As you may have seen FPL, prior to the 17/18 site opening, have created a fantasy premier league free hit chip to replace the all out attack one. Here’s a few initial thoughts on the subject
fantasy premier league free hit chip – a few initial thoughts
What is this new chip?
The title is quite misleading. A hit in normal FPL parlance means a 4 point deduction for a transfer over and above your free ones. This is more like a 1 week wildcard as you’ll see below
The premier league site describes it quite simply:
The “Free Hit” chip replaces last season’s “All Out Attack” chip to sit alongside the Wildcard, the Triple Captain and Bench Boost.
A Free Hit can be taken once per season and allows for unlimited transfers in a single Gameweek.
Managers can replace their entire squad for that Gameweek but their 15-man squad of the Gameweek before returns for the next deadline.
For example, if the Free Hit chip is played leading up to Gameweek 2, once the deadline has passed, you will see the points scored by your new squad via the points tab.
Your previous squad will now return and is accessible on the transfers tab.
The Free Hit chip will give unlimited transfers for a single Gameweek
Like the Wildcard, the Free Hit is used when confirming transfers. It cannot be cancelled once confirmed.
Managers cannot benefit from any price changes gained from their new Free Hit squad.
However, price changes applied to their previous line-up will take effect on their return once the chip expire
When would you use it?
Double gameweeks
These are gameweeks where a certain number of teams play twice. Whenever you hear the word chip in an FPL context you’re going to immediately start thinking of double and blank gameweeks so this seems a good starting point.
Just for background, Blank gameweeks result from premier league fixture postponements caused by clashes with the League Cup final, the FA Cup quarters and the FA Cup semis. These blanks create double gameweeks as fixtures are moved into midweek therefore creating 2 games in a gameweek for some teams. Normally these DGWs occur around GW34 and GW37 and the blank gameweeks slightly earlier.
Standard practice has been to use the wildcard the week before the biggest DGW and then the bench boost in the DGW so as to have potentially 15 players playing twice. 2 chips can’t be played in the same gameweek btw.
Using the fantasy premier league free hit would mean a maximum of 11 players playing twice as you wouldn’t be able to use the bench boost. However it would have the advantage that if you load up on the poorer players in order to get them playing twice you wouldn’t have them clogging up your team for weeks afterwards. You would get your old squad back. That advantage has to be weighed up against losing the 4 players playing twice. Last season for various reasons I kept 2 players only playing once so I only had 13 DGW players. Would I have used it then? I’m not sure. Capoue gave me 9 points I recollect which was nice if extremely lucky.
Now it’s always likely that there will be more than 1 double gameweek given the 3 sets of postponements so there’s always the option of using it for another double gameweek than the largest 1 if that seems the right thing to do
Blank gameweeks
The postponements I mentioned above end up with only a handful of games in a gameweek. Last season I think GW28 ended up with 4 fixtures. Careful planning can mean that you can maximise the number of players in that gameweek but you pay the heavy price of forced transfers in during the weeks leading up and then forced transfers out of unsuitable players for the longer term. For the blank weeks you end up transferring in by team and not by the best players. This chip would avoid that by covering the blank gameweek for 1 week only.
Fixture turns
So as an example, if your team is made up mainly of Spurs, Arsenal and Everton players for some reason and in 1 gameweek they happen to be all away to Chelsea, Man City and Man Utd respectively then you may want to use it then to give your team better fixtures for that 1 gameweek. That’s using it as a shield.
You could use it as a sword by looking for a series of good fixtures for certain teams. The advantage of it being 1 week is that you can have on your bench the cheapest possible players to maximise the value of your 11 as they will go away at the end of the week. Bring out the £3.9m defenders and £4.4m midfielders for your bench that 1 gameweek to maximise your spend on the 11. Obviously you have to be certain that the 11 will play to get that advantage.
An injury and suspension decimated gameweek
Seems a bit of a waste to me. It would have to be serious to use it for that
A few general thoughts
It’s hard to say at the moment whether this is a good thing or not. Planning is 1 way of getting an advantage in FPL and this could reduce that advantage as people will avoid blank gameweeks by using this chip rather than planning for it. However, history has shown that those who don’t plan for blank and double gameweeks probably spurn the advantage of chips by using them too early anyway so maybe this will be used in the same way.
In my ebook “preparing for FPL 17/18” I talk about how the blank and double gameweeks can save your season and therefore this could be another one to do this. Remember it also gives you the chance to use your triple captain somewhere else even if you don’t change wildcard strategy.
I was wondering if when you use it the free transfer rolls over. It doesn’t for a WC so I imagine it won’t here. I’m trying to think how it works practically presumably your old team returns after the games for that gameweek have finished so you can appoint a new captain, make a transfer and change the subs etc?
One thing I know for sure is I’m going to be panicking until my last gameweek team returns as it’s just one of those things you think will go wrong
FFgeek plans
It’s too early to say how I’m going to use it and it will depend on how the fixtures pile up as well. One thing I can say is that I wont be rush using it that’s for sure. It’s likely I’ll see how the blanks and double gameweeks look way into the 2nd half of the season.. My initial thoughts are that it’s too good to use in a normal gameweek.
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