We have been building up to this moment for a few weeks now: Jacob has decided to activate his Wildcard!

We work our way through the options from the bottom up, going through the locks and then discussing the shortlisted players for each position. Given the healthy selection of attractive defenders available at the moment, the question is instead how many defenders at each price point Jacob wants. In midfield, the bulk of our conversation revolves around which budget options can best supplement Saka and Semenyo. We run into the most trouble with the forwards—we love Haaland and we like Mateta, but no one else seems quite up to par. At the end, Jiayang is left pondering whether he wants to activate his Wildcard too—to be fair, he does want to replace his entire backline, but he remains unconvinced by the appeal of any attacking assets that he doesn’t already own.

As for captaincy—any sane person should probably captain Haaland for against Everton at home. Sadly, we won’t be able to record next week, so we also have a crack at captaincy for Gameweek 9. The decision is slightly trickier—Semenyo at home to a free-falling Forest looks promising—but Haaland might just be too damn good to bet against.