Did the budget FPL starters keep their places? GW6–8 follow-up

93 of the 150 budget players in our Gameweek 5 study started all three matches in Gameweeks 6–8. That is 62%. Another 31 started twice, 13 once and 13 not at all. All 150 remain in this follow-up, including those who stopped playing or became more expensive.

This is a check on what happened after the original five-gameweek screen, published on 6 October 2026. It is not a new list selected using the results we now know. We captured the follow-up on 27 October 2026, after FPL marked Gameweeks 1–8 finished and checked.

Download the complete 150-player comparison. No email or account is needed for this study or its CSV.

How often did the budget starters keep starting?

57 players (38%) did not start all three matches. Within that group, 26 players (17.3% of the full cohort) started no more than once. This does not tell us why: injury, suspension, tactical changes and rotation can all affect playing time. We have not assigned a cause to an individual absence.

Goalkeepers had the highest three-start share in this sample: 13 of 16. Only nine midfielders played all 270 minutes, although 36 started every match. A start and a full match are different things; the minutes column matters when evaluating a cheap squad slot.

What happened to the four original value leaders?

These four players led their positions by points per £1m in the original article. We selected them for this table because of that earlier result, not because they scored well afterwards. Points and minutes below cover GW6–8 only; prices are the 27 October snapshot.

All four started three times, but Kostoulas played 219 minutes while Tzolakis played 270. Starting regularly did not produce identical playing time or points. Bogle added eight points after leading the first five-gameweek defender table with 42. The original ratio described points already earned; it was never a promise that the same pace would continue.

Method: keep the cohort fixed, then check every match

The original screen used prices on 6 October: at most £5.0m for goalkeepers and defenders, £6.5m for midfielders and £7.0m for forwards, plus at least 270 minutes and three starts through GW5. Those were our editorial cutoffs, not official FPL budget categories. The screen contained 150 of the 667 players in that snapshot.

We matched those same 150 player IDs to the official FPL player data and each player's public match history, such as Tzolakis's match records. Replace 572 in that address with another player ID from the CSV to retrieve that player's records. For each player, we summed starts, minutes and total_points for rounds 6, 7 and 8. We checked the official fixture list: all 30 fixtures were finished and every club played three times.

Every match-history total agreed with the difference between the new season total and our saved GW5 total. There were no missing player IDs or reconciliation differences. The CSV includes the original totals, both dated prices, the three-gameweek sums and each game's individual fields. For example, gw6_8_starts = gw6_starts + gw7_starts + gw8_starts. Counting rows where that sum equals three reproduces the headline figure of 93.

We did not drop players whose price rose above the original limit, replace absentees with new starters, or rerank the cohort using later points. Current prices are context, not another eligibility filter. The original article and its CSV remain unchanged.

Use this as a check, not a transfer forecast

Three matches are a short follow-up, and the cohort was already selected for early playing time. There is no unscreened comparison group here, so this study cannot show that our screen predicts starts better than another method. It does not measure our prediction model's accuracy or prove a secure place in a team's next lineup. Later official data corrections may change historic totals; this publication preserves the data captured on 27 October.

For a decision now, check current team news and compare predicted points over the coming gameweeks, then test the change against your budget and starting eleven in the free FPL team planner. The free team rater supplies a separate squad benchmark. The tools require a working email for access; the planner uses email confirmation. Automated transfer plans are a separate Pro feature, available through a paid subscription or an eligible trial.

This is independent KnightManagers analysis of public FPL data, not an official Premier League publication. To cite the finding, credit KnightManagers, “Did the budget FPL starters keep their places? GW6–8 follow-up”, 27 October 2026, and link to this dated article so readers can inspect the method and CSV.