FPL Gameweek 2 Review: What Went Right And Wrong

The average manager scored 81, with the very top of the pile hitting 161. A big week, and most of it came from players we already had. Haaland — owned by about 7 in 10 of us and the crowd's captain — returned 13. Not the monster we armband him for, but 26 with the doubler is a perfectly respectable base, and if you captained him you lost nothing to the field, because so did everyone else. That's the quiet value of the template pick: when it goes fine, we all go fine together.

Calafiori (11 points, roughly 4 in 10 of us) did the same job at the back. Solid, shared, safe.

The rank-movers were elsewhere. Cherki hauled 14 with only about 2 in 10 owning him, Groß went for 13 in around 1 in 10 teams, and Gibbs-White's 13 landed for fewer than 1 in 10. Alex Scott's 12 was owned by almost nobody. If you're staring at a red arrow this morning, it's likely one or two of those punts in a rival's team, not anything you did wrong. That's fine. Punts land some weeks; they miss more often. We don't chase them.

The captaincy autopsy is honest but calm: Fernandes at 23 was the pick in hindsight, and plenty of us own him without armbanding him. That stings a little. But Haaland was the right call before kick-off and he returned. Swapping a 7-in-10 captain for a hunch because of one week is how ranks get burned. The armband stays boring until the fixtures say otherwise.

So the lesson from GW2 isn't a transfer — it's restraint. The two players who defined the week, Fernandes and Haaland, are already the spine of the template, and if you own both you rode this week comfortably. If you own neither, that's the gap to close before anything clever.

The call: protect what worked. Own Fernandes and Haaland before Friday if you don't already — Fernandes first if it's one or the other — and don't spend a hit chasing Cherki or Gibbs-White off a single haul. Hold the line, keep the armband on Haaland, and let the punters take the risk for us.