Monday night at Elland Road closed Gameweek 4 in a way almost nobody saw coming: Leeds 4:1 Newcastle. A gameweek that looked poor after Saturday finished with an average of 67 points — 16 higher than the week before. Here we close the week out: the last match, an honest review of our pre-deadline calls, our league table, and what has changed in the ratings before Friday’s deadline.
Leeds 4:1 Newcastle: four goals and the cheapest hero of the round
Leeds took Newcastle apart at home, and did it with players almost nobody owns. Jayden Bogle, Noah Okafor and Dominic Calvert-Lewin all scored, with the fourth goal going down as an own goal off Luke Miley. Newcastle’s consolation came from Bazoumana Touré — the winger they paid £42m for this summer — set up by Tino Livramento.
The number of the night: Bogle’s 15 points. A £4.5m defender owned by 2.6% of managers scored, swept all three bonus points and finished as the highest-scoring defender in the entire gameweek. Four rounds in he has 37 points — more than Bruno Fernandes at £12.0m. Calvert-Lewin added a goal and an assist (10 points at 22.2% ownership) and Okafor returned 9 points at 0.3% ownership.
| Player | Price | Ownership | GW4 points |
|---|---|---|---|
| Bogle (LEE) | £4.5m | 2.6% | 15 |
| Calvert-Lewin (LEE) | £6.0m | 22.2% | 10 |
| Okafor (LEE) | £5.8m | 0.3% | 9 |
| Touré (NEW) | £5.8m | 0.1% | 6 |
| Livramento (NEW) | £4.9m | 0.1% | 3 |
Newcastle have a problem — but the fixtures give them a way back
For FPL managers what surrounds the club matters more than the scoreline. Anthony Elanga is flagged as injured with no return date and still sits in 10.4% of squads; he did not play a minute this weekend. Wissa, owned by 18.4%, played the full 90 for 2 points. We flagged both in late August as a gap between what the crowd was buying and what the model saw — and that gap has not closed.
There is another side to it. In Gameweek 5 Newcastle host Hull, a fixture our engine rates 2 out of 5 for difficulty. Their highest-rated player remains Harvey Barnes (rating 87) at just 3.0% ownership. After a night like that nobody will want to buy Newcastle assets — which is exactly why they are worth a look.
The final tally, and the trap of reading numbers too early
Gameweek 4 averaged 67 points, with a top score of 151. For context, after Saturday alone the average stood at 42 — Sunday and Monday added a lot.
While we are here, a correction of our own figure. In our Gameweek 3 review we wrote that the average had fallen to 36. That was read before the game formally closed the round — Gameweek 3 finished on an average of 51. The same caveat applies today: the game usually finalises a round within a day of the last whistle, and the average can still tick upward. Treat 67 as close to final rather than carved in stone.
The round was won by the usual suspects — meaning, not the ones everybody owns:
| Player | Price | Ownership | Points |
|---|---|---|---|
| Groß (BHA) | £5.6m | 18.2% | 17 |
| Schade (BRE) | £6.0m | 5.6% | 15 |
| Bogle (LEE) | £4.5m | 2.6% | 15 |
| Raya (ARS) | £6.0m | 40.3% | 14 |
| Davis (IPS) | £4.0m | 6.0% | 14 |
| Belloumi (HUL) | £5.0m | 2.8% | 13 |
Reviewing our calls: what held up and what did not
On Friday we published our captaincy ranking for Gameweek 4. Here it is in full, including the parts where we came off badly.
| Our rank | Player | GW4 points |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Rogers (CHE) | 8 |
| 2 | Szoboszlai (LIV) | 3 |
| 3 | Saka (ARS) | 8 |
| 4 | João Pedro (CHE) | 12 |
| 5 | Mitchell (CRY) | 1 |
| 7 | Haaland (MCI) | 9 |
| 8 | Bruno Fernandes (MUN) | 2 |
Our top five averaged 6.4 points. Haaland, whom we placed seventh of eight, returned 9 — the third week running that he has beaten the top of our captaincy ranking. No point dressing it up: the “the template ran into the hardest fixture” argument held on Bruno (2 points) and United’s whole attack, and failed on Haaland. We covered that at length in our piece on the derby and the VAR error.
What did hold up completely were the minutes warnings. Gakpo, bought by more than 600,000 managers during the week despite his flag, came on for 30 minutes and scored 1 point. Luke Shaw (10.6% owned) — zero minutes. Pedro Porro (9.4%) — zero minutes. We flagged both in our Saturday update, hours before the deadline.
We got it wrong the other way on Nico O’Reilly. On Friday we reported that his flag had been lifted and he was available — true, but he played only the last 8 minutes for 1 point. The information was right; the practical conclusion drawn from it was misleading.
The model changed its mind on Haaland. We are saying so plainly
With ratings recalculated after Gameweek 4, our engine now shows something it did not show a week ago: Haaland is rated 90 with a Strong Buy verdict, and he tops our captaincy picks for Gameweek 5 — risk 34, upside 89. Seven days ago the same model had him seventh.
The reason is mundane, and exactly as it should be: the data changed. Haaland scored, City won, and above all the opponent changed — instead of a derby rated 4 out of 5, he has Sunderland at home rated 2. The model has no pride and does not defend yesterday’s argument; it scores what is in front of it. The other Strong Buy is Morgan Gibbs-White (rating 90, £7.9m, 11.3% owned), at home to Coventry.
Good news for the 600,000 who bought Gakpo: he carries no flag now and his rating is back up to 88. The full table is in our AI rankings.
Our league: 70 teams, a 74-point average and four wasted chips
The Fantasy PL Edge league has grown to 70 teams and closed Gameweek 4 on an average of 74.3 points against 67 across FPL. 45 of 70 teams beat the global average.
| # | Team | Manager | GW4 | Total |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | AVERAGEJOE | Jóhann Örn Kjartansson | 85 | 365 |
| 2 | Pogoń Bydło | Szymon Żaba | 110 | 350 |
| 3 | Puszcza Niepołomice | Jakub Podgórski | 57 | 328 |
| 4 | Dc OldBoy | Grzegorz Podgrodzki | 89 | 327 |
| 5 | PTC Mistrzem Anglii | William Lewis | 88 | 323 |
The best score of the round — 110 points — belongs to Pogoń Bydło, up from third to second. An even bigger jump came from Team 11: 100 points and a climb from 26th to 10th. The leader held on, though his cushion is down to 15 points.
The captaincy story is the interesting one. The most-picked captain in our league was Cole Palmer — 22 of 70 teams (31.4%). He returned 5 points. Haaland, captained by 19 teams, returned 9, and João Pedro (15 armbands) returned 12. The most popular pick in the league was the weakest of the three.
It hurt more with chips. Our league played four Triple Captains this round — three of them on Palmer (15 points from a tripled captain) and the fourth on Isak, who scored 2. None paid off. Six teams played a Wildcard and one a Bench Boost. Small consolation: the league leader tripled Palmer too and still posted 85 points and kept top spot — and Team 11 managed 100 with the same misfiring chip.
The full table, where you can expand any team to see its squad, is on our mini league page. The join code is 3ix1cw — you can join at any point in the season and bring your full points total with you.
Before Gameweek 5: Friday deadline, Foden banned until October
The Gameweek 5 deadline is Friday 18 September at 18:30 UK time, with the first match — Brentford v Chelsea — kicking off 90 minutes later.
The main squad news from the weekend: Phil Foden was sent off in the derby and the game lists him as suspended until 17 October. He is owned by 3.2%. Elsewhere in our Injury Centre: Elanga (no return date), Shaw and Porro at 75%, Hull’s Mendy at 50%, Villa’s Cash at 75%, with Palace’s Mateta and Henderson due back around 11 October.
Prices have moved sharply: 56 changes, 50 of them falls. Rogers, João Pedro, Tavernier, Gvardiol and Tarkowski went up. The crowd is buying Rogers (more than 336,000 transfers in) and selling Szoboszlai (227,000) — the exact opposite of what it did before the last deadline.
| Fixture | Kick-off (UK) | Difficulty |
|---|---|---|
| Brentford – Chelsea | Fri 18 Sep, 20:00 | 4 / 3 |
| Tottenham – Aston Villa | Sat 19 Sep, 12:30 | 3 / 3 |
| Brighton – Arsenal | Sat 19 Sep, 15:00 | 4 / 3 |
| Everton – Ipswich | Sat 19 Sep, 15:00 | 2 / 3 |
| Newcastle – Hull | Sat 19 Sep, 15:00 | 2 / 3 |
| Nott’m Forest – Coventry | Sat 19 Sep, 17:30 | 2 / 3 |
| Bournemouth – Liverpool | Sun 20 Sep, 14:00 | 4 / 3 |
| Leeds – Crystal Palace | Sun 20 Sep, 14:00 | 3 / 3 |
| Man City – Sunderland | Sun 20 Sep, 14:00 | 2 / 5 |
| Fulham – Man Utd | Sun 20 Sep, 16:30 | 4 / 3 |
Our recommended squad for Gameweek 5 has already been recalculated, and the full difficulty spread is in the fixture ticker. We will be back before the deadline with who to buy.
All figures come from the official game data and from our own engine, read on 15 September. Ratings and prices change daily, and the game formally closes a round within a day of the final match, so averages may still tick up slightly. AI ratings are decision support, not a guarantee — the final call is yours.