Fantasy Premier League: Four Different Ways to Build Your £100m Squad

You’ve got £100m and need to assemble 15 players, sounds easy, but Fantasy Premier League managers know it’s anything but straightforward. This week, countless line-ups will be tweaked: Salah in, Haaland out… then swapped back again, Sport360NG reports.

To help navigate the chaos, FPL experts Pras, FPL Heisenberg, Gianni Buttice and Holly Shand share four contrasting approaches to shaping your squad. Remember, the deadline is Friday, 15 August at 18:30 BST, and Pras will host a special live Q&A from 15:30 for those last-minute dilemmas.

1. The “No Salah, No Haaland” Strategy

Bypassing the two priciest stars, Mohamed Salah and Erling Haaland, frees up funds to build a balanced squad stacked with other top performers such as Cole Palmer and Bukayo Saka.

This draft is based on a 3-4-3 formation, with budget players like Martin Dubravka and Granit Xhaka on the bench, leaving a strong front seven with no obvious weak link. Florian Wirtz, playing in the same attack as Salah, offers a form of “coverage” should Liverpool run riot, while the rest of the midfield and forward picks are all proven FPL point-getters.

2. The Gameweek 1 Bench Boost

Starting the season with a full bench boost has its perks:

It’s the only time you can wildcard and bench boost in the same week.

You can react to last-minute injury news before the deadline.

It removes the headache of maintaining a strong bench later in the season.

Early fixtures mean fewer midweek games, reducing rotation risk.

The trade-off? Team line-ups aren’t fully settled yet, so there’s some uncertainty around new signings and systems.

3. Big Hitters, Budget Defence

This approach packs in six premium players, talismans on set-pieces and guaranteed 90-minute men, while keeping defence ultra-cheap with £4m options from newly promoted sides.

The compromise? A fragile backline. But with clever rotation, you can usually limit it to playing just one budget defender per week. Notably, this draft avoids selecting both Salah and Haaland, whose combined price eats up almost a third of the budget.

4. The Salah & Haaland Combo

For those unwilling to miss out on either superstar, this build commits £28.5m to the pair, justified by their blistering starts to previous seasons. Salah has never blanked in gameweek one, averaging 12.25 points on opening weekends; Haaland averages 11 points.

With the new scoring for defensive contributions, it’s easier to fill the rest of the team with value picks. Nottingham Forest’s Elliot Anderson (£5.5m) is the budget enabler here, offering both attacking returns and strong defensive stats from last season.

Whichever route you choose, the key is committing to a structure and sticking with it, at least until the first inevitable wildcard temptation strikes.