Welcome back for another article
Who are the best players to buy? Who are the essential wildcard picks?
DGW33 is officially confirmed and final. We know who will double, and those 6 teams that double will blank the following week in gameweek 34. So the rest of the season is basically mapped out now; it's just that Palace v Man City postponement to be rearranged still, and that has a good chance of dropping into GW36.
Anyway, let's quickly talk about the double gameweek having just been finalized.
The 6 teams are Bournemouth, Brighton, Burnley, Chelsea, Leeds, and Man City. If you're new to FPL, double gameweeks carry lots of potential because you get the points from both games. Haaland will be the most popular captain; if he scores against Arsenal and a hat trick vs Burnley, then you'll get all those points doubled as captain, plus appearance points, bonus points, etc., all doubled.
Arsenal losing to Southampton was a spanner in the works, and chip strategy is more divisive now. The reason being there's little incentive to carry many Arsenal players on a wildcard in GW32, and the likes of Bournemouth, Burnley, and Leeds have rough fixtures. Bournemouth have Arsenal this week, Leeds have Man Utd away, and Burnley players are just an avoid except in a DGW potentially. Oh, and Chelsea and Man City play each other this week as well.
So if you've still got your wildcard, bench boost, and free hit, then the two prevailing strategies are to wildcard this week and set up for a big DGW33 bench boost, then free hit in BGW34. Again, as a reminder, those 6 teams doubling in 33 do not have a fixture in GW34.
So WC32, BB33, FH34 is a common strategy. The other common one is FH33, WC35, and BB36. This looks pretty good too because then you don't have to sell players this week with good fixtures: Bruno, Gabriel, Rice, Ekitike, Thiago, Dango, etc. Those guys. That lets you keep them a week, free hit the best DGW33 team, but only works if you'll be able to field 11 players in GW34, which is easier now Arsenal don't blank.
Then wildcard GW35; Man City and Palace are expected to double in GW36, the final double of the season and a very small one. So you can wildcard triple Palace in. The downside is it's not a great bench boost and obviously all single gameweek players. And if Palace progress in Europa Conference League, then rotation could be at play because the league will be dead for Palace and that's all they've got left to play for.
🧤 Goalkeeper
Verbruggen is a name I'm expecting to see everywhere for GW32 wildcarders. He makes a lot of sense because it's Burnley this week plus the DGW33, and he's relatively cheap at 4.5m. Raya tops the keepers table this week with 4.0 points. Arsenal are home to Bournemouth with the early kick-off on Saturday—not ideal given they're having to play midweek in the Champions League as well.
To remind you—the teams still in Europe that play this week before GW32 are Arsenal, Liverpool, Villa, Forest, and Palace.
Another keeper worth looking at if wildcarding this week is Darlow. He's started 10 league games in a row with Perri the cup keeper; Darlow is the league keeper and the Leeds double is decent: Wolves home and Bournemouth away. Dubravka, thanks for the memories, but I wouldn't have him on a wildcard despite him doubling. The doubles aren't fantastic really; the two best teams doubling are Chelsea and Man City, and in their cases, you'd rather look at outfield players with more upside: Haaland, Semenyo, O'Reilly, Guehi, Joao Pedro, Palmer, Cucurella, etc. Therefore, the budget keepers have some appeal.
On a wildcard, the keeper combo to consider is Verbruggen and Darlow, assuming you still have your bench boost, of course. Otherwise, you've got the flexibility to keep Raya in there! 🧤