If you’ve still got your regular season wildcard, here’s a few thoughts on whether you should use your wildcard for DGW28 or hold it for later possible DGWs .
fantasy premier league wildcard tips – Should you use your Wildcard for DGW28 or later?
I’ve tried to make this a fairly short and straightforward article. At the risk of stating the obvious using your wildcard for double gameweeks is a quick way of gaining points by setting up a team with the maximum number of players who play 2 games in that gameweek. Double game weeks are produced through postponements resulting from the domestic cups clashing with premier league fixtures or through weather postponements. The postponements themselves create blank gameweeks when teams are playing in those Cup games instead of premier league games. Given that were getting through February now the prospect of weather postponements are diminishing.
There is a somewhat disputed rule that games can’t be just postponed to the midweek of the gameweek if they clash with European games. Thats any games, not just games with teams who are playing in the European fixtures.
Firstly I’ll warn you of the blanks and then I’ll talk about the DGWs coming up and give a few thoughts on whether to use it for DGW28 or hold. Obviously it’s impossible to talk about every scenario your team may have so generally I’m speaking through my team and how a typical team mught look like at this stage of the season.
The Blanks
The blanks coming up are as follows:
GW27: Sees the Capital 1 final and blanks for Spurs, Chelsea, Leicester and QPR. Games can’t be postponed to midweek as GW28 starts on the Tuesday.
GW33: This game week will see the postponement of teams playing in the FA Cup semis. They can’t be postponed to midweek due to UCL matches
Just to remind us the quarter finals involving premier league clubs are as follows:
Liverpool v Blackburn
Man Utd v Arsenal
Villa v WBA
The DGWs
The Double gameweeks coming up are as follows:
GW28 can accomodate teams that aren’t in the FA Cup quarter finals as there is no round of PL games in that weekend. GW31, GW34 and GW37 are the only gameweeks that don’t have UCL games or internationals preventing postponements midweek.
GW28: Confirmed Spurs and QPR. Likely to be Leicester v Chelsea
GW31: Alternate location for Leicester v Chelsea
GW34 or GW37: Location for postponed semi final teams. See quarter finals above for likely teams involved
Wildcard for DGW28?
If it’s only Spurs and QPR that make it then there really would be little point in using your wildcard.
Spurs have Swansea (H) and QPR (A). You’ll probably have Kane anyway so it should be easy enough even at this stage to add in Eriksen and if you want to go wild, a Spurs defender. QPR have tough games home to Arsenal and Spurs. Only Austin has any potential for QPR and thats questionable.
If Chelsea come into the mix they would play West Ham (A) and Leicester (A). then you probably want a defender plus Hazard and Costa. If you’re like me then getting Costa in is the diffcult one. The way to maximise points without hits is to have 3 DGW players on the bench in GW27 and then 2 transfers for DGW28. You would then have the 5 players in Eriksen, Kane, Chelsea defender, Hazard and Costa. You probably already have a Chelsea defender, Hazard and Kane so it’s whether you think it’s worth a wildcard for Costa as you should be able to get Eriksen in without issue.
The Leicester Chelsea game could be postponed to make a DGW31. A 2 team DGW which includes Leicester hardly seems worth using the Wildcard
Wildcard for DGW34
Obviously it’s impossible to predict who will get through the quarters. If we assume Liverpool do then 3 teams will go through and it means 6 teams will have DGW34s. As I said they could choose GW37 for postponments but thats the last chance for postponements so it seems unlikely to me.
Here’s the potential GW33 postponments. I’ve included all 5 teams and not tried to predict winners of the PL clashes:
Arsenal v Sunderland
Aston Villa v QPR
Chelsea v Man Utd
Crystal Palace v West Brom
Hull v Liverpool
I ahve to confess I’m not sure how replays will be dealt with as there isn’t space in GW28. It could be GW31 where there is space midweek which initself would create other DGWs. If anyone understands this then please leave it in the comments section.
So we should have at least 6 teams with DGWs. Man Utd beating Arsenal in the FA Cup quarters would bring Chelsea into the mix. WBA winning would bring Palace and WBA which is a better combination than Villa and QPR. The reverse of this is coping in the blanks of GW33 and would involve some thought after the quarters finals in GW28 especially if the Chelsea players will also face blanks. Being able to prepare for the blanks and then wildcarding straight after gives a big advantage as people without wildcards will have to either have limited people for the DGW if they prepare for the blanks in GW33 or the other way round
DGW37
This seems unlikely to me but the potential games are
Arsenal v Swansea
Aston Villa v West Ham
Chelsea v Liverpool
Crystal Palace v Man Utd
Newcastle v West Brom
So again Chelsea come into the mix.
My thoughts?
Personally even if Chelsea do appear in DGW28 I’m going to leave the wildcard until DGW34/DGW37. My target is Eriksen, Kane, Terry, Hazard and Costa for the DGW. However I already have Kane Terry Hazard so only need Costa and Eriksen To me it’s just not worth it.
As I said please leave any thoughts you have in the comments column. Especially if you think I’ve missed something
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