Erling Haaland (£14.0m) is in 86% of Fantasy Premier League teams &#8211; but one FPL manager didn&#8217;t own him in his record-breaking season&#8230;and has no plans to in 2023/24 either.
Javier Marron is taking on the ultimate FPL experiment to achieve a top rank without last season&#8217;s 36 goal star.
Many FPL managers found it unthinkable not to captain the Norwegian last season, let alone leave him out of their sides.
But the fearless Venezuelan, who has one top 3k and four top 50k finishes, talks us through why he&#8217;s going without Haaland for a second season running &#8211; and how high he believes he can finish.
We&#8217;ll also put his latest draft through our <a href="https://www.fantasyfootballhub.co.uk/my-team/pick">My Team</a> tool to see how our AI rates it without last season&#8217;s top points scorer, plus three personalised recommended transfers to improve his draft.

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<h2>Javier&#8217;s no-Haaland experiment: How it started</h2>
Javier&#8217;s inspiration stretches back to the 2017/18 season, when Haaland was off the FPL radar learning his craft at Molde.
Instead of Haaland banging in Premier League goals, it was Harry Kane who won the Golden Boot, scoring 30 times.
Javier lost a mini-league battle by 80 points, despite finishing with a respectable rank of 35k.
But when he checked out his opponent&#8217;s team, he made a surprising discovery. Javier said:
<blockquote>&#8220;He not only didn&#8217;t have Kane, he never owned Kane in the whole season.
&#8220;I had Kane&#8217;s points ahead of him but he had a more balanced team with better players than me in midfield and defence.&#8221;</blockquote>
From that point onwards, Javier decided that no expensive forward was essential.
With the exception of some double gameweeks, he set up his team to avoid forwards priced £11.0m and above, instead opting for more premium midfielders and defenders.
A few years after that Kane season, Haaland would arrive in the Premier League priced at £11.5m.
In reality, he was never in Javier&#8217;s plans as a result.
<div id="attachment_32737" style="width: 1034px" class="wp-caption aligncenter"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-32737" class="size-full wp-image-32737" src="https://cms.fantasyfootballhub.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2021/02/FPL-Kane.jpg" alt="" width="1024" height="682" srcset="https://cms.fantasyfootballhub.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2021/02/FPL-Kane.jpg 1024w, https://cms.fantasyfootballhub.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2021/02/FPL-Kane-300x200.jpg 300w, https://cms.fantasyfootballhub.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2021/02/FPL-Kane-768x512.jpg 768w, https://cms.fantasyfootballhub.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2021/02/FPL-Kane-610x406.jpg 610w" sizes="(max-width: 1024px) 100vw, 1024px" />Harry Kane. Picture by Getty Images.</div>
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<h2>How did not owning Haaland go in 2022/23?</h2>
Javier finished inside the top 1m managers, with a final rank of 792k.
It was his lowest ever FPL finish, however he said it was &#8216;barely 100 points below many experienced managers who played the entire season with Haaland as a permanent captain&#8217;.
Things didn&#8217;t go to plan early on.
Haaland started like an express train, scoring multiple hat-tricks. Javier said:
<blockquote>&#8220;The moment when I decided to definitely go without Haaland was after the Manchester City v Manchester United game.
&#8220;That was Haaland&#8217;s third hat-trick and his 14th goal in eight games. 14 goals in 8 games projects 67 Premier League goals at the end of the season.
&#8220;I was pretty sure he wasn&#8217;t scoring anything near that number. So the motivation of the experiment was something like: I&#8217;m not going to recover from this just buying Haaland after this huge overperformance stretch.&#8221;</blockquote>
<div id="attachment_47747" style="width: 1034px" class="wp-caption aligncenter"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-47747" class="size-full wp-image-47747" src="https://cms.fantasyfootballhub.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2021/08/Haaland-2.jpg" alt="" width="1024" height="683" srcset="https://cms.fantasyfootballhub.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2021/08/Haaland-2.jpg 1024w, https://cms.fantasyfootballhub.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2021/08/Haaland-2-300x200.jpg 300w, https://cms.fantasyfootballhub.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2021/08/Haaland-2-768x512.jpg 768w, https://cms.fantasyfootballhub.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2021/08/Haaland-2-610x407.jpg 610w" sizes="(max-width: 1024px) 100vw, 1024px" />Erling Haaland. Picture by Getty Images</div>
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A &#8216;perfect storm&#8217; of circumstances also affected his plans, lessening the appeal of the premium players he had packed his side with to gain an advantage. He said:
<blockquote>&#8220;Son never recovered from a poor start, Salah lowered his level, De Bruyne kept playing deeper and started to be a rotation risk, and Fernandes never returned to be that goalscoring guy.
&#8220;To make things even worse, the whole season ended up revolving around the mid/low-priced midfielders: Rashford, Martinelli, Odegaard, Almiron, Mitoma, March and Mac Allister.
&#8220;Basically my plan (structure) to compete without Haaland collapsed. To top it off, Liverpool fell off a cliff defensively, making one of the few players who I could make a difference &#8211; Alexander-Arnold &#8211; also worthless.
&#8220;Brighton finished the season with three double gameweeks in the last five, making it impossible to ignore their underpriced cheap midfielders.
&#8220;In short, all the planets aligned so that the experiment of playing without Haaland was particularly impossible.&#8221;</blockquote>
<div id="attachment_49270" style="width: 1240px" class="wp-caption aligncenter"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-49270" class="size-full wp-image-49270" src="https://cms.fantasyfootballhub.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2022/09/Screenshot-2022-09-13-at-17.17.18.jpg" alt="Gabriel Martinelli FPL" width="1230" height="1042" srcset="https://cms.fantasyfootballhub.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2022/09/Screenshot-2022-09-13-at-17.17.18.jpg 1230w, https://cms.fantasyfootballhub.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2022/09/Screenshot-2022-09-13-at-17.17.18-300x254.jpg 300w, https://cms.fantasyfootballhub.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2022/09/Screenshot-2022-09-13-at-17.17.18-1024x867.jpg 1024w, https://cms.fantasyfootballhub.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2022/09/Screenshot-2022-09-13-at-17.17.18-768x651.jpg 768w, https://cms.fantasyfootballhub.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2022/09/Screenshot-2022-09-13-at-17.17.18-610x517.jpg 610w, https://cms.fantasyfootballhub.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2022/09/Screenshot-2022-09-13-at-17.17.18-1080x915.jpg 1080w" sizes="(max-width: 1230px) 100vw, 1230px" />Gabriel Martinelli and other cheap FPL players were dominant last season. Picture by Getty Images</div>
<h2></h2>
<h2>Javier&#8217;s 2023/24 no-Haaland FPL draft</h2>
Without Haaland taking up 14% of Javier&#8217;s £100m budget, he can afford more of the players FPL managers are having to choose between. He said:
<blockquote> &#8220;I think the biggest advantage is to have a huge flexibility in the midfield spots. Basically you can have Salah and four more £7.5m-£9.0m midfielders, which in this particular season seems to be a powerful bracket.
&#8220;Besides that, you can have two forwards spots to rotate with all forwards not named Kane or Haaland.
&#8220;That allows you to have for example Jesus and Nkunku at the same time in their good fixture runs, instead of having to select only one of them.&#8221;</blockquote>
Here is Javier&#8217;s latest draft. He expects this to change, however it is a starting point to demonstrate the pricing structure he can target across his team. He said:
<blockquote>&#8220;Watkins can be Jesus, Son can be Martinelli and Stones can be Shaw, Chilwell or another &#8216;nailed&#8217; City defender. The remaining pre-season games will define those spots.&#8221;</blockquote>
Despite not having Haaland, he has still managed to build a team with a 90% rating. Does your Haaland team beat his rating and 62.6 predicted points for Gameweek 1? Find out by visiting <a href="https://www.fantasyfootballhub.co.uk/my-team/pick">My Team</a>.
<div id="attachment_56020" style="width: 729px" class="wp-caption aligncenter"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-56020" class="size-full wp-image-56020" src="https://cms.fantasyfootballhub.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2023/07/Javier-Marrons-team.jpg" alt="" width="719" height="765" srcset="https://cms.fantasyfootballhub.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2023/07/Javier-Marrons-team.jpg 719w, https://cms.fantasyfootballhub.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2023/07/Javier-Marrons-team-282x300.jpg 282w, https://cms.fantasyfootballhub.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2023/07/Javier-Marrons-team-610x649.jpg 610w" sizes="(max-width: 719px) 100vw, 719px" />Javier&#8217;s My Team rating for his no Haaland draft</div>
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<h3>My Team recommended transfers</h3>
The My Team tool gives all users <a href="https://www.fantasyfootballhub.co.uk/my-team/transfers">recommended transfers</a> for their FPL team to help them improve their overall team rating.
And perhaps unsurprisingly given his high predicted points, it recommends a certain Norwegian!
<div id="attachment_56021" style="width: 1007px" class="wp-caption aligncenter"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-56021" class="size-full wp-image-56021" src="https://cms.fantasyfootballhub.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2023/07/Javier-recommended-transfers.jpg" alt="" width="997" height="690" srcset="https://cms.fantasyfootballhub.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2023/07/Javier-recommended-transfers.jpg 997w, https://cms.fantasyfootballhub.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2023/07/Javier-recommended-transfers-300x208.jpg 300w, https://cms.fantasyfootballhub.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2023/07/Javier-recommended-transfers-768x532.jpg 768w, https://cms.fantasyfootballhub.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2023/07/Javier-recommended-transfers-610x422.jpg 610w" sizes="(max-width: 997px) 100vw, 997px" />Three transfer recommendations to improve Javier&#8217;s team from Hub AI</div>
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<h2>How high can Javier finish without Haaland?</h2>
Javier&#8217;s main goal is to beat last season&#8217;s rank. He said:
<blockquote>&#8220;The only rank I&#8217;m pretty sure I can achieve is better than 792k.
&#8220;Last season Haaland was priced at £11.5m and the perfect storm arrived with all the budget midfielders making this challenge pretty much impossible.
&#8220;This season he&#8217;s £14.0m, and all those underpriced players are not underpriced anymore.
&#8220;I&#8217;m going to set a realistic/optimistic target of top 250k.&#8221;</blockquote>
Javier&#8217;s approach won&#8217;t be for most FPL managers, however as 2022/23 champion <a href="https://www.fantasyfootballhub.co.uk/fpl-world-number-one-top-tips">Ali Jahangirov</a> found, not being afraid to captain someone other than Haaland often worked wonders.
Addressing the &#8216;fear of missing out&#8217; (FOMO), Javier said:
<blockquote>&#8220;As a science guy, I try to be as cold as possible with this subject. My technique is to always see the points from a player as a long term thing.
&#8220;And when I don&#8217;t own a popular player, I think that I own a player or a combination of players that the masses doesn&#8217;t own.&#8221;</blockquote>
Follow Javier&#8217;s progress on his <a href="https://twitter.com/marronjavier22">Twitter</a> page.
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