🚀 Prepare for chaos
Gameweek 27 preview
Hello and welcome to the latest edition of Fantasy Gameweek. This week starts a chaotic stretch of three gameweeks where there are doubles and blanks for teams in Fantasy Premier League. Planning ahead is going to be key - on transfers, using your bench, and potentially using your remaining chips. Fantasy Gameweek will help you navigate what should be an important three weeks.
Firstly, let’s look ahead to the fixtures, starting with Gameweek 27. The deadline for transfers and changes to your team is 11am UK time on Saturday. As you can see, it is a double gameweek for Brighton, Crystal Palace, Southampton and Brentford.
Now let’s look at next week. There are only seven matches in Gameweek 28, with no games for Brighton, Fulham, Liverpool, Man City, Man United, or West Ham.
The following week is Gameweek 29, which looks like this…
This is a huge gameweek. There are 16 matches, with doubles for Bournemouth, Brighton, Leeds, Forest, Leicester, Aston Villa, Chelsea, Liverpool, Man United, Brentford, West Ham and Newcastle.
All of this means that there is a big discrepancy in the quality and quantity of the matches facing teams over the next three weeks. For example, Brentford play five matches while Fulham and Man City play only two. Brighton have four games but this includes two doubles and one blank in the middle. Another factor to consider is that there is a break for international matches between Gameweek 28 and 29 - so there is the potential for injuries.
That is a lot to take in, so let’s make it easier - this is a breakdown of how many times each team plays over the next three weeks and who they play, starting with the team with the most matches and finishing with the least…
Brentford - 5 (Everton away and Southampton away, Leicester at home, Brighton away and Man United away)
Aston Villa - 4 (West Ham away, Bournemouth at home, Chelsea away and Leicester away)
Bournemouth - 4 (Liverpool at home, Villa away, Fulham at home and Brighton at home)
Brighton - 4 (Leeds away and Palace at home, no game, Brentford at home and Bournemouth away)
Chelsea - 4 (Leicester away, Everton at home, Villa at home and Liverpool at home)
Crystal Palace - 4 (Man City at home and Brighton away, Arsenal away, Leicester at home)
Leicester - 4 (Chelsea at home, Brentford away, Palace away and Villa at home)
Leeds - 4 (Brighton at home, Wolves away, Arsenal away and Forest at home)
Newcastle - 4 (Wolves at home, Forest away, Man United at home and West Ham away)
Nottingham Forest - 4 (Spurs away, Newcastle at home, Wolves at home, Leeds away)
Southampton - 4 (Man United away and Brentford at home, Spurs at home, West Ham away)
Arsenal - 3 (Fulham away, Palace at home, Leeds at home)
Everton - 3 (Brentford at home, Chelsea away, Spurs at home)
Liverpool - 3 (Bournemouth away, no game, Man City away and Chelsea away)
Man United - 3 (Southampton at home, no game, Newcastle away and Brentford at home)
Tottenham - 3 (Forest at home, Southampton away, Everton away)
West Ham - 3 (Villa at home, no game, Southampton at home and Newcastle at home)
Wolves - 3 (Newcastle away, Leeds at home, Forest away)
Fulham - 2 (Arsenal at home, no game, Bournemouth away)
Man City - 2 (Palace away, no game, Liverpool at home)
As well as Brighton and Brentford having interesting fixtures, there are other teams with top FPL options who have four matches - Aston Villa, Chelsea, Leicester, and Newcastle. Meanwhile, Arsenal, Liverpool, Man United and Tottenham only play three times but have intriguing fixtures, particularly Arsenal and Tottenham.
Negotiating all this threatens to be a minefield. One straightforward tip to make is this: Ivan Toney (FWD, £7.8m), the 9th top-scoring player in FPL so far this season, is basically a must-pick. Going without him is high-risk.
We mentioned in the last edition that plenty of top FPL managers used their wildcards last week to set themselves up for this run of fixtures. However, that went badly wrong for many teams, with Liverpool’s 7-0 win over Manchester United meaning that those who sold Mo Salah (MID, £12.8m), Cody Gakpo (MID, £7.7m) and Darwin Nunez (FWD, £8.8m) lost a lot of points…
Liverpool beating Man United 7-0 was an unexpected result. It was unprecedented actually (and very painful for Man United fans like me). Those who wildcarded made their decisions based on sound logic. But as we have written before in Fantasy Gameweek - uncertainty, chaos and luck should be base assumptions for you when playing FPL. The key is to build a team that can weather the storm. You read more on our general guide to playing FPL here and some more tips from last week’s edition here.
When considering how to play these next three weeks a couple of recent quotes from Warren Buffett about decision-making stand out. These are from his annual letter to investors, which we also enjoyed flagging last week…
The world is full of foolish gamblers, and they will not do as well as the patient investor
And
A string of wonderful numbers times zero will always equal zero. Don’t count on getting rich twice
What does this mean for FPL? Bad players are still bad players even if they have two matches in a gameweek instead of one. Don’t just pick players because they have a double gameweek. Only consider players who you would have considered anyway. The quality and quantity of fixtures should be a factor in making your decisions, but not the only one. In his book on investing, Winning the Loser’s Game, Charles Ellis explained how one of the best ways to outperform rivals is by focusing on avoiding losers, not picking winners. More here.
So while Man City only have two matches, do you really want to abandon Erling Haaland (FWD, £12.2m) for Gameweek 27 and 29? Also, Harry Kane (FWD, £11.7m) and Tottenham only have three matches but they all are against teams in the bottom-half of the table. By using your transfers, chips and bench wisely over the next three weeks you can avoid taking these players out and making unnecessarily high-risk moves.
Unsurprisingly, Brighton and Brentford players are popular transfers-in this week. As well as Toney, this week you also probably want at least one of Brighton’s midfield trio of Kaoru Mitoma (FWD, £5.5m), Alexis Mac Allister (MID, £5.4) and Solly March (MID, £5.1) plus Pervis Estupinan (DEF, £4.8m) who is on an extraordinary points-scoring run since Gameweek 20 - 6,9,6,7,8,6.
These are the most popular transfers-in so far this week in FPL. As you can see, there are plenty of U-turns on Liverpool players too, who are being brought back in after being sold…
These are the top transfers-out. Those taking out Kane are taking a risk, although Tottenham’s form and the mood around the club is miserable…
In terms of potential captains, Toney is an option, but so is Haaland and Marcus Rashford (MID, £7.4m). Your choice of captain over the next three weeks could be a key way to differentiate from your rivals and take some risks if you are looking to catch-up.
This is what the underlying data from Impect, our data partner, shows about the top performers in the Premier League. These are the leaders in post-shot xG since December 26:
Marcus Rashford -5.8
Ollie Watkins - 5.5
Harry Kane - 5.2
Kaoru Mitoma - 5.2
Erling Haaland - 4.8
James Ward-Prowse - 4.7
Brennan Johnson - 4.7
Eddie Nketiah - 4.7
Darwin Nunez - 4.4
Mo Salah - 4.2
These are the leaders in Offensive Impect, a measure of how effective a player is in attack for their team. Minimum 180 minutes played since December 26
Manor Solomon - 100
Marcus Rashford - 98
Evan Ferguson - 97
Ollie Watkins - 96
Harry Kane - 96
Erling Haaland - 96
Solly March - 96
Kelechi Iheanacho - 95
Kaoru Mitoma - 95
Danny Ings - 95
And this is Offensive Impect for defenders only, a great insight into the defenders who are capable of getting attacking points as well as a clean sheet. Liverpool have five clean sheets in a row and Trent Alexander-Arnold (DEF, £7.3m) has gone 6,12,6,7,6 in his last five matches. He looks a stellar option at the back again. Also note how high Estupinan ranks and that Kieran Trippier (DEF, £6m), the top-scoring defender in FPL, is still high in this list despite Newcastle’s poor recent form.
Trent Alexander-Arnold - 100
Pervis Estupinan - 98
Luke Shaw - 96
Lewis Dunk - 94
Macros Senesi - 92
Kieran Trippier - 90
Tim Ream - 88
Thiago Silva -85
Manuel Akanji - 83
Ben Davies - 81
Finally, the FPGE 100 is back this week. This is Fantasy Gameweek’s ranking of players by value. It uses an algorithm to calculate the value a player is offering based on their points-per-million and potential upside over the course of the season. It allows you to accurately compare players who are priced differently…
Thanks for reading Fantasy Gameweek. Please do share it with others and spread the word…
Graham