Gameweek 7: the projection column is just last month's form

Every one of the 468 fully available players in FPL's database carries an ep_next value identical to their form figure. That is worth stating plainly before anything else in this brief: the projection column is not a forecast of Saturday, it is a readout of what each player has already returned per match recently. Read it as momentum, not prophecy. With that caveat in place, the gameweek splits cleanly along one line — two clubs have been handed difficulty 2 at home, and the recent-returns table has pooled almost entirely in one of them.

The captain call

Maxim De Cuyper (Brighton, defender, £5.2m) tops the entire projection table at 10.5, on 38.8 per cent ownership, at home to Crystal Palace at difficulty 2. His teammate Pascal Groß (£6.1m) sits at 10.0 on 42.9 per cent in the same fixture. Both have 53 total points.

Erling Haaland (Manchester City, £15.7m) is the default. He is owned by 76.1 per cent and also has difficulty 2, at home to an Ipswich side rated difficulty 5 for the trip. But his projection is 6.0, because his recent returns are 6.0. Rayan Cherki (£7.9m) in the same City side reads 9.0 on 35.6 per cent at less than half the price.

The recommendation is Groß. He combines the second-highest figure on the board with the lowest fixture difficulty available, he is a midfielder rather than a defender so the attacking ceiling is not capped by a clean sheet, and at 42.9 per cent ownership the captaincy is not a wild deviation from the field. What makes it wrong: the number driving it is a form readout, and a Brighton side with ten players carrying injury flags — including Mitoma, Minteh, Tzimas, Ferguson and Azeez, all at zero per cent chance of playing — may not line up as it has been lining up. If Palace keep it tight, Groß returns two points and Haaland's 76.1 per cent ownership costs you nothing by comparison.

The differentials

Matheus Cunha (Manchester United, midfielder, £7.9m) is on 6.7 per cent ownership with a projection of 10.0 — joint-highest among midfielders — away at Leeds, a fixture rated difficulty 3 for United and difficulty 4 for the hosts. He has 36 points from 497 minutes.

Brian Brobbey (Sunderland, forward, £5.7m) reads 8.5 on 5.4 per cent, away at Bournemouth at difficulty 3. Twenty-four points from 399 minutes, and the only sub-£6.0m forward near the top of the table.

Luka Vušković (Brighton, defender, £5.1m) offers the same difficulty-2 Palace fixture as De Cuyper and Groß at 5.0 per cent ownership rather than 38.8. His projection is 8.0 and he has 40 points from 527 minutes. If the Brighton route is the right one this week, this is the cheap way onto it.

The traps

There is no player above 25 per cent ownership facing a difficulty 4 or 5 fixture this gameweek. The category is genuinely empty, which is unusual and worth knowing rather than papering over.

The nearest two sit just below that threshold. Dominic Calvert-Lewin (Leeds, £6.0m) is owned by 22.6 per cent, hosts Manchester United at difficulty 4, and projects 2.0 — he has already been moved out by 169,022 managers this week. James Tarkowski (Everton, £6.2m) is on 18.4 per cent and hosts Chelsea at difficulty 4, though his projection of 8.5 is the highest of any defender in a difficulty-4 fixture, so the case against him is the opponent alone.

Team news

Liverpool are the story. Dominik Szoboszlai (23.4 per cent owned) has a hamstring injury and a 25 per cent chance of playing. Alexander Isak (12.5 per cent) has a thigh injury, also 25 per cent. Cody Gakpo (6.8 per cent) is on 25 per cent with an ankle injury. Ryan Gravenberch is suspended until 25 October. Szoboszlai alone has been sold by 731,504 managers, the highest outbound figure in the game, and Isak by 473,467.

Elsewhere, Morgan Gibbs-White (Nottingham Forest, 13.1 per cent) is a 75 per cent doubt with a muscular injury, hosting Arsenal at difficulty 4. Kevin Schade (Brentford, 13.9 per cent) is 75 per cent with a shoulder injury against Liverpool at difficulty 4. Jarrad Branthwaite (Everton) is 75 per cent with a leg injury; Vitalii Mykolenko is 50 per cent.

The one thing

The decision most managers will get wrong is treating 10.5 next to De Cuyper's name as a prediction. It is not. It says he has been scoring at 10.5 per match recently, and the fixture happens to be a home game at difficulty 2 — those are two separate facts that happen to point the same way, not one model that has weighed both. The 784,298 managers who bought him this week, and the 776,994 who bought Cherki, are buying momentum at its most expensive point. Note that Bruno Fernandes, at £11.8m and 31.8 per cent ownership, reads 1.5 on exactly the same metric that makes De Cuyper look unmissable, and 582,973 managers have already sold him on it. The honest position this week is that the fixture data is clear — difficulty 2 for Brighton and City, no blanks, every club playing once — and the projection data is backward-looking. Weight the first more heavily than the second.