Where should you use your chips in the first half of the season?

If you're unsure then I'm going to lay it all out for you.

As a quick refresher for newer players, wildcard gives you unlimited transfers, the most powerful chip in the game.

Free Hit also gives you unlimited transfers, but only for building a temporary squad that lasts one week, your team reverts back to how it was before you activated the chip the gameweek after.

Triple captain, very simple - captain earns triple instead of the usual double

Bench boost, also very simple - earn whatever points your bench scores

What's more complicated is exactly when these chips should be deployed, and this is one of the biggest edges you can get in FPL if not the biggest, good use of chips. The boys I play pro clubs with play FPL very casually, last season one bench boosted a blank gameweek without a full bench even playing. If you see this, sorry Craig.

All chips must be played before the Gameweek 19 deadline, use them or lose them. That's January 2nd. You can't play two chips in one week.

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Triple Captain

There's 4 players selected here to potentially use it on, Haaland and Bruno obvious. To play devil's advocate I've included Saka and Palmer as well - for all we know these two hit unstoppable form and could be in the conversation too, might not happen. No harm in including.

What I've done here, is grabbed those first 19 gameweeks from the gameweek projections ticker, and removed any gameweeks that don't have triple captain potential. On the tool you can click the cross by gameweeks to remove, can do the same with teams. It's only 92p a week or even cheaper for the season plan.

The gameweeks are gameweek 1, 2, 3, 4, 7, 15, 16 and 19.

The teams that make sense to target are the 3 promoted teams. Coventry, Ipswich, Hull.

Hull in particular are probably the stand out teams to target. Finished 6th in the Championship, 22 points behind Coventry at the top, they only managed 13 clean sheets in 46 games. Their xG difference was -18.2 so they did very well to have an actual goal difference of +4. 2nd worst expected goals conceded in the league if I recall which is unbelievable.

Haaland, Saka, Palmer all play Hull home before GW19, Bruno of course plays them away in GW1 which is the GW1 triple captain opportunity. Generally speaking opting for home games is the best approach though.

Look at Gameweek 3, 7 and 16 for Haaland. He has all three promoted teams home and that's where I'm looking with the chip.

The only thing to mention with Haaland and waiting for GW16 is that it's in the very busy winter period where output might dip relative to the start of the season.

Here's a fun stat you might not have seen before. August is Haaland's most productive month of his career, he scores more at the start of the season than any other time. September his joint second most goals. So he always gets off to an explosive start and then things slow a little, this kind of lines up with what you've heard before and it's helpful to see the numbers behind it. December is his 2nd quietest month. Again that could be partly because it's such a busy time, there's 6 gameweeks in December plus other competitions.

Hull home for Man City is the fixture with the single most projected goals with 3.1. Getting back to the other point, the only slight risk waiting until then is you may not have a good option to pivot to if it doesn't work out, if Saka's on fire than he has Ipswich home GW19 right before the chip reset.

Bench Boost

Let's talk bench boost. As a high level overview, it's the GW1 bench boost, the GW2 bench boost or save it until straight after you wildcard. If you're running with two playable keepers it's possible there will be some other gameweek where everything lines up very strong on your bench, that's also a week you could go for it. But if you're running with a 4m non-playing backup keeper then it won't happen.

The GW1 bench boost team I've put together is Raya, Williams, Shaw, Mosquera, Bruno, Szobo, Anderson, Gross, Schade, Haaland and Joao Pedro. On the bench Verbruggen, DCL, O'Shea, Ajer.

Nice cheap bench with potential in GW1 and have avoided attacker vs defender to give it some really good potential. Schade should be in line to start GW1 with a home fixture and only 6m but there is a risk Anthony could share mins with him off the bench. With a GW1 bench boost team it's not a huge issue if he later becomes a dodgy pick, since you've got depth to bench him, just start DCL over him for example. Ndiaye is heavily linked with a move away at the time of recording so he's intentionally been left out, if that falls through then he's one alternative 6m option. Welbeck has gone to Chelsea so there's a chance Gross gets some pen share, has some corners and free kicks, no midfielder 5.5m and under scored more than his 4.1 points per game.

The GW2 bench boost I like more, this is a slightly alternative team in a few places.

It's Raya, Shaw, Gvardiol, Mosquera, Bruno, Szoboszlai, Anderson, Schade, Haaland, Joao Pedro, Brobbey. So the bench is Petrovic home to Everton, Slater with Coventry home, Thomas with Hull home, Kayode Leeds away.

Coventry home to Hull is the one that makes it really appealing because their defenders are only 4m, you could go double Coventry defence even, like Maguire and Van Ewijk instead of Shaw and Kayode. No problem with that.

Just on Gvardiol - he's made it in to my team. Sam Lee, reported the other day that during conversations with Man City, Gvardiol was assured of his place as one of the most important players in the squad. Man City consider Gvardiol, Foden and Haaland as three central pillars under Enzo Maresca."

I'm wondering if Maresca's favoured backline could actually be:

O'Reilly - Gvardiol - Guehi - Khusanov

Gvardiol could actually be the best Man City defender to own, and he's cheaper. 🇭🇷

So speaking of the wildcard. If you don't go early with the bench boost, the most likely best play is to use the bench boost shortly after wildcarding.

Wildcard

One wildcard window that looks great is Gameweek 4, because of good fixture runs for the following teams in particular: Man City, Arsenal, Chelsea, Liverpool, Man Utd, maybe Newcastle. Though Eddie Howe has gone separate ways so let's see what they look like, perhaps just a defender such as Thiaw. Maybe new keeper signing Jaouen has claimed the #1 spot, he's 4.5m. You get 3 gameweeks of solid info before activating. There's some decent fixtures in GW5 for the bench boost if you hold it until then, in terms of some cheaper bench picks available. Newcastle have Hull home, Forest have Coventry home, Everton have Ipswich home. Leeds have Palace home.

I'm just looking at projected goals specifically on these ticker screenshots by the way, projected clean sheets is also an important factor so give the tool a try on the app or fpl.page. Only 92p a week to unlock that and 30 other features, or even less on the season plan. The Official FPL fixture ticker is not a good way of look at fixture runs because it is in absolute numbers 1 to 5 and they basically never use 1 which is dark green, whereas breaking it down by goals and clean sheets and having actual specific numbers to a decimal places is a gamechanger. The guy who provides the data averages a 1K rank finish the last 4 seasons.

The Gameweek 6 wildcard has similar appeal, if you don't feel pressed early on. Gameweek 4 will be very popular for those that got a lot of picks wrong early on, whereas GW6 is great if you can make it longer, it comes after a very long international break, 3 weeks long in fact. You get plenty of time to really think about what you want to do, you can catch some price rises and avoid falls, you can react to potential injuries from international games etc. Load up on the same teams as before plus Bournemouth. Fulham play the three promoted teams in a row from that week. Loads of cheap options there to bench boost the week after.

There's other gameweeks that look good, GW7, GW13, even GW16 if you can wait that long. There's no harm in not having a specific week pencilled in, and wait until you really need it. In FPL you can end up in a position where issues start to mount. Someone gets injured, you need to replace them first, but you've got someone else underperforming that needs selling, oh and two others in your team are now hitting horrendous fixtures etc. Personally I look at a mix, when my team starts to feel like it's slipping behind plus there's a wildcard window like the ones just mentioned coming up.

Free Hit

Lastly free hit. Free Hit is my favourite chip because it's the one you can have the most fun with. Wildcard is the most powerful but it's a high pressure chip to get it right. Free Hit only lasts one week so you can chuck in some fun picks, it's only for one week and then you get your old team back anyway.

There's 3 gameweeks shortlisted again.

Option 1 is Gameweek 3. This is appealing if you've got lots of Chelsea and Arsenal in your team, they play each other that week, and it's a week where Liverpool have Ipswich, Villa have Hull, Watkins is low ownership so you can free hit him in. Brighton have Leeds home, Man City notable home to Coventry, Brentford with Sunderland home. Those are the main ones. So Kerkez, Szobo, Isak, Watkins, Vuskovic, Haaland, Foden, Semenyo, or a defender, Thiago of course home to Sunderland. Only 15% owned currently.

Gameweek 4 the next week is also appealing. The opposite way round - if you don't own many Chelsea and Arsenal this is strong. Chelsea have Hull home, Arsenal have Sunderland away. Plus you've got Palace home to Ipswich, Liverpool home to Fulham, Leeds home to Newcastle, Brighton have Coventry away. So triple Arsenal, perhaps Sarr, Mateta, Munoz, triple Chelsea attack home to Hull will be such a fun differential. Rogers - Palmer - Joao Pedro perhaps. Liverpool has those same options as before. Calvert-Lewin if you need a cheap filer on your team. It's the Manchester derby, so no harm in keeping Haaland but if you have a City defender you could look to lose them on the free hit. I like GW4 more than GW3 but it does depend on your Chelsea and Arsenal player ownership in your team.

Lastly GW13 and this is the save it for a rain day strategy. This is where I'm leaning myself currently.

Save in case of emergency. Leaks can present a huge opportunity e.g. Haaland and Foden benched and you own both.

Gameweek 13 has good fixtures and comes much later, if no emergency arises as well.

Gameweek 16 has similar appeal so I've included that screenshot, it's the week Man City have Hull home, remember only one chip can be used in a gameweek so if you wanted to triple captain Haaland vs Hull then that's not a free hit option.

Thanks for reading!

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