Welcome back to this week's off the bench podcast from the Premier League. I'm Janney.

Hi, Jenny. This is Press. Good to see you, Pras. It's been a while. Well, look, Game Week 3 is over as we head into the international break. And we head into the closing of the transfer market. Of course, that's crucial for FPL. And this is a great time, I think, to reassess our teams and our decision making, our chip strategy moving forward. and in today's episode, Pras, we've got to talk about all of the major players we're at to date. The three blanks in a row for E Watkins, should we have Harland Oversala, is 442 back on the menu and more defender points up for grabs. But first and foremost, mate, how is your game week? And how has your start of the season been? I mean, the game because fine and the start of the season's been fine. Like, I, what do you judge a start of the season by? Because points are bunched up, you know, somebody could be ahead of you by 10 points, but have, you know, 4 million rank better than you. So I think start of the season has to be judged by, are you happy with your team?

And, you know, we'll talk about it as we go along this podcast. I'm not unhappy with it. I'm not delighted with it. So that's where I am. I got 52 points this week. But you know what? Like, the team is fine. I've got Liverpool players. I've got some Crystal Palace players. I've got Bruno, who scored for me as captain.

So the team looks okay, But the start of the season has been such that no one's really sure on who actually is a good pick. How is yours? Yeah, you define that so well. I think I'm in a similar boat. Like I'm not reading too much into the numbers. It's more, am I happy with my squad? am I happy with my transfers in the bank, my money in the bank, my plans moving forward?

And I think it's more, am I happy with my squad? Am I happy with my transfers in the bank,

my money in the bank, my plans moving forward? And I think it's a lot of yeses. So yeah, it's so lovely having FPL back. It does feel like when you look at a lot of the engaged managers, it's been a fairly slow start in terms of rank. But as you say, it's so bunched up. I had two good weeks.

I'm coming off the back of a bad week.

I, Captain Cunia, so that was a bad one.

I was kind of torn on two things this week. Do I bring in a man United attacker? And if I do, which one do I bring in? If I don't, I captain Jal Pedro. If I do, I bring in Bruno and captain him or Cunia and captain him. So both those 50-50 calls were really bad. But other than that, I'm happy I had Daniel Monoz to save my game week on the final game on Sunday evening. So I was happy with that. But yeah, I mean, some great games over the weekend. I'm looking forward to getting into them. I think there's some wider topics we need to touch on in today's show when we touch on Chip Strategy and 442 and defensive contribution points. But first and foremost, should we go game by game? Where should we start? Yeah, let's start with Chelsea, the lunchtime kickoff, right? And I don't own Zhao Pedro. And every game I watch, I'm thinking, why don't I own Zhao Pedro? Yeah, he's become like a key cog in the, well, key cog in Chelsea's team. And I don't think we, we necessarily knew that preseason. It was like, okay, this is Palmer's team and we'll see who fits around him. But he really has hit the ground running. And he's never been overly prolific. But boy, are we seeing that now. It's continued from the Club World Cup preseason. He he scored, and then obviously early on in the season as well. His record's been outstanding. And playing in the number 10 role might even be better for him than as Chelsea's number nine. But regardless where he is on the pitch, he's become a Kekog, a 90-minute man. He's scoring goals from corners a lot of the time. He didn't take the penalty, though, which was interesting. We all thought with no Palmer, Jao Pedro will take the pen and it was Enzo. But even without that, at like mid-price point, he feels like a no-brainer, doesn't he? I mean, he's a very good striker. I tend to like strikers who take penalties. It's just the thing I've done when I've played FPL for 15 years. But at 7 and a half, or what is he now, 7.7, he is great value. And you're right that when he plays the 10, which is what he used to do at Brighton, he's just really good at finding spaces and, you know, looking pivotal around the attack. He's the guy who makes things happen. So I love him as a player. I've loved owning him as a Brighton player. Look, he's doing very well at Chelsea. I, you know, whether I get him in or not depends on many other things. What I do with Watkins, what you do with Gokeres. I went for Mateta. I had a choice last week and I chose Mateta because of the penalty. Now, Mateta didn't match Xiaopedro, but it showed just just in one game week where Mateta had, you know, arguably the tougher fixture away to Villa. Of course, how Villa are doing is a different question. We'll come to them. But it just shows that, you know, I got the penalty and now he is home to Sunderland. So having set piece take a penalty takers sometimes also works out. Yeah, it absolutely does. And same sort of price point. Mattetta, Chris Wood on pens as well, same price point. The Mateta pen was interesting this week. We saw it with Bruno as well. How the bonus point system has changed this season.

The penalty in the BPS doesn't reward you a penalty goal in the same way as a normal goal. So we didn't see Mateta get bonus points. Ordinarily, he'd have been amongst it. Same with Bruno. He didn't get the three. He would have had the three bonus points if his penalty goal had the same weight as a normal goal.

But obviously, I think it's plus 10 in the BPS and a midfielder gets plus 18 for an open play goal or forward. I think

it's plus 22 or 24. So yeah, nice little tweak there to the bonus point system. We also saw

goal clearance off the line from Zhao Pedro. Another change to the BPS. There's only four or five

changes. They were two of them.

And Zhao Pedro then got three bonus. He would have only got two bonus without that clearance

off the line at the end. Shalaba would have got all three. And actually, Chelsea defense is worth

talking about because it's two clean sheets from three. Only a Lewis Piquetta Worldie has stopped

them keeping three clean sheets on the bounce.

Chelsea defence, whether you're on a Coquarela or a Shalaba or even a Sanchez in goal,

feels again like a really safe pick covering that backline.

Yeah, it does.

I'm not going to get into the Josh King ruled out goal.

...