FPL Free Hit GW3: Best Team for One Gameweek

Gameweek 3 has been played. Playing this chip in GW4 instead? See the Free Hit GW4 team, built on live projections for the current deadline.

TL;DR

Playing your Free Hit in Gameweek 3? The GW3 deadline is Friday 4 September at 6.30pm BST. The XI above is the highest-projected legal squad for that single week, ignoring your current team entirely, because that is exactly what a Free Hit lets you do. Draft purely for one gameweek, then everything reverts.

Copilot verdictONE WEEK ONLY

“Nothing you pick carries over. Ignore price rises, ignore next week's fixtures, ignore whether you would ever own the player again. Pick the eleven highest scorers you can fit.”

Best Free Hit Team for GW3: How to Draft the XI

A Free Hit gives you unlimited transfers for one gameweek, and your squad reverts to normal afterwards. That makes it the most single-minded chip in the game: nothing matters except this week's points.

The pitch above is solver-built on live projected points for the gameweek. Tap any player for their projection, then score your own draft with a free Copilot Score.

• Stack the best fixtures. In GW3 that means Man City at home to Coventry, the softest draw on the board. Take three from one club if their fixture is the best available. It costs you nothing next week.
• Ignore price and ownership. You are renting, not buying. A £14m forward you could never normally afford is fair game.
• Bench barely matters. Only your XI scores, so spend everything on the starters and fill the bench with £4.0m names.
• Captain the highest projection, not the safest. With no long-term consequences, the ceiling pick is the right pick.

Should You Free Hit in GW3?

Straight answer: Gameweek 3 is a full gameweek. All 20 teams play once, and there are no blanks anywhere between Gameweek 1 and Gameweek 6. The ten fixtures are Ipswich vs Liverpool, Newcastle vs Bournemouth, Brentford vs Sunderland, Brighton vs Leeds, Fulham vs Crystal Palace, Man City vs Coventry, Forest vs Spurs, Hull vs Aston Villa, Everton vs Man Utd, and Arsenal vs Chelsea. The classic Free Hit use, rescuing a week where half your squad has no fixture, does not apply here.

So if you are playing it now, you are playing it for a different reason: a pile of injuries, or a stack of players on bad fixtures you would rather sit out. That works, but the upside is smaller than a blank-week Free Hit, because you are beating your own squad rather than replacing a squad that cannot score.

If the problem is your whole squad rather than one bad week, the Wildcard GW3 draft is the chip you want instead, because that squad is permanent. For how the chip fits the season, see the 2026/27 chip strategy guide. For this week's captain and transfers see the GW3 tips, and if you are trebling instead of Free Hitting, the Triple Captain GW3 guide covers that call.