FPL Gameweek 3 is the first awkward week of the season. Three chips are live at the same time, the transfer window has just slammed shut, and two Gameweeks of data have already turned half the template on its head. The GW3 deadline is 18:30 BST on Friday 4 September, and Ipswich against Liverpool kicks off two hours later.
Most managers are picking from three paths this week: play the wildcard now and attack Manchester City at home to Coventry, hold the wildcard and free hit instead, or roll transfers and put the triple captain armband on Erling Haaland. All three are defensible. Below is what separates them.
FPL Gameweek 3 fixtures and deadline
| Date | Fixture | Kick-off (BST) |
|---|---|---|
| Fri 4 Sep | Ipswich Town v Liverpool | 20:00 |
| Sat 5 Sep | Newcastle United v Bournemouth | 12:30 |
| Sat 5 Sep | Brentford v Sunderland | 15:00 |
| Sat 5 Sep | Brighton v Leeds United | 15:00 |
| Sat 5 Sep | Fulham v Crystal Palace | 15:00 |
| Sat 5 Sep | Manchester City v Coventry City | 15:00 |
| Sat 5 Sep | Nottingham Forest v Tottenham | 15:00 |
| Sat 5 Sep | Hull City v Aston Villa | 17:30 |
| Sun 6 Sep | Everton v Manchester United | 14:00 |
| Sun 6 Sep | Arsenal v Chelsea | 16:30 |
Two things stand out. City host a promoted side on a Saturday afternoon, which is the fixture every chip in the game is pointed at. And Arsenal host Chelsea on the Sunday, which is the first real test of the season for both and the reason a lot of wildcard drafts are benching Chelsea attackers in the same week they buy them.
The Champions League restarts immediately after GW3, so this is also the last weekend before rotation becomes a permanent tax on your squad. Friday press conferences land in time for the deadline, so there is no need to confirm anything before then.
Triple Captain GW3: is Haaland at home to Coventry the spot?
Haaland (£15.5m) started GW2 with two goals at Selhurst Park in a 4-0 win. He now gets a newly promoted side at the Etihad with no midweek game behind him. On paper this is exactly the profile that has produced triple captain hauls in previous seasons: fresh striker, home banker fixture, early in the campaign when he tends to score in bursts.
The case for playing it now
City have not played since Friday of last week, so Haaland goes into this fully rested. Their Champions League opener at Porto is on the Tuesday after, and the Manchester derby in GW4 is not until the Sunday, which gives a five-day turnaround. Minutes risk from fixture congestion is close to zero this week.
Coventry also have a problem down their left. City exploited that side repeatedly in the win at Palace, and it is the flank Antoine Semenyo will attack from the right. If City go two or three up early, the goals tend to keep coming rather than stop.
The case for holding
The counterargument is the Porto trip. Enzo Maresca is an unknown quantity for how he manages Haaland’s minutes, and if City lead 3-0 or 4-0 with a Tuesday away tie coming, a 70th minute substitution is a live possibility. Under the previous regime Haaland was rarely pulled early. That assumption no longer holds.
There are later windows. City host Ipswich in GW7, but that follows a midweek tie with PSG, so it may be the wrong side of a rotation call. GW16 at home to Hull looks cleaner because it comes after a League Cup week, which is a midweek City can rest players in. Hull are also currently the worst-projected side in the league despite two wins from two.
The verdict
Play it. The fixture is right, the rest is right, and the alternative windows all carry a European tie attached. A single roll of the dice on a striker who scores early does not need 90 minutes to pay off. Your first-half chips also expire at the GW19 deadline on 2 January, so the window is narrower than it feels in September.
Wildcard GW3: the drafts are converging on the same ten players
Wildcard GW3 exists to attack the City fixture while there is still an entry point on the two best defences in the game. With only two Gameweeks of data, the pool of players anyone can justify is small, so most drafts look similar. That is not a criticism. It is a sample-size problem.
Ten picks appear in almost every version:
Riccardo Calafiori and Ezri Konsa (£4.4m) in the Arsenal defence, one Newcastle full-back, Pascal Gross and Sangaré at £5.5m each, Dominik Szoboszlai, Rayan Cherki, then João Pedro (£7.7m), Haaland and Yoane Wissa (£6.1m) up top. Everything else is where drafts differ: your fifth defender, your goalkeeper split, and whether you spend up on Bukayo Saka or Cole Palmer (£9.6m).
Doubling up on the Arsenal defence has stopped being a strategy and started being hygiene. Arsenal sit inside the top five for clean sheet odds in every one of the next six Gameweeks, including this one, and Konsa at £4.4m is the cheapest route in once he settles into the side. Tripling up is defensible given how crowded the midfield and forward options are.
Gross and Sangaré do the same job at the same price for different reasons. Both hit defensive contribution points regularly, both take set pieces, and both are cheap enough that you can bench one in a bad week without it hurting. Defensive contribution scoring has turned £5.5m into the best value bracket in the game.
The two picks you should plan to sell
Cherki (£7.7m) and Nico O’Reilly are the flaky ones, and everyone building a GW3 wildcard knows it.
Cherki scored twice at Palace and has risen twice already. He also admitted afterwards that he was close to being substituted at half time. He has completed five full 90s in 35 Premier League appearances and has never played more than 2,441 minutes in a season. With Enzo Fernández and Iliman Ndiaye now through the door at City, his ceiling is high and his floor is a 55th minute hook. Buy him for Coventry and have a plan to move him to Morgan Rogers (£7.5m) or Palmer within two or three weeks.
O’Reilly has played three different positions in three games and blanked twice. Josko Gvardiol (£5.6m) has two attacking returns and is a million cheaper. The argument for O’Reilly is narrow and honest: he gets Coventry at home in GW3 and Sunderland at home in GW5, he stations himself inside the box, and his ceiling in those two fixtures is a brace. Take those two weeks, then downgrade and put the money somewhere permanent.
Bruno Fernandes: keep or cash in?
Bruno’s GW2 was the highest-scoring week of his career: a hat-trick, an assist, 23 points, eight shots and three chances created, playing as a false nine with Matheus Cunha behind him. That is a hard performance to sell into.
The case for selling is arithmetic rather than emotion. He costs roughly £3m more than Palmer. Over the next ten Gameweeks that £3m spent elsewhere, on an Arsenal defender or a second premium forward, is likely to out-earn the gap between the two midfielders. United’s home run in GW4, GW6 and GW8 is City, Tottenham and Bournemouth, and Chelsea’s is Hull, Bournemouth and Tottenham, so the fixture edge is thin.
The case for keeping is that no other player in the game produces his floor. A quiet Bruno week is still an assist, a defensive contribution and two bonus. If you sell, keep the route back open: most squads holding O’Reilly and Palmer are two moves from Bruno at any time.
Free Hit GW3: who it actually suits
Free Hit GW3 is stronger than people expect. Liverpool travel to Ipswich, City host Coventry, Brentford host Sunderland and Brighton host Leeds. There is enough upside to build a completely different XI without touching your squad.
The structure most free hit drafts settle on is a triple City stack, a triple Brentford stack and a Liverpool double. Brentford’s defence has produced defensive contribution points in volume already, Kristoffer Ajer (£4.5m) and Nathan Collins both returned against Leeds, and no Europe means settled line-ups. Up top, Haaland and Alexander Isak pick themselves.
Free Hit GW3 makes sense if you already hold two or three Chelsea attackers, because it lets you skip the Arsenal fixture without selling them, and it postpones the wildcard until you have seen how the deadline day signings settle. It is a delay tactic, and this week it is a good one.
One argument to shut down: free hitting in GW3 so you can wildcard in GW4 is a waste of a chip. If your GW4 team needs a rebuild, wildcard now. There are better free hit windows coming, including GW12 when Arsenal play City and a chunk of the template has a bad fixture at the same time.
Wildcard or free hit? A short checklist
Ask yourself four questions before you click anything.
Is your GW4 team already good without a chip? If yes, free hit is live. If your squad needs work whether you free hit or not, wildcard.
Would a GW5 or GW6 wildcard draft look materially different from a GW3 one? If the gap is six or seven expected points, wait. If it is two or three, take the earlier week and stop chasing information.
Are you carrying two free transfers? Wildcarding with transfers banked is much stronger than wildcarding after burning them, because you go into the international break with flexibility rather than a locked squad.
Do you have the nerve to go without Haaland in GW4 and GW5? A free hit this week means answering that question honestly.
No chip in GW3? These are the moves that matter
If you are rolling through, the priority list is short.
Christos Tzolis is the problem most squads share. He was hooked at half time at Villa Park after Matty Cash spent 45 minutes in his pocket, and even if he starts against Chelsea, a 60th minute substitution is now the realistic ceiling. If your wildcard is far away, move him on. If you are wildcarding within two weeks, bench him and save the transfer.
The Newcastle full-back call is between Lewis Hall and Malick Thiaw. Hall hit 13 defensive contributions and 52 BPS against Tottenham, which included two clearances off the line, and he takes set pieces. Thiaw is the more durable pick with the better injury record and picks up his numbers in harder games. The tidy answer: if you are building a squad you can rotate, take Hall for the easy fixtures. If you need one Newcastle defender to play every week until GW10, take Thiaw. Newcastle face only two of last season’s top 10 in the next eight Gameweeks, and both are at St James’ Park.
For a fourth or fifth defender, Maxim De Cuyper (£4.7m) is playing left wing for Brighton while Kaoru Mitoma is out, which is an odd but real source of ceiling at that price. John Egan (£4.0m) has hit defensive contributions in both games and is the pick of the cheap enablers.
FPL Gameweek 3 FAQs
When is the FPL Gameweek 3 deadline?
18:30 BST on Friday 4 September 2026, two hours before Ipswich host Liverpool.
Should I triple captain Haaland in GW3?
Yes, if you have the chip and no reason to doubt his fitness. City host Coventry with no midweek game beforehand and a five-day gap to the Manchester derby. The main risk is an early substitution with the Porto trip in mind.
Is a GW3 wildcard better than a GW4 wildcard?
A GW3 wildcard lets you attack City against Coventry and buy the Arsenal defence before further price rises. A GW4 wildcard buys two more Gameweeks of information on the deadline day signings. If your current squad is playable this week, waiting costs little.
Can I play a wildcard and a triple captain in the same Gameweek?
No. FPL allows only one chip per Gameweek, so the GW3 decision is a straight choice between the three. Your first set of chips also has to be used before the GW19 deadline on 2 January 2027, after which a fresh set is issued for the second half of the season. The official FPL rules and the Premier League’s 2026/27 chips explainer both confirm the detail.
Who should I captain in GW3 if I am not triple captaining?
Haaland at home to Coventry is the standard pick. Bruno Fernandes at Everton and Palmer at Arsenal are the differentials, though Arsenal have not conceded a big chance all season.
Should I sell Bruno Fernandes after his 23-point haul?
Only if the money buys you something permanent. Selling him to fund an Arsenal defender plus a premium forward is coherent. Selling him to sidegrade is not.
What to watch before the deadline
Three things will move the needle between now and Friday evening. Whether Konsa starts against Chelsea, whether Tzolis is trusted from the first whistle again, and whether Maresca gives any indication about Haaland’s minutes with Porto four days away. Friday press conferences arrive in time for the 18:30 deadline, so there is no reason to confirm a chip on Wednesday.
Set your team, then leave it alone. The managers who lose points in a week like this are the ones who click the wildcard on Thursday and spend Friday wishing they had waited an hour.
Keep an eye on the price lists overnight as well, because Cherki and Konsa are both moving. For the wider calendar, the Premier League’s chip strategy explainer sets out the season-long windows