps this up, the rating will climb on its own — but for now we are the ones who are wrong, not the market.
How the rest turned out
From Thursday’s picks: Tavernier, whom we flagged as a differential at 2.3% ownership, returned 10 points. But Thiaw, whom we called the best value at £5.0m, finished on minus one.
Gameweek 3 results
| Fixture | Score |
|---|---|
| Ipswich – Liverpool | 0:2 |
| Newcastle – Bournemouth | 2:2 |
| Brentford – Sunderland | 1:1 |
| Brighton – Leeds | 1:1 |
| Fulham – Crystal Palace | 2:3 |
| Man City – Coventry | 1:0 |
| Nott’m Forest – Tottenham | 0:0 |
| Hull – Aston Villa | 0:0 |
| Everton – Man Utd | 2:2 |
| Arsenal – Chelsea | 2:1 |
Two goalless draws, four games settled by a single home goal and only one fixture with five. Hence the average.
The cheap and the unknown scored
| Player | Club | Price | Points | Owned |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Tyrick Mitchell | Crystal Palace | £4.5m | 15 | 5.1% |
| Jayden Bogle | Leeds | £4.5m | 14 | 0.9% |
| Alexander Isak | Liverpool | £9.0m | 13 | 18.2% |
| Vuskovic | Brighton | £5.0m | 12 | 2.5% |
| Harvey Barnes | Newcastle | £6.0m | 12 | 1.5% |
| Cody Gakpo | Liverpool | £7.1m | 11 | 11.5% |
The two best players of the round cost £4.5m each, and one of them was owned by under one percent of managers. It is the same pattern as Gameweek 1: when the template fails, the players nobody owns win the week.
On the other side: Cherki, the transfer story of the week with over 1.5 million buys, returned 3 points in 65 minutes. Bruno Fernandes — 2 points. Cole Palmer — 1.
Our league: the biggest gap of the season
In a difficult round our mini league had its best week yet. Our average was 54.0 points against 36 globally — a gap of eighteen points, the largest this season. 66 of our 69 teams scored above the global average.
| # | Team | Manager | GW3 | Total |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | AVERAGEJOE | Jóhann Örn Kjartansson | 61 | 277 |
| 2 | Puszcza Niepołomice | Jakub Podgórski | 43 | 265 |
| 3 | Pogoń Bydło | Szymon Żaba | 46 | 240 |
| 4 | Dc OldBoy | Grzegorz Podgrodzki | 59 | 238 |
| 5 | PTC Mistrzem Anglii | William Lewis | 73 | 235 |
| 6 | Kazimierz’s Team | Kazimierz Grocki | 59 | 233 |
| 7 | Jajognioty | Maciej Konieckiewicz | 53 | 233 |
| 8 | Chelsea Champion | Champion Chelsea | 50 | 232 |
| 9 | HaHaHaHaaland | Daniel Filipowicz | 61 | 230 |
| 10 | Cienkie Bolki FC | Piotr Urbański | 57 | 229 |
AVERAGEJOE is back on top with 277 points, pushing Puszcza Niepołomice down to second. The best score of the round, though, belongs to Szase (Seb Sza) — 77 points, more than double the global average.
The full table of all 69 teams with squad previews is on the league page. You can join at any point in the season with code 3ix1cw — your full points total comes with you.
What next
Gameweek 4 begins on Saturday 12 September, with the deadline that same day at 13:30 UK — earlier and on a different day than usual, because of the international break. The first matches kick off at 15:00, and the round closes with Leeds against Newcastle on Monday. That is plenty of time to think your squad through — and to watch who comes back from international duty in one piece, because injury flags tend to multiply after these breaks.
We will be back with a guide before the deadline. Until then, all ratings are in the AI Rankings and a ready-made fifteen is in the Recommended Squad.
Our ratings are generated by an AI model from official FPL data, refreshed hourly. The points in this article are from Sunday evening, before the game formally closed the gameweek — bonus points may still shift slightly.