# The gameweek 5 draft squad: 3-4-3

> A legal 15 for 98.2m, with an XI projecting 65.3 points.

By the evmax model · 17 September 2026 · https://evmax.ai/fpl/gw5/wildcard/

The model's draft squad lines up 3-4-3 and costs 98.2m of the 100.0m budget, leaving 1.8m in the bank. The starting XI projects 65.3 points.The bench is deliberately cheap — four enablers that make the 15 legal so the spending sits in the XI. No club contributes more than three players, which is the squad rule that most often forces a compromise on the premium picks.

**Bottom line:** Build around this 3-4-3: 65.3 projected points for 98.2m.

## The data

| # | Player | Team | xPts | Price | Captain EV | Ceiling | Owned % |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Haaland | MCI | 8.02 | 15.5 | 16.05 | 17.06 | 72.7% |
| 2 | Saka | ARS | 6.93 | 9.5 | 13.86 | 16.59 | 12.5% |
| 3 | Gibbs-White | NFO | 6.90 | 8.0 | 13.80 | 16.75 | 13.3% |
| 4 | Barry | EVE | 6.67 | 5.6 | 13.35 | 14.96 | 6.8% |
| 5 | Cole Palmer | CHE | 6.35 | 9.7 | 12.71 | 16.10 | 26.8% |
| 6 | Calvert-Lewin | LEE | 6.26 | 6.0 | 12.52 | 14.78 | 23.5% |
| 7 | Barnes | NEW | 5.39 | 6.0 | 10.78 | 13.79 | 3.4% |
| 8 | Hall | NEW | 5.02 | 5.2 | 10.04 | 11.74 | 14.4% |
| 9 | Guéhi | MCI | 4.90 | 6.0 | 9.81 | 11.45 | 18.5% |
| 10 | N.Williams | NFO | 4.81 | 5.0 | 9.61 | 11.41 | 8.8% |
| 11 | Donnarumma | MCI | 4.02 | 5.5 | 8.04 | 8.89 | 7.7% |
| 12 | McConnell | LIV | 0.77 | 4.4 | 1.53 | 3.53 | 0.2% |
| 13 | Kipré | IPS | 0.65 | 3.9 | 1.30 | 3.22 | 0.9% |
| 14 | Matthews | CRY | 0.53 | 4.0 | 1.07 | 3.38 | 1.7% |
| 15 | Charlie Hughes | HUL | 0.00 | 3.9 | 0.00 | 0.00 | 0.2% |

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Method: Market odds (de-vigged) → Dixon-Coles scorelines → 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/gw5/wildcard.json
