FPL Fixture Difficulty — The Next Six Gameweeks

Arsenal are the outlier. Their fixtures — Coventry (h), Villa (a), Chelsea (h), Sunderland (a), Brighton (a), Leeds (h) — look very kind for goals, yet the model's Arsenal picks are all at the back: Gabriel (£8.0m) first, then Raya (£6.0m) and Calafiori (£5.5m). That's a nudge that the defensive assets carry the clearest route to points here, with Calafiori the cheap way in at under 13% ownership.

City and Liverpool sit a step below on fixture kindness but not on quality. Haaland (£15.5m, 74.8% owned) projects at the very top of the forward pool across Bournemouth, Palace, Coventry, United, Sunderland and Liverpool. Semenyo (£8.5m) is the standout mid-price attacker in the group. For Liverpool, Szoboszlai (£7.0m) leads the list ahead of Virgil and Wirtz.

The nuance: Brighton's kind attacking run does *not* extend to their defence — the clean-sheet outlook there is among the worst of these six, so Groß (£5.5m, 2.0% owned) is the sensible Brighton route, not Verbruggen. Similarly, Arsenal's clean-sheet fixtures are only middling, so Gabriel and Raya are backed on quality, not soft opponents. Two caveats in the other direction: United's run turns hard from City onwards, and City close with a trip to Liverpool.

FPL VERDICT. Buy Bruno Fernandes — the strongest projection in this set, and the front-loaded fixtures justify the £12.0m. Captain Haaland where fixtures allow; at 74.8% owned he's a hold-by-default. Buy Gabriel if you can fund £8.0m; otherwise Calafiori at £5.5m is the value defensive route. Watch Groß and Mbeumo as low-owned upside. Avoid Brighton clean-sheet assets.

Where the model actually sees value is Bournemouth and Sunderland. Truffert at £5.5m tops our Bournemouth list, and even against City, Newcastle, Liverpool and Chelsea he's projected for around three points a game — attacking returns doing the heavy lifting rather than clean sheets. Only about 1 in 20 managers have him. Behind him, Kroupi Jr (£7.5m, owned by roughly 1 in 7) and Rayan (£6.5m, barely 1 in 25) land in similar territory: solid rather than spectacular most weeks, with the odd goal turning a quiet score into a big one.

Sunderland's Le Fée (£6.0m) is the pick of this whole group on our numbers — comfortably the best six-week return here, a bit over three a game, and owned by only about 1 in 15. Fulham's Iwobi at £5.5m is almost unowned and projects well, though the model prefers Leno and Robinson ahead of him for reasons of squad structure, not raw points.

The nuance: "very tough for clean sheets" isn't the same as "no points". Leno at £4.5m still projects respectably because busy keepers collect saves, and Ipswich's Davis at £4.0m is a functional bench body. That's the trap, though — Diop is already in about 2 in 10 squads at the same price with a slightly worse outlook. Popularity there is habit, not evidence.

FPL verdict. Avoid Hull and Coventry entirely — the fixtures punish both ends and neither has a player worth the slot. Watch Truffert; at £5.5m he's a fair fifth defender if you need one, but don't pay up for clean sheets that likely aren't coming. The one genuine buy is Le Fée at £6.0m: cheap, lightly owned, and the strongest scorer our projections see in this bracket.