# The draft XI: what a pure gameweek-1 squad looks like

> Eleven players, 59.17 projected points, no loyalty to anything but this week's fixtures.

By the evmax model · 21 August 2026 · https://evmax.ai/fpl/gw1/wildcard/

This is the knapsack answer: the highest-scoring legal XI our optimiser can assemble for gameweek 1 alone, under the full budget, quota and three-per-club rules. It is not our squad — our Model XI is built on six-week horizon value and published separately — but if you are drafting late or wildcarding from scratch, this is what one week of pure expected value looks like: B.Fernandes, Thiago, Gabriel, Ndiaye, Calafiori, Mbeumo, Watkins, Gibbs-White, E.Le Fée, Tarkowski, Raya.

The shape of it tells you where the week's points live. B.Fernandes (8.85 expected points at Hull) is the fixed star. Arsenal's home fixture against Coventry supplies the defensive core — Gabriel (5.32, 27.7% defensive-contribution probability) and Calafiori (5.12, the game's best value at 0.931 points per million). Everton's home tie against Palace puts Ndiaye (5.13) in every rational squad this week.

Notice who is missing: the optimiser leaves Haaland out. At £15.5m, his 7.8 expected points cost more per point than any other premium route, and a one-week optimiser feels no fear of the crowd. Whether you should copy that depends on whether you are maximising this week's points or protecting a season-long rank — we publish both philosophies as full squads elsewhere on this site.

**Bottom line:** 59.17 projected points is the one-week ceiling for a legal XI — use it as the benchmark your own draft should be judged against.

**Bottom line:** 59.17 projected points is the one-week ceiling for a legal XI — use it as the benchmark your own draft should be judged against.

## The data

| # | Player | Team | xPts | Price | Captain EV | Ceiling | Owned % |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | B.Fernandes | MUN | 8.85 | 12.0 | 17.70 | 19.70 | 48.7% |
| 2 | Thiago | BRE | 5.89 | 8.0 | 11.78 | 14.16 | 16.0% |
| 3 | Gabriel | ARS | 5.32 | 8.0 | 10.63 | 12.92 | 25.4% |
| 4 | Ndiaye | EVE | 5.13 | 6.0 | 10.27 | 15.04 | 20.0% |
| 5 | Calafiori | ARS | 5.12 | 5.5 | 10.24 | 13.88 | 13.8% |
| 6 | Mbeumo | MUN | 5.00 | 8.0 | 10.00 | 14.83 | 13.6% |
| 7 | Watkins | AVL | 4.94 | 8.0 | 9.88 | 13.15 | 12.2% |
| 8 | Gibbs-White | NFO | 4.83 | 8.0 | 9.67 | 13.53 | 12.3% |
| 9 | E.Le Fée | SUN | 4.79 | 6.0 | 9.59 | 13.02 | 9.9% |
| 10 | Tarkowski | EVE | 4.67 | 6.0 | 9.33 | 11.16 | 9.9% |
| 11 | Raya | ARS | 4.63 | 6.0 | 9.25 | 8.17 | 30.2% |
| 12 | Diop | IPS | 3.23 | 4.0 | 6.45 | 10.28 | 20.8% |
| 13 | Dubravka | TOT | 2.74 | 4.0 | 5.49 | 6.86 | 24.8% |
| 14 | Walle Egeli | IPS | 0.99 | 4.5 | 1.99 | 5.66 | 2.4% |
| 15 | Amass | MUN | 0.83 | 4.0 | 1.66 | 4.97 | 0.2% |

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Method: Market odds (de-vigged) → Dixon-Coles scorelines → 50k Monte-Carlo simulations, scored on the official Fantasy Premier League points table.
Data license: CC BY 4.0 (attribution: evmax, https://evmax.ai). Machine-readable JSON: https://evmax.ai/api/fpl/gw1/wildcard.json