The FPL Gameweek 1 template team without Haaland

The Gameweek 1 deadline is 6:30pm on Friday 21 August, which leaves two days, and the loudest question in the community is no longer who to captain. It is whether to own Erling Haaland at all.

Since the Community Shield, hundreds of thousands of managers have taken him out. In a sample of 50 managers who finished inside the top 1,000 last season, his ownership has fallen from 97% to 82%, and the share planning to captain him has slipped from just over 75% down to 65%. He is still the most owned forward in the game at 70%. He is just no longer automatic.

Here is the squad that crowd keeps landing on, built only from players this week’s drafts actually named.

The £100.0m no-Haaland fifteen

It comes to exactly £100.0m. The shape is the 3-4-3 that was the most popular formation across 100 expert drafts collected this week, and there are two playing goalkeepers in there, so a bench boost is live in either of the opening two weeks. Bruno Fernandes captains.

What £15.5m actually buys

The team sheet is less interesting than the difference. Take the same fifteen and force Haaland back in, and three players have to move.

Position	No Haaland	With Haaland	Freed up
Defence	Gabriel £8.0m	van Ewijk £4.0m	£4.0m
Midfield	Semenyo £8.5m	Sangaré £5.0m	£3.5m
Forward	Thiago £8.0m	Haaland £15.5m	spends £7.5m

That is the trade in full. Haaland is not funded out of spare change. He is funded by the best defender in the game and an £8.5m midfielder who has been a reliable FPL asset for years, both replaced by a £4.0m Coventry defender and a £5.0m enabler.

It explains a number that looks odd at first glance: Gabriel is in only 16% of expert squads despite his price, and nearly all of those squads are missing one of Haaland or Bruno. The rule of thumb doing the rounds is exactly that. If you have not got one of those two, put the money into Gabriel.

The case for going without

The defence is the part people keep underrating. There is very little worth owning below £5.0m, and dropping Haaland lifts your cheapest defender to that mark. Ballard and Muharemović pick up defensive contributions, clean sheets and the odd goal, and you cannot get near them with a £15.5m striker in the squad.

The bench falls out of the same maths. 30% of experts are bench boosting in Gameweek 1 and another 35% in Gameweek 2, and 46% have three of their four bench players priced above the minimum. This squad pays for that without you having to think about it.

Then the quieter one, which is transfers. Fifteen genuinely playable players means an early injury can be benched rather than transferred, and that is a free transfer saved at the point in the season when nobody has any spare.

The armband, meanwhile, costs you nothing. Man United have Hull and then Ipswich, and 98% of experts are captaining Haaland or Bruno either way.

The Gameweek 3 problem

Nobody has solved this bit. City are home to Bournemouth in Gameweek 1 and away at Crystal Palace in Gameweek 2, neither of them frightening. Then it is Coventry at home in Gameweek 3, Sunderland at home in Gameweek 5, Ipswich at home in Gameweek 7. If Haaland starts the way he usually does, you will want him by the third week, and every route back costs something.

A Gameweek 3 wildcard is widely thought to be too early, and the fixture swings that week do not justify burning it. A free hit is more defensible, though Gameweek 4 has far more worth targeting. That leaves two transfers, selling Bruno down to a cheap midfielder and upgrading Thiago to Haaland, which books both free transfers before the season has properly started and leaves you nothing for the injury you have not had yet.

The case against

Haaland has been the highest scoring player in the game from Gameweek 1 to Gameweek 6 in each of his four Premier League seasons, averaging 61.3 points and nine goals across those opening six weeks. He has also never scored in a Community Shield in four attempts, while scoring eight goals in Gameweek 1s over the same period, which is the obvious counter to reading much into 50 minutes and seven touches on Sunday.

Then the honest argument, from a creator who has spent more time without him than most: it is not more fun. It is draining. If your answer to a Gameweek 1 hat-trick is that you would wildcard him straight back in, do not start without him.

Who it is actually for

Not one of those 100 experts went without both Haaland and Bruno. 70% own both, 17% own Bruno alone, 13% own Haaland alone. Dropping Haaland is the more popular of the two escapes, and it is still very much a minority position. The squad above is the strongest version of it: better defence, better bench, the same captain you were going to use anyway, and the real decision parked until Gameweek 3.

If you are going to be different, it helps to know who else is. You can search any FPL manager and follow their squad, transfers and captain from Gameweek 1 onward.