The Pre-Match Preamble – Gameweek 27

We are all united in hoping for the great divide.

There has long been this theory that missing fixtures and double Gameweeks drive a wedge between the Fantasy Premier League (FPL) player base. That blissful ignorance or the distractions of “everyday life” mean that a section of FPL managers are left ill-prepared.

This season, that wedge could be thicker than ever.

The new “Chips” introduced, presumably to maintain interest and offer a route back for trailing managers, are now ours to exploit to the fullest.

From the very start of the season we have earmarked them as weapons to be preserved for the situations that are now looming.

We see them as potential gamechangers, conjuring visions of triple captain hat-tricks and bench boost double Gameweeks that bring 40+ points from the timber.

Similarly, we hope that those around us are left scratching their heads and cursing the day they wasted their “triple C” on Harry Kane’s blank earlier in the season.

Yet all this feels just a little bit wrong.

It is bad enough that the machinations of double Gameweeks may well be lost on a proportion of FPL managers. It feels worse that we now have the tools to punish them further.

Talk of “casual” FPL managers is often shouted down on these pages. While I argue that it is futile to claim that there aren’t more “casual” players of FPL, I also reject an elitist approach to playing the game.

I want to welcome new players, I want more to play and enjoy it. And yes, hands up, of course I want more people in our community and reading our pages.

That leaves me torn on this current situation where we are left revelling in the potential that, as FPL managers wise to double Gameweeks and the use of Chips, we now hope to have the opportunity to gain a huge advantage on others.

I want the points and the climb in rank, but I don’t want to feel I’ve somehow gained that through the complexities and exploits created by the game.

Maybe a level playing field is a foolishly optimistic utopia: there will always be those who take FPL management that little bit further. Again, this site exists to embrace that.

Perhaps I should snatch at these opportunities to exploit the time we invest in absorbing information and sharing knowledge.

But part of me is hoping that, with Chips in play, the double Gameweeks don’t prove quite so devastating.

Part of me is worried that that scenario could drive a wedge between FPL managers, which we could struggle to remove.