The gameweek report

Ivo takes the throne as Clarky wins again and Mitchell watches from the bench

Ivo leads by five, Clarky claims another weekly high score, and Candace takes the Bench of Shame. Twelve managers, two new arrivals and one Pork Chop.

The 2026/27 season · GW03 · Final edition

The league table

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#		TEAM / MANAGER	GW3	TOTAL	MOVE
1		This is the Wirtz! Ivo Ferreira	52	188	▲1
2	RD	Red Djed Redemption Ryan Hindle	33	183	▼1
3		sendmetocoventry ian gpowell	52	178	▲2
4	TB	The Balon D'orgus Dela Avle	43	176	—
5		Green Street United Robert Ayres	40	175	▼2
6		CVD FC Candace Van Damme	56	170	▲2
7	CC	clarkys cloggers Paul Clark	68	169	▲3
8		Boo Tottenham Aubrey Hindle	50	166	▼1
9		Park the Bus Hailey Hindle	40	158	▼3
10	A	ABCDEFC Tineka Bishop	53	152	▲1
11	MA	Mikel Arteta's Army Peter Mossad	46	149	▼2
12		AFC Kincardine Steve Fletcher	37	109	—

The gameweek report

By the time the football stopped, Ryan Hindle had lost the lead, Ivo Ferreira had acquired it, and Paul Clark had once again made the rest of the league wonder why they bothered turning up for the opening weekend. FPL has signed off the paperwork, so Ivo can claim the summit and Paul can collect another weekly honour. The muttering about Clarky is fully operational.

There is something deeply irritating about a man who misses the first Gameweek and then wins both of the next two. Paul’s approach to catching up appears to involve absolutely no respect for the people who arrived on time. This was no one-man rescue job, either: Mitchell and Isak gave his side substance around the familiar reassurance of Haaland wearing the armband. Clarkys cloggers now sits close enough behind Green Street United for Rob to hear the studs coming down the tunnel.

At the front, Ivo chose his moment to press the big button. Triple Captain Haaland supplied the weight behind a change of leader, turning Ryan’s comfortable-looking cushion into a five-point deficit. It was a decisive intervention rather than a flawless weekend; there was enough talent sitting on Ivo’s bench to organise a separate promotion campaign. Still, football has never required its winners to be tidy. Just ahead when somebody checks the scoreboard.

Ryan’s response lacked conviction, most obviously in the captaincy. Palmer was entrusted with defending the summit and supplied precious little protection. Behind him, Ian Gpowell has worked his way back into third, although the transfer bill takes some of the gloss off the recovery. Dela Avle remains in the thick of it without having gone shopping at all. Amid the urge to rip everything up after a disappointing afternoon, there is something to be said for leaving the furniture where it is.

The Haaland appreciation society

The armband restored a familiar social order this week: the Haaland contingent enjoyed themselves, while most of the alternatives were left explaining the thinking behind the decision. Ian, Candace, Paul, Hailey, Tineka and Peter all took the conventional route. Ivo bought the same ticket and paid for first class, collecting 27 captain points through the Triple Captain. The chip added nine beyond ordinary double captaincy, a useful distinction when judging how much of his new lead came from spending it.

Rob’s excursion into Szoboszlai territory did little to disturb the Norwegian consensus. Dela’s faith in Thiago was similarly unrewarded, while Ryan and Steve shared the least productive captaincy calls with Palmer and João Pedro. There was no secret route round the back this time. The obvious door was open, and several managers insisted on climbing through a window.

Aubrey Hindle did at least grant Haaland a place in the starting XI, which counts as progress after the earlier bench episode. Unfortunately, Bruno Fernandes retained the armband and failed to justify the loyalty. Boo Tottenham has therefore moved from leaving Haaland out to leaving part of his return uncollected. The rehabilitation continues, but nobody should cancel the follow-up appointment.

Bench of Shame

Candace Van Damme had one of the strongest weeks in the league and still managed to provide the prosecution with its best evidence. CVD FC climbed despite leaving Mitchell on the bench, where his haul became an exceptionally irritating spectator sport. Paul selected him and won the week. Candace owned him and watched. The difference between those two verbs is where an awful lot of fantasy football misery lives.

The Bench of Shame goes to Candace for 23 recorded points in reserve, narrowly ahead of Ivo. Our new leader clearly believes in strength in depth, although he may have confused that with hiding useful footballers from his own score. Winning the league and winning this award are not mutually exclusive; Ivo appears determined to keep both departments busy.

Hailey Hindle also left Mitchell waiting for instructions as Park the Bus slipped backwards. When your best source of relief is sitting among the substitutes, the team name begins to sound less like a tactical philosophy and more like a description of the problem. With processing complete, that bench regret is now official.

These are recorded bench totals, not a sack of points that could simply be tipped into the starting XI. Formation, goalkeeper restrictions and substitutions still apply. But no amount of procedural small print makes watching your defender haul from the sidelines an enjoyable way to spend a weekend.

Pork Chop of the Week — Ryan

Being knocked off the top does not automatically earn the Pork Chop. Doing it while producing the league’s lowest weekly score makes a rather more persuasive application. Ryan’s 33-point return puts the pig in his custody, and Palmer’s captaincy features prominently in the supporting documentation.

This was less a spectacular implosion than an afternoon in which the attacking threat never really arrived. The defence did enough to keep the situation from becoming thoroughly indecent, but there is only so much covering work your defenders can do while the armband contributes next to nothing. Ryan remains close enough to reclaim the lead. That will not prevent the league enjoying his temporary eviction.

Steve Fletcher escapes the award, though AFC Kincardine had little cause for celebration. Haaland and Guéhi offered some resistance to a week undermined elsewhere, including a captaincy call on João Pedro that achieved very little. Steve and Paul both began in GW2; their subsequent journeys are already making that shared starting point feel like an administrative coincidence rather than a meaningful comparison. Steve needs a response before the view ahead becomes any more distant.

Business in the transfer market

Ian was the only manager willing to pay a GW3 transfer fee, and his shopping had the mixed character of a deadline-day trolley dash. Guéhi made an immediate contribution, Cherki offered no scoring improvement over Enzo, and M. Sangaré supplied nothing after replacing Tzolis. The newcomers’ combined player scores edged those of the departures, but not by enough to cover the four-point hit. That is a narrow comparison of this week’s returns, not a verdict on the long-term business; nevertheless, the receipt deserves keeping.

Paul, meanwhile, won the week after swapping Mbeumo for the lower-scoring Cherki. It is an inconvenient result for anyone hoping to award themselves a recruitment genius badge on the strength of the league table. Sometimes the rest of the team wins despite your best intervention. Aubrey has a cleaner immediate case for satisfaction: bringing in Tzolakis gave him a productive goalkeeper where Dubravka would have supplied nothing.

Ivo’s move for Ajayi made a modest contribution to a much bigger weekend. Ryan’s Wissa purchase offered only the smallest immediate improvement, while Candace’s two free moves were overshadowed by what she already had sitting on the bench. Hailey also used two free transfers, but her arrivals did little to arrest the slide. Dela, Rob and Steve stayed out of the GW3 market altogether. Inactivity, as Rob will shortly discover, does not confer immunity from the column.

The major renovations belonged to Tineka Bishop and Peter Mossad, who both played Wildcards. Tineka’s rebuilt side at least moved in the right direction, with Le Fée and Semenyo helping ABCDEFC climb. Matching her previous weekly score after that much work is faintly comic, but this time the same number bought her a better result. The league had become a less forgiving place for everyone else.

Peter’s overhaul was less immediately rewarding. There were useful contributions from his new goalkeeper and Maatsen, but Mikel Arteta’s Army still slipped backwards. His transaction log even includes buying Palmer and then moving him on for Saka before the deadline: the sort of recruitment process in which the welcome photograph barely has time to dry. Both Wildcards were hit-free; the logs record 13 transactions for Tineka and 12 for Peter, despite their event-history transfer counters showing zero.

Under scrutiny: Green Street United

The Commissioner’s office would presumably prefer to describe this as a period of consolidation. The league table has chosen a less diplomatic interpretation. Green Street United slipped out of third after a week that never quite gathered momentum, leaving Rob looking upwards at Dela and Ian and increasingly aware of the traffic behind.

There was no hit to explain away, no chip experiment to contextualise and no frantic recruitment drive to blame. This was the existing side, sent out to do a job, returning with 40 points against a captured FPL average of 51. Le Fée supplied the liveliest contribution, while the armband on Szoboszlai failed to provide the extra push. In hindsight, giving it to Le Fée would have added five with everything else unchanged. Hindsight remains the league’s most consistently successful manager.

Nor was this primarily a bench disaster. The problem was closer to the familiar footballing complaint that a side had plenty of participants and too few people changing the game. Rob remains within reach of the leading group, but he no longer has the luxury of looking only ahead. Candace and Paul are close enough to turn another quiet weekend into an awkward one. The Commissioner may wish to schedule the next press conference for after he has checked their scores.

Fresh arrivals, fresh targets

A welcome to Portia Pavia’s Vermilion Bird and Angelo Pavia’s Devastators FC, both listed in FPL’s new-entry records on Sunday evening. They have arrived just in time to discover that joining Educating Pork involves considerably more public scrutiny than the registration process suggests. Devastators FC is a particularly confident name to bring into a league where choosing the wrong captain can devastate your own weekend. We await the evidence with interest.

Neither appears in the captured GW3 standings yet, so the table above remains the existing 12 managers. There are no detailed scores or picks for the newcomers in this file; their football can do the talking once those arrive. For now, welcome aboard. Clarky has already demonstrated that arriving late need not prevent you becoming deeply irritating.

GW3 honours board

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What we’ve learned

The temptation after a week like this is to find one grand lesson and apply it to everything. Buy the player who hauled. Never take a hit. Always captain Haaland. Then Paul wins despite a transfer that reduced his immediate return, Candace climbs while benching her best scorer, and Ivo takes the lead with enough points in reserve to irritate himself. Competence and good fortune remain on speaking terms, but they are not the same person.

The next chapter has some proper questions waiting for it. Ryan must respond to being caught. Ivo must defend a lead after spending his Triple Captain. Tineka and Peter need their renovated squads to justify the disruption over more than one weekend. Rob needs to rediscover some forward motion before Clarky’s late arrival becomes everybody else’s problem.

And somewhere in this league, somebody is going to open the team-selection screen, look at Mitchell and face a decision that now comes with an unreasonable amount of editorial attention. The paperwork is finished. Whether anybody has learned a bloody thing is a question for Gameweek 4.