Here’s our article on maximising your Fantasy Premier League points for the Christmas period
Fantasy premier league – maximising your FPL points over the Christmas period
Some might say FPL mini leagues are won or lost in December.
With 10 gameweeks crammed between November 24th and January 3rd, we are entering the most important stretch in the FPL calendar. By the end of this sprint, most minileague tables will have further solidified or taken on a completely new shape, determining managers’ strategies heading into the long winter.
Here’s some strategies you can utilise to maximise your points this busy part of the season.
Try and have a gametime secure squad
Now more than ever, the importance of having a full squad of weekly starters is imperative. At some point, one of your players (if not a number) will get injured, rotated or suspended and your bench will be required. If your original strategy at the start of the season was to stock the bench with cheap players so you could cram as many premium players as possible into your starting 11, now might be the time to shift to a more balanced lineup. That balance though may have to include Man City players though, like Aguero, who will be rotated but are making it up through explosiveness.
You can see from my early GW15 team article that I may not be practising what I preach but I will now be concentrating on putting this right in the weeks ahead
Use a remaining wildcard wisely
If you still have a wildcard available you’re very fortunate. Remember you need to use it before it expires on December 30. It’s impossible to say when to use it as that will depend on the state of your team. However use it to achieve the objectives above.
It maybe that your team itself will tell you, due to injuries or suspensions or you may choose to do it before a particular fixture log jam. Between the 22nd December and the 1st January there are 4 gameweeks in 11 days. Using your wildcard before that period of fixtures may give you the ability to spot players that due to lack of competition in the squad or rest earlier in the season, are least likely to be rotated.
Don’t forget fixtures
Concentrating on a full playing squad is one thing but that doesn’t mean you should forget the basics of form and fixtures. Balance that security over these 2 basic premises.
My fixture ease articles will appear regularly each week to show you which teams have the best fixtures on a 3 and 6 week basis
Look at the period until the New Year where Liverpool, Chelsea, Man City and Leicester all have a decent run of fixtures. West Ham, Southampton, Arsenal and Bournemouth have tricky fixtures over that period.
Be aware of gameweek deadlines
Over the next month there are 8 premier league game weeks on various days of the week. It is a difficult task with all the real world stuff going on to remember each game week deadline.
One thing that you may find worth doing is to set your team up in a preliminary formation and captain choice at the beginning of each gameweek. That will at least avoid your captain or defender who was at home to Huddersfield in 1 gameweek suddenly being in your lineup for the next gameweek away to Manchester City. If you then forget about the deadline at least you have some sort of team in place.
If you have the official FPL app also gives notifications you can set to remind you of an upcoming gameweek.
European Competition Awareness
The Champions League games have added another layer of unpredictability to the team sheets of those teams involved in the competition and in particular predicting Man City’s lineup, as Pep showed against Huddersfield on in GW13, has become a complete roll of the dice according to many betting providers
However, there’s just 1 more week of European fixtures before the round of 16 starts for the Champions league in February. That will at least mean that the squads of Man City, Man Utd, Chelsea, Spurs, Liverpool and Arsenal will have 1 less lineup variable for us to pontificate over. However this is offset to a large degree by the squad rotation that the amount of fixtures will cause.
It’s worth remembering that Man City in this last game need to travel to Donetsk for the last game. While Man City have won the Group Shaktar need a point to qualify assuming Napoli beat Feyenoord in their last match. It will be interesting to see what team Guardiola takes to the Ukraine given that the fixture is crucial to 2 other teams.
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