The last pod before the season is here.

We discuss final preseason friendlies reveal our almost locked teams,

and you can probably guess which of us is considering a Harland and Sala draft.

Well, this is it.

Game Week 1 is finally almost here. I hope you got your teams ready because the game week gets underway on Friday night. Liverpool taking on Bournemouth. Here is your first warning. It's a 6.30pm deadline. And if you're going to forget any deadline this season, don't make it this one, Julian. Loran, I'm looking at you. Yes, this is the final FPL pop for it. All gets underway, so Kelly Summers, Jules and Sam Bonfield back here with one more, hopefully, set of helpful tips and insights. I think we're all panicking, actually, though, aren't we, Jules? Yeah, we are. I mean, I think we're all excited, very excited, but they're just, this year, there's so many options. There's so many things that you need to consider hesitate on Salah Harland, a lot of good midfielder, who do you play up front? There's no ESAC, obviously, because he's not going to play, certainly for now. So there's a lot of very exciting things, but that's why maybe if you're not just ready yet, it's okay. You still have until Friday evening to be ready.

Sam, has it been such a busy week for you with sort of FPL deadlines that you're just joining us in between? If you lived in your car for three days. For those that are watching on YouTube, it's very obvious. This car is not moving. Sam is not driving. You are very much still, but you are in your car. Let's just address the elephant in the room. Yeah, we've had a bit of a nightmare this morning, haven't we? So my hotel room, the Wi-Fi, has completely died. So now I'm sat in my car, in a random car park in Liverpool. But there you are. That's the commitment to this podcast. I will sit in my car and record it.

Thank you very much. We do appreciate it. Yeah, Sam was at the Premier League launch day yesterday, offering tips and advice to people that were there. And hopefully she's going to do that for us now as well. But I'm just going to remind you very quickly of the Pod Mini League code. There's lots of you in there, but hopefully it's going to be even more come the deadline.

And, of course, you can join whenever.

The code is XY6XPL. Now, all we have to go off as we do enter this season open is, of course, the preseason games that we have seen.

But I said it on last week's show that actually what happened in that final weekend would

probably really shape our thinking, and particularly the Community Shield between Liverpool and Crystal Palace, which of course, congratulations Palace fans. You won, lifting another trophy at Wembley. But did we learn much about that from an FPL point of view? Because I felt actually, Jules, that that was quite telling it. It did shape my thinking quite a bit. Yeah, I think you're right. There was a lot of things for us to take away from that game,

both on both sides, Liverpool or Palace. Liverpool first. I thought, Okitika looked really good

in his relationship with Vets, looked really good. The downside of that is that Mossala was

anonymous, maybe one of the worst games that he's ever had with Liverpool from his point of view. And it goes back to some of the discussions that we've had so far in this preseason is Will Vietz and Akitiket to some extent and maybe Isak, if he signs as well, impact the form of Mosala. This is a team that used to be built around him and

for him and now they're going to play in a very different way. And we saw how important

Vertz was, how much he was taking the ball, how much he was touching the ball. So this was not good for Salab. It was very good for Viet and for Eki-TK, not good defensively from Liverpool. but I did tell you that.

So it's okay.

I felt vindicated.

And from a palace point of view,

it's everything the same.

Moon was on the right side. Mateta in the centre, on pens as well. Saar looking good. For Eze, we're not sure about the future. But certainly from a palace point of view, it's what we knew from last season. For Liverpool, there was a lot of new things.

I did wonder, actually, Jules, Sam even, I'm looking at Sam, at St. Jules. You mentioned it there in terms of Palace.

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