After three successive blanks, Az from FPL Blackbox is here to give you tips on what you should do with Erling Haaland ahead of FPL Gameweek 9.
FPL Tips Gameweek 9: What To Do With Erling Haaland
Oh, Erling. After blitzing 10 goals in his first 5 games, the unthinkable has happened. Haaland has a hattrick of blanks, leaving those who transferred him in Gameweek 6 scratching their heads as to what all the hype was about.
At 73.5% ownership and the consistently the most captained player, has FPL’s most expensive every player become a bit of a liability? What should we be doing with him?
Below are the predicaments FPL managers find themselves in and the options available to them.
What to do if you DON’T currently own Haaland?
If you’ve made it this far without Haaland, do you need to bring him in this week? Particularly if the moves will cost you transfer points as you rip up your team to bring him in?
The fixture suggests that you must. Southampton have conceded 18 goals so far this season, with only Wolves (23) conceding more. They have no clean sheets and have been a mess at the back, with individual errors compounding the huge number of chances they are giving opponents in games.
After this gameweek, however, the fixtures stiffen. Two away games at South Coast teams in Bournemouth and Brighton may present quite stern challenges given how they have started the season. Then it’s games against likely top 6 opponents in Spurs and Forest. Meanwhile, evergreen Mohamed Salah (£12.6m) has two home games before playing Southampton at St. Marys. Is it unthinkable for him to outscore Haaland over this period? Certainly not. In fact, this week a certain Cole Palmer (£10.8m) plays Newcastle at home, who are also struggling defensively. Palmer represents a strong captaincy alternative to Haaland if you are brave against to back against the Norwegian. Make it through this week, and I don’t think Haaland is a “must own” given the emergence of premium options such as Palmer, Salah, Ollie Watkins (£9.1m), Heung-min Son (£9.9m) and Bukayo Saka (£10m; fitness depending).
What to do if you DO currently own Haaland?
Haaland is surely the number one captaincy option this week, despite decent alternatives in Palmer, Son, and maybe even Salah with Arsenal’s current injury/suspension list.
Selling or benching him is obviously off the cards this week, but is there a case to take him out in the next few weeks? This question is probably moot if he bangs a hattrick in against Southampton, but another low-scoring Gameweek will see many FPL managers losing patience with the big man.
It’s never a “good time” to sell Haaland. We know what he’s capable of, but spreading the funds around your team can mitigate the risk, especially given we have good options elsewhere.
I’m not panicking yet and still feel like Haaland will score goals over the next 4 fixtures and overcome this blip. Gameweek 13, when he goes away to Liverpool, could be a time to reassess the situation and see if funds can be redistributed, with both Chelsea and Arsenal going into fantastic runs of fixtures from this period.
If that still doesn’t take your fancy, I can’t see anyone parting ways with Haaland until Gameweek 23 at the earliest, where a tough run of five games will see many looking elsewhere with captaincy and perhaps deciding Haaland is dispensable. This is the most likely route for me, and I’ll almost certainly be taking him out of my team at this point, simply because £15m+ is too much for a player who I won’t be captaining. But if Haaland can rediscover his golden touch and start plundering the goals again, he’d be back in contention as a season keeper. Let’s see what happens over the next few weeks.
