One of the most exciting, deep-thinking and highly rewarding times of a Fantasy Premier League (FPL) season is when Blank and Double Gameweek frequency increases.
What is a Blank Gameweek?
League fixtures occasionally get postponed due to bad weather, cup competitions or exceptional circumstances.
So, when a player and team are without a match on that Premier League weekend, it’s called a Blank Gameweek. They mostly occur towards the end of the season. For example, clashing with the EFL Cup final and FA Cup semi-finals.
The knock-on effect is that FPL managers may therefore be unable to field a team of 11 starters.
What is a Double Gameweek?
Meanwhile, the rescheduling of these will often end up creating a Double Gameweek, when a player and team have two matches until the following FPL deadline.
Again, they usually occur towards the end of the season, during April and May midweeks that are free of Champions League and FA Cup football.
By picking the right Double Gameweek players, FPL managers can score highly and fire themselves up the rankings.
How to plan for these
With the combination of free transfers, organisation and a solid chip strategy, Blanks and Doubles can be excellently navigated.
Tools such as PlanFPL and the Fantasy Football Scout Fixture Ticker have an invaluable role to play.
Managers will often play their Wildcard shortly before activating the Bench Boost during a Double Gameweek. This is to maximise the one-week potential of having 15 players, many of which about to appear twice.
The Triple Captain chip is also handy for Doubles, whereas a Blank Gameweek Free Hit lets you field 11 players at a time when many managers are short by a few.
Of course, only one of these chips can be used per Gameweek, activated before the deadline.
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