Compared to a few recent seasons, we have been remarkably fortunate with injuries so far this time. While there have been a lot of injuries cumulatively, and a particularly heavy density of them recently during the gruelling winter months, not many of the most popular FPL selections have been badly affected, and we haven't had multiple players wiped out in the same week.
Well, not until this last week.... Sunderland right-back Nordi Mukiele, one of the most popular 'cheap fifth' defender picks in the game, had already gone missing with a calf injury the previous weekend (immediately after I'd opted to leave him in my Wildcard selection...); and Florian Wirtz, whose ownership had soared since he started to discover better form around mid-December, had reported a back problem in the GW27 warm-up. Then, Erling Haaland - the most popular player in the game by far, with around two-thirds ownership - suddenly failed to show up this last weekend, having apparently suffered a knock late in training. Another popular cheaper defender, Joachim Andersen, went missing with an unspecified 'illness'. And other super-popular picks like Harry Wilson, Declan Rice, and Nico O'Reilly came out of this weekend's games limping, and are now stigmatised by the dreaded maybe-they'll-play-maybe-they-won't 'yellow flag'.
Many FPL managers will own at least three of those players; some 'unlucky' ones might own six or seven.
And to make matters even worse, this heaviest cluster of injuries-to-top-players we've experienced all season happens to come the week before the 5th Round of the FA Cup; this means that the next batch of Premier League fixtures is shunted forward into midweek - giving these injury-doubt players almost no time to shake off their problem. Most of these issues are probably so slight, you wouldn't expect them to affect fitness to play a full week later; but only two or three days later, I fear they are unlikely to be risked... And there's not much time for any more accurate and detailed information on these injury situations to emerge.
We're all flying blind into Gameweek 29, fearing that we might be without some of our key players,.... perhaps several of them.
But most of us will probably just keep our fingers crossed, and hope we don't end up with only 8 or 9 men on the park. There is a fair chance that at least some of these players will be able to turn out after all (Declan Rice is made of titanium, and will happily play through almost any injury short of a broken leg). Because of the FA Cup, these players will then have a further 10 days to recover before the next Premier League fixtures - so, almost certainly will miss no more than one gameweek. They're not players we'd want to let go of, unless we really have to. And, since they've probably increased in price quite nicely while we've had them, we'd take quite a heavy hit in squad value if we went for a quick sell-and-buy-back on any of them. So..... we sit tight, and hope for the best.
But this is WHY it's undesirable - an unacceptable RISK - to use your second Wildcard EARLY. It is not all that uncommon to suffer 5, 6, 7 long-term injuries within one or two gameweeks; if something like that happens, the Wildcard can help to dig you out of the hole.
This 'injury crisis' - potentially damaging though it is - is not Wildcard-worthy. (It's not even transfer-worthy!!)
We always have to be on our guard against possible sudden disasters like this. BAD THINGS do not happen all the time; but they do happen often enough that we need to be constantly vigilant, constantly prepared.
BEST OF LUCK, EVERYONE! AND DON'T FORGET THAT TUESDAY EVENING DEADLINE!!!
