The great CHIP Dilemma

This conundrum presents itself every year - In what order should we play our Free Hit and 2nd Wildcard chips?

In general, the Free Hit would seem better suited to helping you dance around the problem of a big Blank Gameweek - when many top teams, and hence many of your best players, may be missing from the action for one week only.

And the Wildcard is traditionally preserved for use just ahead of the big Double Gameweek, which usually follows close after it,... but this year, oddly, is going to precede it. (You might, of course, use your Wildcard in the Double Gameweek; but a big Double is usually a good opportunity to get the most out of the Bench Boost chip - and, since you can only use one chip per gameweek, people tend to use their Wildcard to 'set up' their squad to optimise all 15 players with the best fixtures the week before the Double so that they can use Bench Boost the following week.)

However, there's no hard-and-fast rule: you always need to stay flexible in your approach to chip play.

The optimum use of the chips in any given year will depend on how the fixtures break on those crucial weekends (do the blanks/doubles involve a lot of your players, or not?), and on the subsequent run of fixtures (do you actually want to keep most of your doublers for more than that one gameweek?).

For Gameweeks 33/34 this year, with only a small number of teams involved, and mostly not the most popular ones in FPL at the moment - it was really looking as though, for most FPL managers, you'd probably only want additional players from the doubling teams in GW33, but not thereafter (indeed, you might even want to reduce or eliminate your exposure to those teams by removing some of your long-term holds from them, because their form was stuttering or ther run-ins looked a little shakey). In contrast, many of the players you were loading up on in the subsequent Blank Gameweek 34 were not just one-week makeweights, but players coming into form and/or facing a promising final month of fixtures, players you would want to keep for the remainder of the season.

And thus.... playing the Free Hit for the double in GW33 and the Wildcard for the blank in GW34 was probably the more sensible option this time around.

It can work out either way. But it's usually very much better one way than the other - and that can be a tricky choice to make.... And the answer could be different in each year. [At least, that's how it is now - since we no longer have any truly big Blank/Double Gameweeks to worry about, as the FA Cup Quarter-Final weekend has been removed from the League programme from this year. In the past, with a really huge Blank and Double resulting from up to 8 rearranged fixtures, the case for using Free Hit to survive the BIG Blank was pretty overwhelming...]

Wildcard THIS week??

 

Hell, NO!!!

The 'chips' in general, and perhaps - strangely - the Wildcard in partcular.... well, it seems to burn a hole i people's pockets: they grow impatient to get rid of it.

So, although there are still 9 more gameweeks in which one might play the 2nd Wiildcard,.... an awful lot of folk seem to be intent on activating it for Gameweek 30.

There are several reasons why this probably isn't a great idea:

1)  As I pointed out some months back, in relation to hazarding the Triple Captain chip in the gameweek after an international break, it's non-ideal to play a chip straight after a break because of the additional uncertainty that now surrounds the next batch of fixtures. After the long hiatus from Premier League football, teams and individuals have been knocked out of their usual rhythm and 'form' may suddenly be dramatically different when things resume. Plus, of course, there is enormous scope for new injuries to have arisen in the two-and-a-half weeks since everyone last played a league match. And in fact, those who were not involved in international duty nor in this coming weekend's FA Cup ties might be the most problematic - because clubs often keep quiet about training-ground mishaps until the very eve of the next match. You really don't have much idea how the GW30 matches are going to go, or who's going to be available (and there might be a few nasty surprises that emerge only after the deadline, since the matches are staggered over three days). Making even one or two regular transfers in these circumstances is nerve-wracking enough; hazarding a whole squad rebuild is.... utter INSANITY. 

2)  At the moment we have the further complication that a couple of top players are poised to return from injury soon (Saka and Jackson [and NO, I don't put Jackson on the same level as Saka; he might not even be in contention for a squad place himself, but.... his reintroduction for Chelsea could have a huge impact on Palmer's productivity!), and a couple more from extended suspensions (Cunha and Gordon). If they start producing their best form again, you might want them... And their contributions could have a major impact on the value of certain of their teammates too. But we won't know about this for a few weeks yet. Having some of the most important selection decisions of the remainder of the season looming over us like this is another reason to defer using the WildCard, if possible.

3) There can't be much legitimate pretext for most people to need to Wildcard now. There haven't - yet - been any major new long-term injuries. And there aren't any major turns in fixtures happening that might make you want to consider wholesale squad changes on grounds of fixture-difficulty. (OK, Fulham, Everton, Brentford, and Manchester United are now facing tough runs of fixtures; but they're not clubs you should have had many - or any! - players from anyway.)

4)  There are clearly much stronger tactical occasions for using the 2nd Wildcard still to come. If you've blown your Free Hit already, you'll almost certainly need your Wildcard instead to help you get around the looming catastrrophe of a big Blank Gameweek in GW34. If you've still got the FH in hand for that, there's going to be at least one more - perhaps also a second - Double Gameweek in the final weeks of the season, with the resheduled games from the FA Cup Semi-Final weekend. Many FPL managers traditionally regard such Double Gameweeks as a prime opportunity to deploy the Bench Boost chip; this year, those doubles are probably going to be too small to make that a particularly attractive play, but still, even without the bonus chip staked on it, a DGW will benefit from a major squad shake-up that week (or the week prior, if you are going for the Bench Boost) - that's what you should be keeping your Wildcard for. (If you don't have the Bench Boost still to use, but you do have both the Wildcard and the Free Hit, you enjoy the leeway to decide which order to play them in. If you don't fancy your doubling players that much for the other remaing gameweeks, it could make more sense to use the Free Hit for that Double Gameweek and play the Wildcard in GW34 - rather than vice versa.)

5)  Some people want to try to 'set up' for the coming Double Gameweeks by Wildcarding NOW - but it's way too early. At the time most of these folk were activatig the chip, they didn't even know which teams would have progressed to the FA semi-finals (and thus be blanking in FPL in Gameweek 34); and we almost certainly still won't know when those missing GW34 games will be rescheduled before the GW30 deadline on Tuesday evening. It's really too early even to think about 'optimising' for the already setttled Double Gameweek in GW32: that's still two weeks away, and players you bring in now might not still be available then (and some of them might not be ideal for the two intervening gameweeks...). Rebuilding a squad with a Wildcard even one week in advance of a big gameweek (most commonly, because you want to play Bench Boost in a BIG double) can backfire, with multiple injuries and suspensions hitting in the intervening week. Trying to do it two or three weeks ahead is asking for trouble.

6)  Some years.... the Cup fixtures break in such a way that you can thread your way through the end-of-season blanks and doubles without needing to use your Wildcard or Free Hit (without needing to use both of them, anyway!). In that happy circumstance, it's rather nice just to be able to drop a remaining 'rebuild chip' in the last week or two of the season to enable you to blitz one of your cup competitions...

As so often, the blame for this mass delusion spreading over the Interwebs seems to lie with FPL's inane anonymous 'pundit', The Scout, who's published a 'Wildcard squad' for this week - and that seems to have given all The Sheep the idea that this is a good week to play the Wildcard.  It's NOT, not at all.

Occasionally, Fate craps on you from a great height and you are obliged to play a Wildcard at such a non-ideal time just because of a sudden combination of injuries, fixture swings, and losses of form. Ultimately, you play your Wildcards when you need to - whenever you have urgent squad changes that have to be made all at once, and the total is at least 3 or 4 more than the number of Free Transfers you have available. (Even a surplus need over Free Transfers of 3 or 4 is very borderline: you probably ought to consider whether you can defer one or two of those changes for another week or so.... or eat the extra 'hits'!)

But it's very difficult to envisage why anybody would be in such a predicament now. You really ought to hang on to your Wildcard a bit longer...

When to use the 2nd Wildcard?

 

Good grief - the FPL forums at the moment seem to be full of people proposing to play their 2nd Wildcard this week! Which, of course, prompts me to ask, "WHY?"

'Truisms' often irritate, because they are used over-frequently and often unthinkingly... But there are two truisms about the Wildcards that are in fact usefully TRUE.

1)  A Wildcard tends to become more valuable the longer you can hang on to it. (That's not to say the best time to use it is in the last possible week; but it certainly is worth resisting the impulse to use it early during its period of availability.)

2)  How early you use your Wildcards is usually a precise indicator how how badly you're doing in the game. (Again, that's not saying that it's always a bad decision in itself to use a Wildcard early; certainly, for the 1st one - as I've discussed before - there can be good reasons for using it early; but that does indicate that you've had a dreadful start to the season, and are needing to take drastic action to recover the situation. If you're using a Wildcard early because you absolutely have to, that's bad; if you don't absolutely have to, but you're using it early anyway, that's very, very bad.)

Using the 2nd Wildcard the instant it becomes available smacks of impatience, impulsivity, and just making changes out of boredom rather than any pressing need. Even if you don't accept the arguments in favour of keeping it for the last stages of the season (which I'll get to in a moment), there are rarely any good reasons for using it NOW. In fact, if the first half of the season has gone well for you, you might have been able to hold on to your 1st Wildcard until quite recently. I know some people who've only finally used it in GW18 or GW19. (I have much admiration and envy for them!!)

And even if you haven't Wildcarded just recently, you have had half a season to get your squad in shape. If you feel the need to make a bunch of changes now - and you really do need to - then you must have been making some terrible choices up until now.

At the beginning of the season, we're all just making blind guesses about which players and teams are going to be in the best form, and even perhaps about what team selections and tactics are going to be. It's almost inevitable that many of those guesses will turn out to be wrong, perhaps some of them disastrously wrong, and - if we avoided resorting to the remedial surgery of an early Wildcard - it may take some time to sort our squads out. But by GW19, that really should have happened. Unless we've had a lot of bad luck with injuries, we should really have had a fairly stable lineup for a month or so now (and have been giving our attention to hoarding up some spare Free Transfers!).

Occasionally, there may be a couple of factors that may prompt us to consider a very early 2nd Wildcard. These are: a rash of injuries to key players at the end of December; and/or a major 'turn' of fixtures (upcoming matches looking suddenly much harder) for a number of the big teams. Neither of those is the case this year. Saka and Bowen are the only big names to be ruled out in the last month. And only West Ham and Wolves (and, to a rather lesser extent, Bournemouth and Brentford) are facing an imminent bad fixture run; and they're not exactly major clubs.

So, what are the advantages of hanging on to the Wildcard for a later date?

i)  We're in a transfer window. Some exciting new players may enter the league; others may suddenly leave. (It's unlikely to be a particularly busy window, I think; although, you never know! Manchester City and Arsenal, and perhaps also Manchester United will probably be looking for one or two big purchases. And I really can't see the logic of getting Trent Alexander-Arnold in on a Wildcard now, when he might be leaving for Spain in a week or two...)  There really is not much point in using the Wildcard before or during this phase of transfer activity, when there are going to be a number of new options to consider in a month's time, and the possibility you might then want to make multiple changes at once. Transfer speculation also adds greatly to the uncertainty of match results in this period: players involved in negotiations may be removed from squads. Team dynamics and individuals' morale may be adversely affected by the introduction of new stars, or the loss of old ones - or merely the mooted possibility of such changes. Blowing the Wildcard now is like spending your life savings on a 'Mystery Box': you have no idea what you're getting - you just don't know how the EPL is going to play out this month, or what it's going to look like going into February.

ii)  We're still in the depths of 'the bleak midwinter'. Cold weather and insane fixture congestion at this time of year mean that there continues to be a greatly increased risk of injury over the coming month or more. And you don't really want to blow your Wildcard on bringing in a bunch of players who might become unavailable almost immediately. Of course, there is some risk of such ill fortune whenever you play it; but the risk is much higher from December through February.

iii)  The 2nd Wildcard can be very valuable in negotiating the selection challenges of the Blank Gameweeks (gameweeks with less than the full number of fixtures; some clubs not playing in that week) and Double Gameweeks (where clubs that missed out in a previous Blank Gameweek make up their postponed fixture by playing two games within one gameweek, offering you a chance of higher points from their players). Now, these are likely to be much less of a problem than they have been in the past, because we've lost two of the four regularly occurring occasions for them (the Club World Cup has been moved from December to June/July, and the FA Cup quarter-finals are now to be played on a weekend emptied of EPL fixtures); thus, we are left with only the League Cup Final (GW29; affected teams probably getting a DGW in GW33) and the FA Semis (GW34; follow-up DGW probably in GW36 or 37). Also, the new rule allowing us to hoard up to 5 Free Transfers - effectively a 'mini-Wildcard' (if we could ever manage to save that many transfers....) - could make it a lot easier to get through these bothersome chicanes this year.

However, even the relatively small interruption of the League Cup Final can be pretty devastating - if you happen to have 2 or 3 players from each of the 4 affected teams (not just the finalists themselves, but whoever they were drawn against in the League that weekend); so devastating that even if you have got 3, 4, or 5 Free Transfers in the bank, you might still not be able to get to a full eleven without taking a lot of 'hits' as well. And even if you can address this problem with Free Transfers and/or paid 'hits', you might want to use a 'makeover chip' to rebuild your squad to its regular shape immediately in the following gameweek. Alternatively, there may be circumstances where it seems better to use the Wildcard to create an 'ideal' squad for this eccentric gameweek, but structure it in such a way that you can quickly restore it to is more normal shape with transfers over the next two or three gameweeks.

The Free Hit is, naturally, the best chip to use for sorting out a one-off problem like this. But you only have one of those, and this challenge is going to present itself at least twice in the second half of our season. (Just be grateful that it's no longer four or more times in a season! The FA Quarter-Finals used to be a colossal clusterfuck....)  It might yet arise more than twice; we've already seen one fixture postponed because of high winds, and more recently several others came close to being called off because of severe fog. As I pointed out in this post on the main hazard of The New Chip, there are all kinds of things that might lead to multiple postponements on one weekend. If that should happen, it's nice - very, very, very comforting! - to have the option of using either the Wildcard or the Free Hit to deal with the gaping holes it could leave in your squad.  

The common expectation of 'chip strategy' this year is that it will probably be best to hold on to your Free Hit to get around the FA Semis in Gameweek 34. But it would be very valuable to hang on to your Wildcard at least until Gameweek 29 as a back-up option for coping with this kind of last-minute emergency.

And it is also possible - though a much rarer eventuality - that teams with a Double Gameweek also have favourable fixtures following, and thus (especially if you're also developing a high level of dissatisfaction with some members of your current squad...) it may be appropriate to drop the Wildcard in that Double Gameweek to load up on more players from these teams that are playing twice, and that you're happy to keep on afterwards.

iv)  The other prime candidate for an especially valuable use of the Wildcard late in the season has traditionally been to 'set up' optimally to exploit your Bench Boost chip in a Double Gameweek. If you play your Wildcard the week before the DGW, you can be reasonably confident of having every member of your squad being a starter, and as many of them as possible having double-fixtures (and good fixtures). It is difficult to do this just with transfers, because you don't know until a few weeks ahead who the teams involved will be. (And even if you could do it that way, it tends to be non-ideal, because you're probably moving some players out of your team much earlier than you'd like to, just to optimise for the coming double-fixture week. Again, this might be more possible this year to do in one go, through having saved up 5 Free Transfers; but it would be very tricky to pull that off.) There were only two scheduled Double Gameweeks this year (we now have a third one, thanks to the Everton v Liverpool postponement a few weeks back), rather than four, which was the common minimum until now (we'd also grown rather used to having even more additional ones occur in recent years due to things like Covid outbreaks and the death of the Queen); and only one 'big' one, the rearranged fixtures from the FA Semi-Final weekend being crammed in right before the end of the season. While I always counsel that it is very risky - for all sorts of reasons - to wait until then to play a chip,.... most experienced FPL managers will probably be planning to play their Bench Boost in that last Double Gameweek.... and their 2nd Wildcard in the week before (judging that the potentially substantial benefits of this strategy outweigh the risks).

v)  While there are very strong arguments for saving the Wildcard as a contingency for addressing possible Blank Gameweeks, or for setting up for a Bench Boost attempt in a 'big' Double Gameweek,... as I've said in regard to the 1st Wildcard, there can be no hard-and-fast rules: we always need to stay flexible in deciding how we can best use our chips. It can occasionally happen that we're clobbered with multiple injuries, suspensions, and sudden and catastrophic dips in form for key teams or players in quick succession - perhaps even in the space of just one week. And if we've also been taking a chance on carrying one or two people on the bench who we thought might be short-term injuries but turn out to be rather longer-term, and perhaps we haven't been paying enough attention to a looming turn in fixtures for two or three of the sides that we've taken the most players from... then we are indeed most royally screwed. If you suddenly find yourself with 6, 7, 8 gaps in your line-up you urgently need to fill - and you don't have many saved Free Transfers to help you out - that's when you need to consider playing your Wildcard.

vi)  So, I've outlined two reasons why it's just A BAD IDEA to play the Wildcard at the start of January, and given three more why there are likely going to be occasions later in the season when it will be far more valuable. But I'd also suggest simply considering THE ODDS: there are 19 occasions during the rest of the season when you could play this chip. You need to be really, really sure that the week you choose to play it is almost certainly going to be the best possible one. It's really hard to be that confident when there are 18 other opportunities to play it still ahead of you. It becomes a little easier, a little less stressful and uncertain with each passing week; once you get to GW28 or GW29, and there are almost as many gameweeks in which to use the chip behind you as there are still to come, it becomes more possible to make a confident determination - rather than just a wild guess. I think it is very likely that almost all of the remaining weeks of the season will offer a better opportunity to get the best out of the 2nd Wildcard than Gameweek 20 - for absolutely everyone. I am also quite certain that probably about half of them will be much better; and at least 3 or 4 of them will be much, much, much better.

vii)  And finally.... if you have - by some great good fortune - managed to sail through the second half of the season without encountering any huge injury crises or unexpected mass postponements, and if you've been able to safely navigate the expected Blank and Double Gameweeks, and even get the best out of your Bench Boost, just by using regular transfers (and perhaps the occasional 'hit').... well, good for you, you are truly blessed. Such things are very possible, from time to time; but you won't know until the end of the season.

And let me assure you, on the rare, blessed occasions when this may happen, there is no greater pleasure in Fantasy Premier League than being able to drop an unexpected Wildcard as a late-season 'smart-bomb' to get you through a tricky final (or perhaps even the semi-, or quarter- ) against a bitter rival in the 'Cup' competition of one of your mini-leagues. Honestly, that possibility alone always makes it worth thinking twice - and thrice, and four times! - about using the 2nd Wildcard for anything else earlier on!

So, in summary, if you are thinking of playing your 2nd Wildcard in Gameweek 20 - What is wrong with you, are you completely BATSHIT INSANE??  PLEASE, DON'T DO IT!!!

And DON'T FORGET The Boycott:

#QuitFPLinGW23         #DownWithTheNewChip

Oops - he did it AGAIN!

 

I joked last week that we might already have seen 'peak Haaland' for this season - at least in terms of his points-per-game average.  And then the bugger goes and gets another hattrick!!

Now, it would be absolutely astonishing if he managed to register THREE hattricks in successive weeks. (I don't think that's ever been done in the Premier League? And probably not in top flight football anywhere in the world, ever in history? But dammit, he is a record-smashing machine... Maybe it could happen??)  And, statistically, it does seem rather improbable that he'll even pick up a brace again for another month or so now....

But he is in exceptional form: probably the sharpest and most confident we've ever seen him. And that is utterly terrifying!

And it is prompting many people to revisit The Big Question I considered before the start of the season, whether a with-Haaland or without-Haaland squad was likely to be the best option for FPL this year.

I think that question is more open than we might have expected - an early switch of strategy more tempting - not just because of Haaland's exceptional start to the season, but because of the impressiveness of our options at the lower end of the price scale. No, we don't have any 4.0 starting keepers (like Areola last year) or unexpectedly starting and oustandingly good cheap defenders (like Gusto and Van Hecke); and we don't have a 'Player of the Season' available for only 5.0 (Palmer was a once-in-a-decade-or-two FPL miracle!!). But we do suddenly have Arrizabalaga, Johnstone, Verbruggen, and Ramsdale added to the pool of very decent keeper options at only 4.5 (I'd probably stick with Areola and Henderson as the strongest two at the moment; but Hermansen, Sels, and Muric could also emerge as tempting, more left-field picks); there's even a chance that 4.0 Fabianski might get a few starts, after Areola apparently hurt himself with a bad landing in the City game this weekend. Up front, we've got Wood, Wissa, Welbeck, Joao Pedro, Delap, Vardy, Calvert-Lewin, Duran and Strand-Larsen among the leading scorers so far - all priced between 5.0 and 6.0 million. And - outside of the inevitable Liverpool and Arsenal (and the slightly less inevitable Spurs!) back lines - all the top 15 highest-scoring defenders started the season at only 4.5 million. In particular, Rico Lewis getting a regular start at City (for now) is a huge bonus. And, to fill out the last couple of seats on the bench, there are even some OK defenders starting who cost only 4.0 million: Nedeljković, Faes, Harwood-Bellis.

Above all, there are some very strong-looking cheaper midfield options; and that is the area of the field where most of your points are usually produced. A With-Haaland squad would not be viable, I don't think, unless we could assemble a full roster of 5 strong attacking midfielders with the remains of our budget. But we have the likes of Smith Rowe, Semenyo, Iwobi, Rogers, Murphy, Wharton, Hudson-Odoi, Adingra, Minteh, Diallo, Kluivert, Tavernier, Sinisterra all looking like more-than-decent prospects to take up the last one or two spots in midfield.

It is looking perfectly possible to assemble a Haaland-Salah-Palmer squad that includes at least one other premium player, and doesn't go ridiculously light in any area of the pitch (NO non-playing bench!!). You only get into trouble, I think, if you rashly opt for Raya or Alisson in goal, and/or one or two of the more premium defenders. With Arsenal and Liverpool looking so solid, it is very likely that players from their defences will substantially out-perform almost all others, but.... will they do so by enough of a margin to justify the huge extra outlay?? That remains doubtful: the spread of points across the best keepers is usually fairly small; the spread across defenders - except for a few outliers sometimes - not much greater. Extra money spent almost always yields more points in midfield.

I can see why so many people are getting tempted to go for an early use of the Wildcard this week (I will probably have more to say on that before long): many of those who initially opted to go without Haaland - perhaps the majority - have had a change of heart. (It's probably safe to assume that almost no-one is moving the other way, and dropping him!)  I hope that's not just short-term reactionism, getting spooked by his two hattricks (you've already missed those: let it go....).  If you're going to make this momentous switch (as I think I will myself), it needs to be because you've carefully considered the overall budget constraints and the available player pool. At the start of the season, we didn't know how many of these cheaper options would be starting, or how good their prospects might be; now that is becoming more apparent, we have a better picture of what a strong With-Haaland squad could be.