With the recent announcement of Double Gameweek 25 for Manchester City and Brentford, we’re now entering chip season and many Fantasy Premier League (FPL) managers may be thinking about soon selecting their Triple Captain.
It’s often said in the FPL community that it’s a bit of a boring chip. Simply wait for one of your go-to premiums like Mohamed Salah (£13.1m) or Erling Haaland (£13.9m) to get two reasonable fixtures in a Double Gameweek and, instead of regularly captaincy, you join the masses in x3 captaining them.
Something similar happened two seasons ago when over one million – a record – Triple Captain chips were placed on Salah in Double Gameweek 26 as he faced Norwich City and Leeds United. While this is a perfectly viable tactic, it has one sizeable drawback.
When you’re doing the same thing as everyone else, this precious, single-use chip loses its power to make a real difference to your season and overall rank. It’s fine for consolidating a good rank and those who believe ‘slow and steady wins the race’ in FPL, but, if it’s the same player who every well-informed and engaged FPL manager is going with, how much do you really stand to gain?
There is another way.
A SEASON-CHANGER
In last season’s Double Gameweek 36, Callum Wilson (£7.8m) had 18.62% in the captaincy poll while team-mate Alexander Isak (£7.6m) was vastly more popular with 38.57%. Wilson scored 24 points. Isak scored seven.
The same Gameweek of two seasons ago had Kevin De Bruyne (£10.5m) on 18.56% behind runaway leader Salah’s 50.17%. As you may remember, the Belgian scored 30 points across the two games – including four goals against Wolverhampton Wanderers – while Salah racked up a paltry three.
As one of those KDB triple captainers, I know how transformative this can be for your overall rank. Especially during the tail-end of the season when it is so difficult to make any kind of breakthrough. I remember entering the top 20k from an abysmal seven-figure rank that year.
Therefore, in my opinion, Triple Captain is not a dull chip to be played in a perfunctory manner as part of a herd. It’s a truly exciting and immensely powerful one. And if you’re struggling rank-wise, it can be a secret weapon that scorches a path through mini-leagues and flips the script on a bad season.
RISK VS REWARD
This is why I’m advocating having a different mindset towards the triple captaincy. Don’t play it when everyone else is playing it. You only get to use this chip once in 38 Gameweeks, so try to maximise its potential. Look for alternative opportunities like we’ve seen with Wilson and De Bruyne over recent campaigns.
That’s when the chip is at its strongest – when masses pile onto a popular Double Gameweek captain, who then flops while you successfully triple-down on a more differential option who still has FPL pedigree. Sure, there is risk involved, but the rewards (90 points versus 9 points; 72 points versus 21 points) can be huge.
So when you decide to play your Triple Captain chip, ask yourself this: how much do I stand to gain by captaining someone like Haaland in Double Gameweek 25 when every manager and their dog is doing the same?
Think of De Bruyne in 2021/22, remember Wilson in 2022/23. Roll the dice when a double comes around by going for the less obvious pick who can blast your team into the stratosphere!
