FPL Gameweek 2 Review: Pedro Giveth. Pedro Taketh Away

Gameweek 2 was supposed to be the week where patience paid off.

After a Gameweek 1 that gave me plenty to think about, I went into the second deadline with two free transfers available and absolutely no intention of using either of them. I had spent enough time looking at the squad already, and after only one Gameweek I didn't think I had enough information to start making big changes.

Instead, I decided to trust the players I had picked, make a few changes to the starting XI and see what happened. Some of those decisions worked really well, some were less convincing, and a couple of them are going straight into the FPL folder marked "probably should have checked that."

The final result was 63 points, which was well below the Gameweek average of 81. That sounds worse than the Gameweek actually felt, mainly because one player managed to carry a fairly large part of the team on his back.

That player was João Pedro.

Pedro giveth. Pedro taketh away.

After failing to captain João Pedro in Gameweek 1, I decided I wasn't making the same mistake twice. He had already returned 11 points in the opening week, looked like one of the better picks in the squad and had done enough to earn my trust.

So this time, João Pedro got the armband. For most of the match, that looked like a very good decision. He scored, created a goal and picked up bonus points, giving me exactly the sort of captain return I had been hoping for.

Then, because apparently a normal captain haul wasn't entertaining enough, he scored an own goal.

There is something deeply funny about watching your captain score a goal, set one up and then decide that the opposition weren't having enough goals, so he would help them out as well. Somehow, though, I'm still calling the captaincy decision a success.

After missing out on his Gameweek 1 haul because I didn't give him the armband, getting 18 points from him this week feels like a correction. A slightly chaotic correction, admittedly, but a correction all the same.

Tarkowski did it again.

Tarkowski was another big positive from the Gameweek. I had brought him into the starting XI for Gabriel, mainly because I liked the fixture and wanted to give him a chance after his decent opening week.

He responded with 12 points, including a goal, a clean sheet and bonus points. For a defender, that's pretty much everything you could ask for, and the decision to start him over Gabriel looked completely justified at the time.

So I made the right decision, but naturally FPL found a way to make me question it anyway. Gabriel was sitting on my bench with eight points, meaning there was still a sizeable score sitting there that I hadn't used.

Had I started Gabriel instead, the Gameweek would have looked very different. I'm choosing to focus on the fact that Tarkowski outscored him rather than the fact that I left eight points sitting on the bench.

The bench was not my friend.

The Gabriel situation wasn't even the bench decision that annoyed me most. That honour belongs to Anderson, who started the Gameweek as a fitness doubt and therefore found himself moved out of my starting XI.

I replaced him with Le Fée, which seemed like a sensible move based on the information I had at the time. Then Manchester City announced their starting XI and, much to my delight, Anderson was actually starting.

Unfortunately, by that point I had already made my decision.

The frustrating part is that I didn't actually want Anderson out of the team. I was reacting to the fitness news, and that's exactly the sort of thing that can happen when you're trying to make decisions before the deadline.

Still, this is where checking the team news properly would have helped. Sometimes FPL really does come down to something as simple as knowing who is actually starting.

Raya was fine. Kelleher was not.

The goalkeeper decision was another one that had me thinking more than it probably deserved. Kelleher had outscored Raya in Gameweek 1, so there was already a little voice in my head asking whether I had picked the wrong goalkeeper.

I decided to stick with Raya, mainly because Kelleher was facing Leeds while I already had Leeds players elsewhere in the squad. Wilson and Calvert-Lewin were both involved in that fixture, so I didn't really fancy spending the afternoon hoping for a Kelleher clean sheet while also wanting my own attackers to return.

Raya finished with six points, while Kelleher managed just two, so for once the goalkeeper decision worked out exactly how I wanted. Raya wasn't spectacular, but six points is perfectly respectable and, more importantly, I didn't have to spend the whole match arguing with myself about which side I wanted to win.

One defender carried the group.

Tarkowski was easily the standout defender, but the rest of the back line was a lot less exciting. Guéhi had been one of my biggest positives from Gameweek 1 after scoring 10 points, but he managed only two this time around.

I'm not worried about Guéhi after one poor score. The opening week showed enough to convince me that the pick still makes sense, and I don't want to start chasing points every time a player blanks.

Virgil is a slightly different story. After two points in Gameweek 1, he managed just one this week. Spending £6.5m on a defender who has given me three points across two Gameweeks isn't exactly what I had pictured, but I'm still not ready to panic.

The defence wasn't a disaster, but Tarkowski was doing most of the work. The bigger concern is that Virgil hasn't started the season the way I hoped, although two Gameweeks still isn't enough for me to decide that the whole pick needs changing.

Midfield didn't exactly explode.

Midfield was probably the quietest part of the squad. Semenyo returned five points, Rice managed five and Le Fée finished on three. None of those scores are exciting, but none are enough on their own to make me want to start ripping the midfield apart.

Wilson is the player who stands out for the wrong reasons. After three points in Gameweek 1, he managed just one point this time around, leaving him with four points from the first two Gameweeks.

I still like the player, which is probably why the decision is more frustrating than simply deciding that he's a bad pick. At some point, though, the FPL points need to start matching the reasons I brought him into the squad in the first place.

The forwards were a mixed bag.

João Pedro obviously carried the forward line, but Calvert-Lewin also gave me something to smile about. After returning only one point in Gameweek 1, he bounced back with eight this week, which is exactly the sort of response I wanted to see.

Thiago was the opposite. He managed just two points, leaving him on only three from the opening two Gameweeks. That's becoming difficult to ignore, especially when I'm already trying to work out whether the underlying numbers are going to turn into actual FPL returns.

I'm not going to pretend two Gameweeks are enough to prove that a player is a bad pick, but Thiago is definitely making me work harder to justify keeping him than I expected.

63 points. That's not ideal.

The final score was 63 points, which left me 18 points below the Gameweek average of 81. My Gameweek rank was 8,213,707, so this wasn't exactly the sort of week that is going to send me flying up the overall rankings.

Still, the score doesn't tell the whole story. João Pedro gave me 18 points as captain, Tarkowski returned 12 and Calvert-Lewin added another eight. Those three players accounted for more than half of the entire team's score.

So where did the points disappear?

The main problem was simply that too many players failed to return enough. Wilson and Virgil managed one point each, while Guéhi and Thiago returned two apiece. When several players are producing those sorts of scores in the same Gameweek, the total is always going to suffer.

The bench didn't help either. Gabriel scored eight points while sitting there unused, and Anderson was moved out of the starting XI because of a fitness doubt before eventually starting anyway. Those are the little decisions that don't necessarily ruin a Gameweek on their own, but start to matter when the overall score is already struggling.

The biggest positive is that I didn't make a transfer simply because I was frustrated. The squad still has several players who have shown enough to deserve another chance, even if a few are now starting to make me nervous.

That's probably the biggest thing I'm taking from Gameweek 2. There were plenty of moments where I could have made a different decision, but hindsight makes every alternative look better than the decision I actually had to make before the deadline.

FPL is always going to give me something to worry about. A player has a fitness doubt, a defender blanks, a goalkeeper is facing one of your own attackers and suddenly you're trying to predict every possible outcome before Saturday lunchtime.

Sometimes the sensible thing is just to accept that some of those decisions are going to go wrong.

Gameweek 2 wasn't a complete disaster, but it certainly wasn't the result I wanted. Too many players returned too little, and there were enough points left on the bench to make the final score even more frustrating.

The good news is that there are still plenty of reasons not to panic. João Pedro looks like one of the best decisions I've made, Tarkowski has quickly become a very useful defender and Calvert-Lewin has finally given me the sort of return I was hoping for.

The rest of the squad now has something to prove.

I'm not rebuilding everything because of one bad Gameweek, but I'm also not going to ignore players who aren't giving me enough.

Somewhere between those two ideas is probably the sensible FPL approach.

Whether I actually manage to find that balance is another question.