Fantasy Premier League tips gameweek 2: Erling Haaland, Brenden Aaronson, William Saliba and more

How many of our picks are in your squad?

Erling Haaland

If you went with Harry Kane in your gameweek 1 squad, don’t be too hard on yourself. It is not often Tottenham score four and Kane blanks. Your prediction was right, the outcome was wrong. The question now is: do you stick or twist?

Our advice would be twist, if you can. Price changes already mean there is a 0.2m gap between Kane and Haaland. Unless you have money in the bank, you’ll need to take a hit to bring in the Manchester City striker for Saturday’s clash against Bournemouth.

Even then, it may be worth it. Haaland will likely be the most popular captain this weekend and though Bournemouth’s depleted defence picked up a clean sheet last time out, their chances of walking away from the Etihad unscathed are slim.

Brenden Aaronson

The sub-5.5m midfielder price point was a popular one leading up to last week’s deadline, with a lot of managers plucking for Pedro Neto. The Wolves winger blanked against Leeds but looked lively and deserves patience, as does Aston Villa’s Leon Bailey at 5.0m.

Still, Aaronson’s performance in the same game as Neto warranted attention. The new Leeds signing was largely overlooked pre-gameweek 1 but put in a lively performance and was unlucky not to come away with his first goal. One to watch.

William Saliba

Saliba’s man-of-the-match display in Arsenal’s win at Crystal Palace suggested that he is no stop-gap in the centre of Mikel Arteta’s defence while Takehiro Tomiyasu is out injured and Ben White is playing at right-back.

Whether he or White ultimately drop out on Tomiyasu’s return remains to be seen and is a note of caution against going early but as a 4.5m route into a defence with decent medium-term fixture, Saliba is beginning to look like the best option in his price bracket.

Aleksandar Mitrovic

A lot of us have been burned by Mitrovic in the past but under Marco Silva, Fulham are playing to his strengths. If they score, he is likely to be involved and last week’s brace answered some of the questions about whether he can deliver at this level.

With Liverpool out of the way, a couple of promising fixtures against Wolves and Brentford follow. There are a lot of forward options around all of a sudden, so if you move early on Mitrovic, make sure you definitely want to go there, but he looks like he will provide excellent value for his price.

Nobody

Yes, nobody. Year in, year out, if there is a week to do nothing, it’s this one. We never know less about the season ahead than we do before the start of the opening weekend. One week in, we only know slightly more.

This is a good week to roll your transfer and come back with two next week. Then you can either spend both, spend one and keep rolling the other, or make three or four changes for a -4 or -8 hit respectively.

Whatever you do, you’ll have another round of games and more data to base your decisions on. If you’re fortunate enough to be in a position where you can roll, you probably should.

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