What does insisting on a player cost you?
Name the players you refuse to drop. This prices that decision in points, against the best legal squad the £100.0m budget can buy. Every figure is 2025/26 actual return at 2026/27 launch prices — a value check, not a forecast. The reasoning behind it is in our GW1 squad guide.
Players you will not drop
Up to eight. Club and price are on every row because five surnames repeat in this pool — two Fernandes and two Sarrs, all four of them midfielders.
What counts as scoring
In a normal gameweek only your starting eleven scores. Counting all fifteen compares squads; counting the eleven is closer to points anyone banks — and it changes the answer a lot. On the eleven, a player you lock is a player you play: he starts, and the four who do not are bought as cheaply as the rules allow. Two goalkeepers are the one thing no eleven can start, so the second one you lock takes the bench slot.
Pool: the 238 currently available players with at least 900 minutes last season, from a snapshot taken 2026-08-06. That floor and the availability check are ours, not FPL rules — they stop the solver filling a squad with players who did not play. The budget, the 2/5/5/3 shape and the three-per-club cap are the game's.
This is a value-efficiency check on last season's returns, and it is blind to everything that has happened since: transfers, lost places, new roles, promoted clubs, and who is actually fit on 21 August. It does not predict points and it is not advice. Prices are locked pre-season, so they are current; ownership and availability move daily and are as of the snapshot above.