FPL Gameweek 3 Review: What Went Right And Wrong — 11 Sep
The call — GW3 Post-Mortem: The Week the Full-Backs Ran Riot Tyrick Mitchell was the best captain in the game this week — 15 points, owned by barely 1 in 20 of us. That's the kind of stat that makes you want to tear up your team and chase. Don't. Let's walk through it calmly.
The average manager scored 51. If we beat that, we're fine. The top score of 119 was built on hauls almost nobody had: Bogle (14 points, fewer than 1 in 50 own him), Barnes (12), Vuskovic (12), Janelt (11). Those are lottery tickets that landed. We don't build ranks on lottery tickets — we build them on not being hurt when the tickets miss, which is most weeks.
Now the part that actually protected us. Isak's 13 points went to about 2 in 10 managers. Gakpo's 11 went to roughly 1.5 in 10, and Ødegaard's 10 to a similar crowd. If we own those players — and a lot of us do — we banked real points from picks the field also holds. That's the template doing its job: when it scores, we don't fall; when it blanks, neither does anyone around us.
The captaincy is the sore spot. Roughly 7 in 10 of us handed the armband to Haaland, and Mitchell out-captained him from nowhere. That stings, but hindsight captaincy is a mug's game. The crowd captain exists because he hauls more often than anyone else over a season. One quiet week doesn't change the maths — it just tests our nerve. Managers who chase last week's captain are the ones who miss next week's.
So what's the move before the deadline? Honestly, for most of us: nothing rash. The temptation is to burn a transfer on Mitchell or Bogle because their numbers glow. But 15 points from a defender is the exception, not the pattern, and paying a hit to chase it is how good ranks die. If we're moving at all, the sensible route is towards the crowded, proven scorers — Isak and Gakpo just showed why Liverpool's attackers are worth their ownership, and Ødegaard reminded us Arsenal's main man still delivers.
The call: hold the template, keep Haaland (or your premium) as captain, and if you make one move, make it towards Isak — not towards last week's fireworks. Protect the rank first. Get clever second.