
Fantasy Football Tips: Three must have picks for FPL Gameweek 1

The new Premier League campaign begins on Friday and with that we also have the return of Fantasy Football. Here at BettingOdds.com we'd like to welcome Holly Shand to our team of expert writers. Holly will be providing her advice on which players you should be switching into your FPL side each week and brings a wealth of experience after playing the game for ten years and twice finishing inside the top 10k in the world
Below you can also find who the top-10 owned players are as Gameweek 1 creeps ever closer.
As we approach the FPL Gameweek 1 deadline for the 2023/24 season, ensuring you have a solid core of the key player picks in your squad can help towards a solid start to the season. So who are the must-have players to select to steal a march on the mates in your mini-league?
Defender: Pervis Estupinan (£5.0m) - Brighton
Brighton’s Pervis Estupinan looks set to start the season in over half of teams with the Seagulls full-back a popular route into a side set for rotation this campaign. Roberto de Zerbi has strengthened his squad significantly ahead of European action this season.
Brighton have fantastic clean sheet potential in Gameweek 1 at home to Luton Town and the favourable fixtures continue with a trip to Wolves in Gameweek 2. The Seagulls kept 12 clean sheets last season and have four home games in their opening six fixtures.
Part of Estupinan’s appeal is that he’s not afraid of getting forward, with eight attacking returns last season ranking him fourth among defenders. He was particularly prolific in the final ten gameweeks of last season where he had three big chances on goal and created a further three big chances for his team-mates.
Midfielder: Bukayo Saka (£8.5m) - Arsenal
Arsenal’s Bukayo Saka is a huge fantasy favourite for the coming campaign and that’s entirely justified as the Arsenal player who produced the most goal involvements last campaign. He’s also on penalties, but has missed from the spot during pre-season, despite picking up three goals and three assists.
He’s set to benefit from the injury to Gabriel Jesus which will see the Brazilian forward miss Gameweek 1. During the period Jesus was out last campaign, Saka scored the most FPL points of any Arsenal player, with nine goal involvements in 11 fixtures.
A change to how stoppage time is calculated in the Premier League this season should give Saka an advantage too, with the Gunners winger completing over 3,000 minutes of action last season. He is very rarely substituted, often completing the full 90 minutes.
Forward: Erling Haaland (£14.0m) - Manchester City
Erling Haaland set plenty of records in 2022/23 and those records will continue to fall this campaign, including being the highest owned player ever selected for Gameweek 1 of FPL. His ownership is at a huge 87% already and continues to grow.
I encourage FPL managers to not try to be clever by backing against Haaland, even with his increased price tag. It seems crazy to me that 13% of players in the game don’t have Haaland for Gameweek 1 - that’s around half a million managers of the teams registered at the time of writing.
He’s going to be overwhelmingly backed with the captaincy for his Gameweek 1 trip to Burnley on Premier League opening night this Friday and should he bang a hat-trick, non-owners FPL season will be derailed before it has even begun.
Haaland is the best goalscorer the Premier League has ever seen, with 36 goals last campaign. He’s on penalties and gunning down the Golden Boot for another season. Do not ignore him - he’s absolutely essential.
Most selected players
Below are the ten players who have the highest ownership percentage so far for Gameweek 1.
- Erling Haaland: 86.7%
- Bukayo Saka: 57.5%
- Pervis Estupinan: 52.5%
- Marcus Rashford: 46.9%
- Kaoru Mitoma: 39%
- Kieran Trippier: 34.3%
- Alphonse Areola: 30%
- Gabriel: 29.8%
- John Stones: 29.6%
- Luke Shaw: 27.1%