Playing the WC prior to DGW37
– Your Honour, the Plaintiff would like to change their plea!
– We’re on final allegations, counsel.
– The Plaintiff is well aware of that, but new evidence has just arrived.
– And what’s that?
– Well respectfully your Honour, another double game week has just been announced!
– Which are the teams involved?
– Everton and Crystal Palace your Honour.
– Humm … well, reluctantly, I’ll allow it.
Well, well, another DGW! Just the two teams involved but a DGW nonetheless. So, they still blank on GW35 but hey they play 4 times in two consecutive gws. Can’t ask for much more really and this surely dismisses any plans for a hypothetical WC36/BB37. Or does it?
Well, it does, in all honesty, but let’s give it a go for the sake of it.
Strategies regarding early WC (that is on GW32) or WC33/BB34 have been well documented and what they show is that you either play 15 doublers to take full advantage of the WC/BB or you mix it up a bit in order to keep a few big points hitters such as Mahrez, Kane, Alli and of course that man Vardy. Both options are valid ones but the former offers of course a bigger risk given that those with 15 doublers will be facing the last 6 GWs without several FPL key players.
My initial approach to this was that of building a decent enough DGW34 team with free transfers and play the BB on that DGW but keeping key players with a single game AND keeping my WC for DGW37. The reasoning behind this strategy is that I don’t think GW34 offers great fixtures for the teams with two games, except Arsenal and of course Man Utd, but they blank on GW35, which would lead me to deplete my squad on GW33 which I see as too early if compared to the (slim) returns I expect GW34 to produce.
Now, I’m leading my ML here and with a 40 points cushion, so maybe I can ‘afford’ to not go all in on DGW34 and save the WC for 37. If my opponents endure the WC33/BB34 path they will surely outscore me on GW34, but maybe not in GW33 and surely not enough to actually take the lead; and then I’ll still have my WC to deploy on 37.
And while Everton’s and Palace’s DGW33 must be considered, one can’t also overlook Arsenal’s TC potential in DGW34 which can’t be met by any of the DGW37 teams/players. All in all I still think this could be the best way to go for managers in this situation. Much depends of each manager’s situation and there are no right or wrong approaches here. Well, there are, but we’ll only know that comewhat May. Literally!
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Let’s see, then, what does WC36/BB37 offer in terms of players/teams who could score big.
Firstly, we need to know which teams have a double and they are West Ham, Man Utd, Norwich, Watford, Sunderland, Everton, Liverpool and Chelsea:
One thing that springs to mind is that out of those 8 teams 4 have two home games (Liverpool, Norwich, Sunderland and WestHam) and the other 4 have two away games.
None of the combos is too appealing but maybe West Ham and Liverpool should be favoured here, with Chelsea and Everton also looking good on the attacking front.
Before we enter in any player discussions we need to also assess these teams fixture in GW36 and GW38 given it’s likely we’ll need to use most of them in all those gws:
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Let’s look at these fixtures closely.
West Ham: Good double home fixtures for GW37 with the Swans and Man Utd and in deed decent away games at West Brom (36) and Stoke (38).
Man Utd: Difficult home game in 36 with Leicester, good away game at Norwich for the first game in 37, not so good second 37 game at West Ham and a great final fixture at home to Bournemouth.
Liverpool: Decent enough double home fixtures for GW37 with struggling Watford and Chelsea and decent away games at Swansea (36) and West Brom (38).
Chelsea: Tough home games actually in 36 and 38 with Spurs and Leicester respectively and not the easiest of fixtures in DGW37 itself.
Everton: Excellent home games to Norwich on 36 and Bournemouth on 38 sandwiched with not that good away games at Leicester and Sunderland in gw37 itself.
Watford: As good as it gets for 36 at home to Villa and a half decent game at Sunderland on 38 sandwiched with one tough away game at Liverpool and a decent enough away game at Norwich for DGW37.
Norwich: It’s Norwich, enough said. Oh, and they face Arsenal (away, 36), Man Utd (37) and Everton (away, 38) in the process.
Sunderland: It’s Sunderland, enough said. Ok, not as bad as Norwich given that their 36 and 38 games are against lesser opposition but still Stoke and Watford away don’t offer much.
So, how does that leave us? It leaves us no doubt with going for WC33BB34 I hear? Well, that’s seems sensible enough surely. Then again, if you didn’t chase that with these final games in mind you could do worse with the following:
3 from West Ham, 3 from Liverpool, 3 from Everton, 1 Man Utd, 1 Chelsea, 1 Watford and keep your 3 Arsenal that you’re carrying because they face Villa and Norwich at home in their last 3!
Here’s an example of your team could look like with a late wildcard:
That’s all folks.
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RMT on my WC team plz (WC33 BB34)
(Bank left 0.5)
Robles/De Gea
Cresswell/Bellerin/Sakho/Olsson/Ward
Mahrez/Payet/Ozil/Firmino/Lingard
Lukaku/Aguero/Welbeck
Gw35
left with 8 player
probably do 2 transfer (10 plyer) or play without gk (9plyer)
De gea – coutois
Ward – van aanholt
Gw36 (hit -4)
aguero – ighalo
lingard – barkley
gw37(hit-4) (11 dgw plyer)
mahrez-willian
welbeck-costa
Courtois
Cresswell/sakho/van aanholt
Payet/Firmino/barkley/willian
ighalo/costa/lukaku(tc)
robles/bellerin/olsson/ozil
Yellow, that seems a fairly decent well thought out plan.
Thanks cookie ^^
in my entire planning frm gw33 – 37 , i must take a hit min-8 and max -16 (wo injury) , is it worth to take too many hit?
Yellow, it’s always a tough one to weigh up. If the hits are for players with doubles and great fixtures then it shouldn’t matter too much, but I’d keep it under control, no point giving too many points away.
-8 is fine, -16 starts to get a bit reckless and the sort of stupid thing I would do.
Morning all, hearing rumours that Brenda has agreed to become Swanseas new manager in the summer.
Best replacement for butland?
Depends what your wildcard plans are if you have it ? but Courtois or Adrian could be good options.
Morning all !! So,nobody considering Sanchez over Ozil in their wildcard teams ?
Ozil has scored better throughout the season. But other than that it’s funds that are killing it for me.
I know this but Sanchez in better recent form and potentially more explosive and would make a great triple captain option in gw34 ?
Morning all!
As you can imagine I have been thinking a lot about my WC over the past few days and I think I have a plan, some of you may not like it but I wanted to see what your thoughts were!
Top photo is GW33 and the bottom photo is GW34 – if bolasie and Barkley do well in GW33 then there is a good chance I will keep them if not I will take them both out and bring in Coutinho and KDB. (I should have a good idea on KDB match fitness by then), it would leave me with 9 for GW35 but again I would do two more transfers and bring back in Alli and Kane.
Thoughts?
First observation is that you’ll probably struggle for funds in the second one. Make sure you do a lot of tinkering throughout the wildcard to catch rises from popular players you don’t want.
EBC – I would leave 5.2 ITB which would leave me enough to do the moves – I’m fooked if any of them go up before GW34
That’s what I mean. It’s likely something will move because lots of people will have the same idea.
Just have to take it as it comes I suppose.
2 FT, 1.5itb. And I’ll WC GW33. What to do?
Monreal & Antonio in for Walker & Sigurdsson/Alli?
Other options include:
B) Sanchez & Defoe in for Kane & Alli/Sigurdsson
C) Cresswell & Cech in for Walker & Butland (playing Sigurdsson)
D) Playing Simpson & going for some other keeper, midfielder, striker option?
If I already had 5 dgw players and 4 transfers up to gw34 giving you 9 dgw players I’d consider saving my wildcard till gw36 and bench boost in gw37.
I had considered that before and I think what put me off was that my GW35 team was shit. I’ll have another look at that though.
It would allow me to TC Ozil which would be good.
Actually the other thing that put me off was that it was a choice between 2/3 BB’s in GW37 and having lots of Arsenal at home to Villa in GW38.
You would have 2 FT’s going into GW38 though…….it’s a dilemma though innit,Arsenal dgw34 is a great triple captain option.I’m considering wildcarding in gw 33 using triple captain in gw34 and bench boosting in gw37,but would mean bench boosting with an Arsenal mid and defender away to City which isn’t ideal.
They also have Norwich GW36 which I’d miss in that case.
I could leave 2 in my wildcard, remove 1 GW37 and put him back in GW38.
OK here are my plans.
Key: Purple = captain, Green = Triple captain, Red = Unavailable, Orange = doubt, bold = playing, lower case = transferred out
GW33, BB34 plan:
GW36 WC, TC GW34, BB WC37.
Which do you prefer?
I do like option 2.Maybe P.v.a instead of Cathcart ? Would maybe have to analyse it a bit harder,which is tricky on a mobile, but I like it.
You could compare form between Ozil and Sanchez up to gw36 and if Sanchez’s is better try and get him in for the Norwich game and just leave him in for gw37 and bring extra Arsenal in for Gw38.