Many Wildcards are being activated as fixture swings abound in Gameweek 31. Scoutcast regular Seb, who finished 389th in the world last season, talks us through who he’d pick if he was deploying the chip this week.
For many, Gameweek 31 has been identified as the week to play their second Wildcard. The teams we built to navigate Gameweek 29 generally had one final ‘good’ fixture left in Gameweek 30, after which there is now an edge to be found in switching your squad up and targeting the season run-in.
The final nine Gameweeks of the season can very roughly be split into two batches based on favourable fixtures: Gameweek 30 to Gameweek 34 and Gamweek 35 to Gameweek 38. There are also the remaining Double Gameweeks to keep in mind, principally Tottenham Hotspur’s in Gameweek 32.
Whilst I do not personally have my second Wildcard – it was used in Gameweek 24 and has since halved my rank – identifying the ideal 15-man squad will be invaluable to my own planning as I attempt to compete with those still holding the chip and improve my standing once again.
Note that this piece was written using statistics up to and including Gameweek 29 and does not include data from Easter weekend.
The Team
I have used my current team as the starting point for this, which means we have £104.8m worth of players and £0.9m in the bank to play with. Some of these players will have been purchased prior to Gameweek 31 at below their current price. This should give us a fair view of what is ‘achievable’ for most managers at this time.
The building blocks of this team are:
- Hold – Players that will stay with the team for the remainder of the season
- Twist – Players that are included based on fixtures and will be swapped out for more favourable options as appropriate
- Efficiency – Minimising planned transfers whilst ensuring routes to players of various value and opportunity are left open
The Players
