# Haaland is worth a four-point hit in Gameweek 1

> Haaland projects +35.19 points over a replacement across six gameweeks — enough to clear the four points a hit costs.

By the evmax model · 4 August 2026 · https://evmax.ai/fpl/gw1/transfers/

Haaland projects 6.15 xPts this gameweek with a 14.67 ceiling — his 85th-percentile simulation, the realistic best case rather than a cap — and at £15.5m that buys +35.19 points over a replacement-level forward across six gameweeks, playing for MCI.

FPL gives one free transfer a gameweek and lets you bank them up to a maximum of five. Every transfer beyond the free ones costs four points, and selling a player whose price has risen hands 50% of that profit back as a sell-on fee — so churn costs money as well as points.

> Four points is the bar, and it is cleared over the window, not over one Saturday. A move worth two points now and one a week for five more weeks is worth taking; a move worth three points this weekend and nothing behind it is not.

One thing to be straight about: that gain is measured against a replacement-level forward — the median option at the position, worth 5.69 points across the same window. This page cannot see your squad, so the median is the stand-in for whoever you would sell. If the player going out is better than that, the gain is smaller than the table says and so is the case for paying four points.

On that baseline all 20 targets below clear four points, led by B.Fernandes (+43.21), Haaland (+35.19) and Thiago (+28.11) — which is what you would expect of the 20 best moves in the game. The bar bites further down the list, not at the top of it, so the question worth asking is not whether these names beat a median player but whether they beat the one you already own.

Timing, not just targets: LEE rate 2.8 on fixture difficulty up to Gameweek 6 and 5.0 from it. That is the sell window — the transfer that buys the kind fixtures is still in the squad when the run turns, and a free transfer spent on the way out costs nothing.

Every club named above plays all six gameweeks in the window, so none of these numbers is propped up by a fixture the reader will not get.

**Bottom line:** Buy Haaland — +35.19 points over a replacement-level pick across six gameweeks clears the four a hit costs, so take it this week rather than banking, unless the player you would sell is already close to him.

## The data

| # | Player | Team | Window gain | xPts | Price | Fixtures | Worth −4? |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | B.Fernandes | MUN | 43.21 | 7.42 | 12.0 | 6 | Yes |
| 2 | Haaland | MCI | 35.19 | 6.15 | 15.5 | 6 | Yes |
| 3 | Thiago | BRE | 28.11 | 5.62 | 8.0 | 6 | Yes |
| 4 | Saka | ARS | 27.61 | 4.89 | 9.5 | 6 | Yes |
| 5 | Watkins | AVL | 26.45 | 5.20 | 8.0 | 6 | Yes |
| 6 | Ndiaye | EVE | 25.21 | 5.04 | 6.0 | 6 | Yes |
| 7 | Gibbs-White | NFO | 24.35 | 4.92 | 8.0 | 6 | Yes |
| 8 | Virgil | LIV | 23.68 | 4.37 | 6.5 | 6 | Yes |
| 9 | E.Le Fée | SUN | 23.36 | 4.95 | 6.0 | 6 | Yes |
| 10 | Rice | ARS | 23.32 | 4.25 | 7.5 | 6 | Yes |
| 11 | Szoboszlai | LIV | 22.38 | 4.25 | 7.0 | 6 | Yes |
| 12 | Gabriel | ARS | 22.34 | 3.97 | 8.0 | 6 | Yes |
| 13 | Gakpo | LIV | 21.54 | 4.12 | 7.0 | 6 | Yes |
| 14 | Mbeumo | MUN | 21.29 | 4.06 | 8.0 | 6 | Yes |
| 15 | Enzo | CHE | 21.01 | 4.06 | 7.0 | 6 | Yes |
| 16 | Senesi | TOT | 20.80 | 4.45 | 6.0 | 6 | Yes |
| 17 | Tarkowski | EVE | 20.42 | 4.31 | 6.0 | 6 | Yes |
| 18 | Guéhi | MCI | 19.66 | 3.64 | 6.0 | 6 | Yes |
| 19 | Anderson | MCI | 19.07 | 3.65 | 6.5 | 6 | Yes |
| 20 | Calvert-Lewin | LEE | 18.15 | 4.12 | 6.0 | 6 | Yes |

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Method: Player scoring rates (goals, assists, defensive contributions) come from each player's own FPL data, not betting markets; match outcomes (de-vigged market odds, or a team-strength rating when a fixture isn't priced) drive 50k Monte-Carlo simulations, scored on the official Fantasy Premier League points table.
Data license: CC BY 4.0 (attribution: evmax, https://evmax.ai). Machine-readable JSON: https://evmax.ai/api/fpl/gw1/transfers.json