Our team of contributors are returning as we count down to the Fantasy Premier League (FPL) Gameweek 2 deadline.
This time, we hear from FPL General, who shares his Gameweek 2 team reveal.
General, aka Mark, is no longer shackled by the Haaland-less experiment of 2025/26! He has three top 500 finishes to his name, as well as a further nine inside the top 50k.
Gameweek 1 Review
The Troops got off to a great start in Gameweek 1, racking up 82 points, thanks in large part to a 16-point Bench Boost. A Gameweek rank of 68k is very satisfying after all the pre-season tinkering!
Going back to my final few decisions on Friday, I wanted to triple up on Arsenal for the Coventry fixture. To do so, I dropped right down to Regan Slater (£4.5m) as my fifth midfielder. I wasn’t too bothered about what the bench scored. Instead, I focused on getting the starting XI exactly how I wanted it. I figured Slater would be good for my long-term team structure (if I don’t use the Wildcard early). The assist against Manchester United was a lovely slice of luck. The clean sheet from Joe Rodon (£4.5m) ensured it was a successful deployment of the chip. It feels liberating to have it out of the way already!
Cristhian Mosquera (£5.5m) was in every draft until Arsenal’s signing of Ezri Konsa (£4.5m). Shoehorning the Gunners’ two full-backs in instead couldn’t have gone any better! Midfielder Martin Odegaard (£6.5m) was in my first pre-season draft, so I followed my initial gut instinct and went back to him on Friday – and boy, I am glad I did.
The Manchester United triple-up was a disaster but they’ve got Ipswich Town at home this weekend, which should yield better returns. If not, they will be the first guys on the chopping block!
It was very satisfying to see Dominik Szoboszlai (£7.0m) step up and score a late penalty for Liverpool. He could now be a 38-Gameweek pick this season with so many routes to points.
Following the Bruno Fernandes (£12.0m) blank, who was captained by many, I was hopeful that Erling Haaland (£15.5m) would capitalise and send me towards a 100-point Gameweek – but it wasn’t to be. After last season, was nice to be able to watch a Manchester City match on the sofa rather than behind it!
Like Szoboszlai, Chelsea’s Joao Pedro (£7.5m) is another Gameweek 1 pick that could be there for the long-term. He’s likely to be my captain in Gameweek 4 for the home tie against Hull City, unless his teammate Cole Palmer (£9.5m) is purchased by then.
Gameweek 2 Team + Future Transfer Plans
PakarPBN
A Private Blog Network (PBN) is a collection of websites that are controlled by a single individual or organization and used primarily to build backlinks to a “money site” in order to influence its ranking in search engines such as Google. The core idea behind a PBN is based on the importance of backlinks in Google’s ranking algorithm. Since Google views backlinks as signals of authority and trust, some website owners attempt to artificially create these signals through a controlled network of sites.
In a typical PBN setup, the owner acquires expired or aged domains that already have existing authority, backlinks, and history. These domains are rebuilt with new content and hosted separately, often using different IP addresses, hosting providers, themes, and ownership details to make them appear unrelated. Within the content published on these sites, links are strategically placed that point to the main website the owner wants to rank higher. By doing this, the owner attempts to pass link equity (also known as “link juice”) from the PBN sites to the target website.
The purpose of a PBN is to give the impression that the target website is naturally earning links from multiple independent sources. If done effectively, this can temporarily improve keyword rankings, increase organic visibility, and drive more traffic from search results.
