FPL Gameweek 7 Review: What Went Right And Wrong

The average manager scored 59. If you landed near there with Haaland doubled up, you held your ground, and holding ground is not failure. It's the whole point of the template: we own what everyone owns so the big weeks can't hurt us.

Now, the honest bit. The week's best captain in hindsight was Neto, who banged in 15 points while owned by just 2.4% of managers. Chelsea team-mate Hato (11 points, 0.7% owned) joined him, and the differential brigade had a field day elsewhere too — Ayari (13 points, 0.5% owned), Evanilson (12 points, 4.4%), Kostoulas (12 points, 9.7%), Manzambi (11, 2.7%) and Iwobi (11, 1.1%). That's where the 122-point top score came from: managers who'd taken punts in the shallow end of ownership and got paid.

Should that sting? A little. Should it change how we play? No. For every Neto week there are five where the punt blanks and the template player hauls. The managers who captained Neto this week weren't being smart — they were being lucky, and luck is not a strategy we can repeat. Chasing last week's 2.4%-owned hero is how good ranks get burned.

What those low-owned hauls *did* do is move ranks — anyone without Haaland just watched 76.7% of the game pull away from them. That's the real lesson of GW7, and it points one way.

The call: before next deadline, the move is to protect, not chase. If you own Haaland, you keep him and you keep captaining him — he is the single biggest threat to your rank sitting in everyone else's team, and this week showed exactly why. If you've been tempted to sell him to fund two mid-priced punts, this is your warning: that's the move that sinks a season. If you somehow don't own him, that's your transfer, and it isn't close.

Hold the template. Captain the big man. Let the differential crowd gamble — we'll be the rank they're chasing.