Introduction

This season FPLbet will have a weekly series of forward look articles designed to try and improve your points and profits. Whether you are an avid FPL player or whether you like to dabble in Football Index, Footstock, Sportstack or traditional betting, this article should be your first port of call before picking your teams or placing any bets.

Last year Braveheart, an FPL veteran with 3 top 5k finishes in the past five years, hosted the FPLbet podcast which included a fixture-by-fixture forward look. That forward look returns in article form for the 2020-21 season. For the first two gameweeks we will look back at data from last year but from GW3 onwards, we be using only data from 2020-21. All data and information in this article is correct as of 16 September 2020.

The forward look - Gameweek 2:

Braveheart's GW1 Review

In my GW1 article, I announced my team with a caveat that it is subject to change if new information becomes known. Within hours of writing that article, Vinagre to Porto was heavily rumoured and so I decided to shuffle my defence and goalkeeper as a result. Out came McCarthy, James, Vinagre and Lamptey. In came Ramsdale, KWP, Taylor and Justin. These moves ended up leaving me seven points down from what my team could have been but I'm not too annoyed as I think it was the right call, saving me needing to waste a transfer earlier than planned on a defender to remove Vinagre who may be out of favour and on his way soon.

How did my team do?

• Ramsdale - 1 point,
• Alexander-Arnold - 1 point,
• Justin - 9 points,
• Walker-Peters - 1 point,
• Salah (C) - 40 points,
• Aubameyang - 7 points,
• Barnes - 3 points,
• Pereira - 2 points,
• Werner - 5 points,
• Ings - 2 points,
• Mitrovic - 1 point.

My bench was not needed due to the Vinagre shuffle described above but I ended up with a benched clean sheet for Mitchell. Again, I think I made the correct call in that benching (as Southampton was a trickier opponent on paper than Palace and West Brom).

I ended up with 72 points and so I'm sitting at 745k after the first gameweek which is a decent enough start. I'm happy with it and I have 0.5m in the bank to fund my move to a Man United player for GW2.

Braveheart's GW2 Reveal

In my initial squad, I saved 0.5m to upgrade one of Barnes or Ings to Greenwood or Martial. I would have liked Rashford (he would be my pick if money was no object - see the forward look to know the reason why - most big changes and chances created last season). Barnes was unlucky not to return either a goal or an assist and looked quite dangerous. Dangerous enough to earn another couple of weeks in my team (as Aubameyang to KDB is earmarked for GW3).

This week I've made my move today (Wednesday) and brought in Martial.
With that move made, my team for this week is as follows:

• Ramsdale v Aston Villa (a)
• Alexander-Arnold v Chelsea (a),
• Justin v Burnley (h),
• Walker-Peters v Tottenham (h),
• Salah v Chelsea (a),
• Aubameyang (captain) v West Ham (h),
• Barnes v Burnley (h),
• Pereira v Everton (a),
• Werner v Liverpool (h),
• Martial (vice-captaincy) v Crystal Palace (h),
• Mitrovic v Leeds (a).

For my captaincy, I have strongly considered putting it on Martial as a "welcome to the team". However, we do not know if United will hit the ground running yet (they should with the quality and fixtures they have) and so the safest option would be Aubameyang at home against a West Ham side that looked quite poor in their opening fixture. Aubameyang, on the other hand, looks relatively quiet in the first half but could have scored more than one goal - a clear sign that even when he is not entirely at the races, he can still return. That is the kind of player I liked captaining.

The above team is my current draft and I'm very keen on much of the team. The team is not set in stone until the deadline so please follow me at @FPLBraveheart on Twitter for any updates.

All the best and I hope everyone reading gets green arrows in GW2. But, most importantly, stay safe out there!