FPL Fixtures: The Teams To Avoid — 25 Aug

The Hard Terrain: Six Clubs Whose Opening Roads You Should Not Travel (GW1–6)

Every season begins with managers plotting routes toward easy ground. This is the opposite map — the passes that are closed, the terrain that punishes, from Gameweek 1 through Gameweek 6.

Aston Villa face the steepest climb of all. Brighton away, Arsenal at home, then Tottenham away lurking mid-route — hostile weather at both ends of the pitch. Our projections have McGinn (£5.5m) and Buendía (£6.0m) scraping barely 14 points apiece across the whole window. Almost nobody owns them — roughly 1 in 10 combined — and that's correct. Leave Villa Park off your route until the climate improves.

Coventry open at the Emirates, visit the Etihad in GW3, and finish hosting Newcastle. Their popular £4.0m defenders — van Ewijk (owned by more than 1 in 10) and Thomas — project around 10 points over six weeks. That's bench-fodder territory at best. If you want a Coventry body, the model marginally prefers Rushworth in goal, but the honest reading is: don't build here.

Hull and Ipswich are similar terrain. Hull's clean-sheet prospects are bleak against Manchester United, Chelsea and Newcastle; McBurnie at £5.5m projects a thin 12 points. Ipswich's £4.0m trio — Davis, Diop, O'Shea — are fine fifth defenders occupying a bench slot, and nothing more. Note Diop's near 2-in-10 ownership: that's habit, not evidence.

Sunderland are the interesting case. The fixtures are genuinely tough — Arsenal and Manchester City both appear — yet Brobbey (£6.0m, owned by well over 1 in 10) and Xhaka (£5.5m, barely anyone at under 1 in 2 of that) still project 18-19 points each. Usable, on their day capable of a proper haul, but the terrain caps them. Hold if owned; don't buy into it.

Liverpool need careful reading. Their attacking road is passable — Nottingham Forest and Fulham at Anfield are decent ground — and Isak (£9.0m, 31 projected points) and Szoboszlai (£7.0m, 28 projected, already in over 4 in 10 squads) remain strong picks. But the clean-sheet route is treacherous: Newcastle away, Bournemouth away, City in GW6. Virgil at £6.5m projects a respectable 22, but you're paying premium defender money into hostile weather.

The call for GW1–6: avoid Villa, Coventry, Hull and Ipswich assets outright beyond £4.0m bench cover. Hold Sunderland's Brobbey and Xhaka if you own them, don't chase them. And with Liverpool — buy the attack, skip the defence. Plot your defensive money elsewhere until this window closes.