Looking at Morgan Rogers ahead of the Fantasy Premier League deadline - and whether he’ll be involved against Fulham.
The deadline for the first week of the Fantasy Premier League is just hours away, and millions of managers around the world are agonising over their starting teams – and one widely-owned player whose minutes might be a worry for many of them is Chelsea new boy Morgan Rogers.
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Rogers was signed from Aston Villa for a massive £117m earlier this summer and will be expected to nail down a starting spot in Xabi Alonso’s squad very quickly, but he also had a long summer with England and has played only a limited role in pre-season. So will he start in Gameweek 1, and should FPL managers have him in their team?
Will Morgan Rogers start for Chelsea in Gameweek 1?
Morgan Rogers scored the opening goal in a 3-1 pre-season win over Real Sociedadplaceholder image
Morgan Rogers scored the opening goal in a 3-1 pre-season win over Real Sociedad | Getty Images
Having been given an extended period of rest after his work at the World Cup, Rogers has played just 62 minutes of football in a blue shirt so far, getting a start on the left wing in Chelsea’s final warm-up match against Real Sociedad.
The 24-year-old returned to training late, getting involved at Cobham for the very first time on 11 August. Like many members of England’s squad, that’s given him precious little time to build up match fitness, and there are reasonable questions over whether he might start against Fulham as a result.
Quite a few England internationals are likely to go no further than the bench on the first weekend of the new campaign – but Rogers seems to be among the most likely to get a start, not least because Chelsea’s first match of the season falls on Monday evening, giving him a little more time to get up to speed.
The fact that Rogers started against Sociedad strongly hints at the fact that Alonso wants him in his XI as well. Teams like Aston Villa and Arsenal didn’t give starting minutes to their World Cup stars in the final weekend of pre-season, but Chelsea made a point of keeping their new signing in the game for as long as possible - and were rewarded with a goal.
That may reflect the fact that Rogers’ workload this summer wasn’t quite as intense as that of players like Declan Rice and Ezri Konsa, but it also reflects the fact that Chelsea’s options on the left wing are a little limited.
The only other potential starters on the left side of Alonso’s 3-4-3 formation are Jamie Gittens, who is coming off an unconvincing first year at Stamford Bridge, and Pedro Neto, whose future is the subject of considerable speculation with Manchester City seemingly interested in signing him. Neto could miss out altogether if transfer talks advance, leaving Rogers with a fairly clear path to a start on Monday night.
Should you have Rogers in your FPL team?
Rogers has been a reliable FPL asset over the past two years - but can he improve his output at Chelsea?placeholder image
Rogers has been a reliable FPL asset over the past two years - but can he improve his output at Chelsea? | Getty Images
There’s a very high likelihood that Rogers plays less than the full 90 minutes against Fulham as he builds up match fitness, which could easily reduce his likely points total – but that’s only a concern in the very short term. Every signal suggests that Rogers will be a regular starter going forward.
There is a reasonable concern about whether he will be able to replicate his Villa form on the left wing – he has generally been at his most effective in the number 10 role – but Alonso’s 3-4-3 system provided plenty of opportunities for the narrow-set wingers to score and create goals at Bayer Leverkusen. Florian Wirtz, for instance, would have racked up some enormous FPL points totals during the Spaniard’s time as his head coach.
If Chelsea’s attack gets going in a similar fashion, then it could give Rogers (and his team-mate Cole Palmer) a very high ceiling – but he has yet to prove that he can go beyond the good but not great scores that he has put up over the past two years.
Rogers scored 161 FPL points in 2024/25 and 169 points in 2025/26 – both very competitive totals for a £7.5m player, but anyone signing him for the long haul will want to see more. The question isn’t whether he will get enough minutes, but whether Chelsea’s attack as a whole will provide him with the opportunities to get closer to 200 points. As a long-term signing he seems to offer a very safe floor, but the height of his scoring ceiling is uncertain – and for semi-premium midfielders, you want to see a realistic chance of going over 170 points.
As a short-term signing who could be transferred out, Rogers is a gamble. That’s less because of the risk of being benched or substituted for the first few games but more because Chelsea as a whole are such a gigantic question mark – they have a new manager, a squad in flux, their pre-season form was all over the place and their early fixtures are a mixed bag.
Rogers could easily be a fine signing at his price point, and he’s probably quite a safe one at the very least – and we expect him to start against Fulham, but not to play the full match. It’s worth noting that he didn’t make our expert’s final FPL team, which you can see here.