{"id":344673,"date":"2025-08-14T19:48:28","date_gmt":"2025-08-14T19:48:28","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/344673\/"},"modified":"2025-08-14T19:48:28","modified_gmt":"2025-08-14T19:48:28","slug":"fpl-generals-gameweek-1-team-no-salah-haaland-triple-forest","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/344673\/","title":{"rendered":"FPL General\u2019s Gameweek 1 team: No Salah\/Haaland, triple Forest!"},"content":{"rendered":"

With Gameweek 1 of Fantasy Premier League (FPL)\u00a0nearing, our pundits are starting to get closer to finalising their teams ahead of Friday\u2019s deadline. <\/strong><\/p>\n

FPL General\u00a0\u2013 who has three top 500 finishes to his name \u2013\u00a0is fully committed to going without Mohamed Salah (\u00a314.5m) and Erling Haaland (\u00a314.0m) this season. He shares his latest team thoughts here\u2026<\/strong><\/p>\n

Make sure you\u00a0sign up for the new season<\/a>\u00a0\u2013 get an extra 5% off with code TEAMSCOUT5 \u2013 to get all the Member-only articles, tools and features to make 2025\/26 your best FPL campaign yet!<\/strong><\/p>\n

\"General<\/p>\n

The calm before the storm\u2026\u00a0<\/p>\n

As I sit down to write this piece, there are just over 24 hours to go until the Gameweek 1 deadline. The research is done, the Fixture Ticker<\/a> has been studied to death and DEFCON analysis from previous seasons <\/a>is complete. Is my team settled? Absolutely not!\u00a0<\/p>\n

VAN DIJK + MUNOZ DOUBTS\"FPL<\/p>\n

The same thing happens every year. I have a few players in every draft during the summer, then, when the deadline approaches, they make way for the first time as I enter the overthinking phase of Gameweek 1 planning.<\/p>\n

Two such players are Virgil van Dijk<\/strong> (\u00a36.0m) and Daniel Munoz<\/strong> (\u00a35.5m). I like both picks as potential season-keepers but Liverpool\u2019s first three games are tricky and Crystal Palace play European qualifiers on August 21 and 28, which gives me pause on selecting any of their assets to begin with. I\u2019m now asking myself, can I go without these two and pick them up later?<\/p>\n

TRIPLE FOREST DEFENCE\"Sels<\/p>\n

I\u2019m keen to go against the grain at times this season. Something I\u2019ve been strongly considering is triple Nottingham Forest defence for the first six Gameweeks (at least). I don\u2019t think too many managers will do that. No Mohamed Salah <\/strong>(\u00a314.5m), no Erling Haaland <\/strong>(\u00a314.0m) and a triple-up in defence, what could possibly go wrong?!?<\/p>\n

PORRO COMES IN\"pro-pundit-article<\/p>\n

Tottenham Hotspur full-back Pedro Porro<\/strong> (\u00a35.5m) has made his first draft appearance. Seeing Spurs set up with wing-backs (this won\u2019t happen all the time) and Porro taking set pieces against PSG on Wednesday night reminded me how much I love the guy as a Fantasy pick.<\/p>\n

Spurs have got good fixtures, he\u2019s got various routes to points and I trust Thomas Frank to make them more solid defensively this season. I think he\u2019s going to make it in. I haven\u2019t ruled out starting with a 4-4-2 setup, which could see one of Virgil or Munoz come back in.\u00a0<\/p>\n

GAKPO OR GAK-NO?\"FPL<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"With Gameweek 1 of Fantasy Premier League (FPL)\u00a0nearing, our pundits are starting to get closer to finalising their…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":344674,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[122398,122399,105739,79,16,15],"class_list":{"0":"post-344673","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-sports","8":"tag-fpl-general-team","9":"tag-gameweek-1-reveal","10":"tag-gameweek-1-team","11":"tag-sports","12":"tag-uk","13":"tag-united-kingdom"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/115028853415346984","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/344673","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=344673"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/344673\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/344674"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=344673"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=344673"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=344673"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}