Does it matter if I have players playing against each other?

NO.

Come on, be serious. You're going to have some of your Fantasy players facing each other in the same fixture almost every single gameweek.

It might be slightly non-ideal - but it's one of those things that you've just got to suck up.

Good attacking players can get a return against anyone, so you shouldn't fret too much if they're up against a good defence. And both sides in a game can get good attacking returns. So, having attacking players facing each other really shouldn't be any sort of problem at all. 

If you have an attacking player facing a defending player, that looks like a zero-sum situation, because a good return for the attacker is going to diminish the return from the defender. But even that's not the end of the world. You can't ever rely on clean sheets. However, even without a clean sheet, goalkeepers can still give you additional points for their saves; and now defenders can also earn extra points for 'defensive contributions'; and they might even pick up some bonus points too! The key thing with defensive players is that you don't want them to be likely to concede multiple goals, where they might end up returning nul points; conceding a goal or two is a regular occurrence, not at all an FPL disaster. And having a defending player facing an attacking player is at least a hedge: you can console yourself that at least one of them should have a good chance of a decent haul - in a match where the outcome is difficult to call. Also, we tend to pick defenders who have a high potential for providing attacking returns as well...

Now, it's certainly not ideal to have your defenders, especially your goalkeeper, facing Haaland, or one of the other most in-form strikers of the moment. But that's why you should have decent alternates on your bench, so you can take players out of that firing-line. With goalkeepers in particular, a good rotation pair - where you can avoid ever having to put one of them into action against the toughest opponents - can earn you more points than the top individual keeper picks like Raya and Pickford.

And yet... an awful lot of FPL managers were panicking last week about having 3 Chelsea players facing 3 Arsenal players, and thought that was sufficient excuse to be playing their Free Hit. Ridiculous!

First, this is a key reason why you should resist getting trebled up on anyone early in the season. In my initial squad, I was only even doubled up on Brentford, Leeds, and Man Utd. Going for three players from the same club this early is just asking for trouble. Doing it for two clubs - who face each other in Gameweek 3 - is a very avoidable foot-shooting.

Second, you ought to be able to park most of these players on your bench, if you really don't fancy their prospects against a tough opponent (that's what your bench is for!).

Third, these aren't the only 'elite' teams. You're going to have players from City, United, Liverpool as well; and Brentford and Bournemouth are looking very good at the moment too. You're likely to have some of your key players facing each other several times in each half of the season. And in some gameweeks, you're going to have more than one such clashing fixture.

Fourth, while you might not have fancied Arsenal for another clean sheet against what has been a very incisive Chelsea attack in the opening couple of games, you should fancy them to score fairly readily themselves - against the rather porous Chelsea defence. And the Arsenal full-backs, Calafiori and White, have looked a particularly potent attacking threat so far. If you had either or both of them in your squad, you should have fancied their chances of picking up a goal or an assist in that game, even if they didn't produce any defensive points. (And Calafiori was unlucky not to - sticking the ball in the net, but getting it chalked off for an offence by one of his teammates.)

So, having players from both Arsenal and Chelsea should really not have been a problem. And if you felt that it was, it was a 'problem' that could easily have been avoided with a little forethought. There will be other more needful occasions for using the Free Hit chip.