In our weekly chip poll, over 35% of responders say they are using their Wildcard in Gameweek 4 of Fantasy Premier League (FPL).
If one of those is you, or if you’re still hovering over the ‘Play Wildcard’ button looking for reasons to (or not to) activate, this article is for you.
Firstly, we’ll assess the pros and cons of deploying the chip ahead of Saturday’s deadline.
After that, we’ll cobble together a draft and explain the rationale behind the picks. If you want to skip the preamble and head straight to that section, click here.
PROS
Aside from the usual stuff (building team value, offloading underperforming players), here are some advantages to Wildcarding this week…
Jump on Chelsea players
Even as far back as pre-season, Gameweek 4 was earmarked as a Wildcard window for one reason: Chelsea.
Yes, the visit of Hull City perhaps doesn’t look as favourable as it once did. The Tigers are unbeaten and yet to concede a goal after three Gameweeks, an outcome that seemed scarcely believable a month ago.
But the clash with Sergej Jakirovic’s side is just the start of a series of mostly favourable – if not entirely straightforward – matches for the Blues:
It’s not just the fixture list, though.
Chelsea are already the division’s joint-top-scorers, despite facing two of the Premier League’s three meanest defences – Arsenal and Brighton and Hove Albion – for goals conceded in 2025/26:
Above: Premier League teams sorted by goals scored (G) in Gameweeks 1-3 of 2026/27
And, the cherry on the cake: no European football.
Eight Premier League teams begin their UEFA group campaigns over the next fortnight, so there’ll be worries over rotation at those clubs (plus Brighton) in the medium term. Not so with Chelsea, who missed out on continental action in 2026/27.
Thanks to Legomane‘s graphic below, we can see just how spaced out the Blues’ schedule is after the September international break in particular.
One caveat worth mentioning is that Xabi Alonso did go strong with his team selection in the EFL Cup round two, so it’ll be worth monitoring any full-game run-outs, knocks or niggles picked up in this Wednesday’s third-round clash with Leeds United.
Thereafter, though, there’ll only be one midweek fixture at most until early December.
A starting Arsenal defender at £4.4m!
It always seemed to be a matter of ‘if’, rather than ‘when’, Ezri Konsa (£4.4m) deposed Christhian Mosquera (£5.4m).
The ‘when’ bit has made us hang fire on our Watchlist, for example, but a handily timed injury to Mosquera saw that question resolved on Sunday. Konsa made his first Arsenal start in Gameweek 3, producing a steady-ish display on his full debut.
He also banked defensive contribution (DefCon) points against Chelsea.
While a move for Konsa in itself is not reason enough alone to deploy a Wildcard, it adds to the list of convincing arguments – and allows you to rejig your Arsenal assets for the long term, perhaps downgrading someone like Gabriel Magalhaes (£8.0m) and/or dispensing with minutes risks like Christos Tzolis (£6.4m).
Abandon the unstable Man City ship?
Got caught up in the headrush to recruit Manchester City assets for Gameweek 3? Or did you always plan to play ‘Pep Enzo Roulette’, knowing that you had the escape route of a Wildcard up your sleeve?
The likes of Rayan Cherki (£7.8m) and Phil Foden (£7.0m) were mightily tempting short-term gambles but as a Wildcard is not just for Christmas (it’s for even longer term than that), do you want to be carrying these rotation risks into a busy period after the September international break?
Nico O’Reilly (£6.5m), incidentally, didn’t make City’s travelling squad for Tuesday’s clash with Porto, so that’s another possible Fantasy headache to be resolved there.
Set up for a Bench Boost in Gameweek 5 (or 9)
If, like this author, you didn’t follow the new craze of early-season Bench Boosting, then the old-school approach – Wildcard one week, Bench Boost the next – is now an option.
True, it’s still “early season” even now, but we’re a bit more clued-up than we were a month ago, regarding reliable picks.
There’s a dearth of £4.0m defenders with good fixtures but cut-price options such as Liam Delap (£5.5m), Thierno Barry (£5.6m), Vitalii Mykolenko (£4.5m), Gabriel Gudmundsson (£4.5m) and, hopefully, Amar Dedic (£4.5m) are all towards the top of the ticker in Gameweek 5:
If you do like your boostable options dirt-cheap, it’s worth pointing out Gameweek 9 further down the line:
On the flip side, if you played your Bench Boost in Gameweek 1 or 2, as 1.15 million Fantasy managers did, then you might want to redistribute your funds. You now may not want, or even need, four playing substitutes.
CONS
We’re yet to assess the true scale of rotation risk
While the closure of the transfer window is a ‘pro’ (no more new arrivals to adversely affect existing picks), a lot of the deadline-day buys have yet to start for their new clubs. Questions over medium-term game-time still linger. Will Chema Andres (£5.5m) soon enter the Brighton and Hove Albion midfield mix, for instance? And will Newcastle United’s capture of Matias Fernandez-Pardo (£6.0m) positively or negatively impact Yoane Wissa (£6.2m)?
The new arrivals are one thing; the start of UEFA club competition is another.
It’s been a mostly serene opening three Gameweeks but now the serious stuff starts. Five clubs – Arsenal, Aston Villa, Liverpool, Manchester City and Manchester United – are in midweek Champions League action for the first time this week. Three more sides embark on Europa League campaigns next week. Plenty more midweek fixtures follow after the September internationals.
How will their respective head coaches manage minutes? For instance, are Bukayo Saka (£9.5m) and Riccardo Calafiori (£5.7m) now vulnerable to (even) earlier substitutions and benchings?
Of course, there’ll always be something to learn in FPL. There’s never going to be a time when we’ll have the full picture. We can’t keep delaying and delaying a Wildcard in the hope of holding all the cards – it just won’t happen. To borrow a quote from Q, FPL is “like solving a Rubik’s cube that’s fighting back”.
But might a week or two of post-Europe analysis be information worth waiting on – especially with coaches like Marco Rose, Andoni Iraola, Michael Carrick, Pierre Sage and Regis Le Bris being unknown quantities when it comes to juggling domestic and UEFA competitions?
Can’t Triple Captain in Gameweek 4
If you’ve still got your Triple Captain intact, consider when you want to use it. If you’re Wildcarding this week, you can’t use your Triple Captain simultaneously. So, if not now, then when?
While Rate My Team is no Mystic Meg, Cole Palmer is projected to score more points this week (7.8, above) than any other player in any fixture until Erling Haaland (£15.5m) meets Hull in Gameweek 16. Will the Norwegian still be in tip-top, full-game condition by mid-December?
So, assess whether maximising the returns from Chelsea v Hull takes precedence over a larger squad overhaul in Gameweek 4.
How to tap into the Liverpool/Brighton fixtures – would Free Hit be better?
Chelsea v Hull is one of three standout fixtures this week. The other two are Coventry City v Brighton and Hove Albion and Liverpool v Fulham.
Unfortunately, if you were planning to go big on the Seagulls and the Reds, the fixtures take a turn for the worse after this week:
There is the odd good game in the above run – the A23 derby in Gameweek 7, for instance – but would you want a squad chock-full of Liverpool and Brighton players after this week? ‘Booking transfers in’ could be one way of circumventing this, of course, especially if you have two in the chamber already.
But could a Free Hit, if you have one, be the better play? Target the three stand-out fixtures in Gameweek 4, then proceed without triple-ups on Brighton and Liverpool (if your normal team doesn’t already contain them!) thereafter. Even Chelsea’s Gameweek 5 fixture isn’t great (away to Brentford), so you may consider three Blues overkill after this weekend, too.
Keep until the international break?
If you can soldier on until the September international break, that might be a more advantageous time to Wildcard.
Three weeks of price rises is one thing; not that that always pans out as hoped!
Reacting to the knocks, niggles, tears, strains and amassed game-time is another. This is no ordinary international break. This is an M&S, Carlsberg, Archie Gemmill-in-’78 international break on steroids. Many nations are playing not two, not three, but FOUR international fixtures between Gameweeks 5 and 6. You can just picture the yellow flags now…
Wildcarding now and saving two (or more, if you’ve already got some) free transfers till Gameweek 6 is an alternative play, of course.
GAMEWEEK 4 WILDCARD DRAFT
Here’s what we’ve come up with, on our modest team value of £100.3m. This is not a Bench Boost squad, obviously, with a non-playing goalkeeper included.
The Chelsea triple-up is in place for Gameweek 4 and beyond.
Meanwhile, there are mostly favourable fixtures for Newcastle United and Everton to tap into.
The Toffees do have an iffy-looking double-header in Gameweeks 7-8. However, the Brighton duo (benchable in Gameweek 5 and even 6) come back into the equation for Crystal Palace (h) in Gameweek 7.
The first of four saved transfers could then be used in Gameweek 8 to recruit, say, Bournemouth assets, whose fixtures improve from that point. Someone like Kristoffer Ajer (£4.5m), if he retains his place, could also offer good coverage for Everton/Arsenal/Newcastle defenders across Gameweeks 8-11:
With Everton, Newcastle and Chelsea players (seven of whom feature in our Wildcard draft), there’s the boon of no European football clogging up the future schedule.
As for the rest, we’ve gone safety-first with the likes of David Raya (£6.0m), Dominik Szoboszlai (£7.0m) and Haaland. Names such as Calafiori and Bradley Barcola (£8.0m) are much sexier picks, but their minutes will likely much trickier to second-guess by the time we’re well into the autumn/winter calendar.
