We’ve put together our Scout Picks ‘bus team’ for Gameweek 2 of Fantasy Premier League (FPL).
Like all good buses, this one’s arrived a little later than timetabled this week.
In this initial selection, we select a first draft of our regular picks. They will then be finalised and published much closer to Friday’s deadline.
Plenty can change between now and then, with the UEFA Super Cup, Scout Squad nominations and a whole host of press conferences still to come.
But in the meantime, this ‘bus team’ – a term coined by the duo behind the Always Cheating podcast – article will discuss the players who are likely to be in the running.
We are, as ever, limited by certain restrictions in our selections:
- An £83.0m budget for our starting XI
- An overall squad limit of £100.0m
- No more than three players per team
GAMEWEEK 2 FIXTURES
A screenshot of the Gameweek 2 fixtures, sorted by ‘difficulty’ on our Season Ticker
THE LIKELY LADS
The two Manchester clubs, Newcastle United and Tottenham Hotspur face tricky tests against one another in Gameweek 2, while Arsenal travel to a Crystal Palace side that boasted some good underlying defensive numbers last season.
So, Liverpool v Bournemouth is the stand-out fixture of the week from a Fantasy perspective.
It takes something to knock Erling Haaland (£14.0m) off his perch in the weekly captain poll but Mohamed Salah (£12.5m) is currently doing that. Garnering 41% of the user vote (Haaland is on 35.7%), the Egyptian is also unsurprisingly Rate My Team’s top projected points scorer of Gameweek 2.
Salah had scored in six successive meetings against the Cherries before last season, somehow failing to add to that tally in 2022/23: an inconceivable blank in a 9-0 thrashing at Anfield preceded a Salah penalty miss on the south coast in March.
Despite the blank on Merseyside, Salah still averaged 6.8 points per home fixture last season.
This is a different Bournemouth outfit than we’ve seen before, of course. They’re a lot more front-foot and there’s a sense that they could cause Liverpool a few problems on Saturday.
But the Cherries still allowed a bang-average West Ham United side 12 shots in the box in Gameweek 1, while the exciting, attack-minded left-back Milos Kerkez (£4.5m) will have his defensive skills tested against Salah.
As for Haaland, he’s looking like even more of a weekly Scout Picks shoo-in with Harry Kane (£12.5m) off to pastures new. Trickier opponents Newcastle may be but the Norwegian striker delivered an attacking return both home and away against the Magpies in 2022/23, with Manchester City putting five goals past the division’s joint-best defence.
IN CONTENTION
The rest of this article is completely free to read but requires a Fantasy Football Scout user account for access – you can get yours at no cost here.
