Manchester City
Etihad Stadium
Manchester City FPL: Who To Own, Captain And Avoid — 31 Jul
The call — Six fixtures, and only one of them scares you. City open with Bournemouth (H), Palace (A), Coventry (H), United (A), Sunderland (H) — and the lone genuine test, Liverpool at Anfield, doesn't arrive until the end of the run. Our model has City with one of the league's two sharpest attacks and one of its two meanest defences, and it…
Haaland (£15.5m) is where the instruction starts. Our projections have him good for roughly 31 points across the six — call it 5-plus a week, with the usual chance he decides to take one game and turn it into fourteen. About 7 in 10 managers already own him, so this isn't clever, it's just correct. He starts, he plays 90, he doesn't blank often. That's what £15.5m is supposed to buy.
Semenyo (£8.5m) is the next one our model likes — around 24 points projected over the run, owned by fewer than 3 in 10. If you can't stretch to the big man, or you want the midfield version of this fixture run, he's the sensible route.
At the back, Gvardiol (£5.5m) is the quiet one. Roughly 21 points projected, barely 1 in 10 own him, and this is a defence our model ranks second in the league with a favourable clean-sheet run — Bournemouth, Palace, Coventry and Sunderland is four decent shutout shouts in six. For £5.5m that's a lovely floor.
The caveat lives in midfield. Foden (£7.0m) projects almost identically to Gvardiol, and 7.0 is tempting — but our model ranks him below the defender for a reason. City's midfield is a crowded room, and Foden is the sort of player who scores twice one week and watches from the bench the next. Ask yourself who gets subbed on 60 when it's 3-0. Usually him. Donnarumma (£5.5m) is fine if you want the keeper, but Gvardiol gets you the same clean sheets with attacking scraps on top.
The calls: get Haaland in and captain him for the home games against Bournemouth, Coventry and Sunderland. Buy Gvardiol as your City defender — cheap, nailed, and sitting behind the league's second-best defence. Leave Foden alone until the minutes look guaranteed, because right now they don't.