With the announcement of rescheduled games and when the double Gameweeks will fall a range of strategies have been put forward to getting the most out of this busy end to the season. A popular strategy is to Wildcard in Gameweek 33 to take advantage of a bench boost chip in Gameweek 34. But I believe this strategy could be tweaked to bring in even bigger returns by bringing forward that Wildcard to Gameweek 32. Here I weigh up two key arguments for getting a strong Gameweek 34 team in place even earlier.Â
Fixtures
To me the biggest attraction is that many of the double Gameweek 34 teams have very strong Gameweek 32 fixtures.
Good fixturesÂ
Arsenal (WAT)
West Ham (CPL)
Man City (bou)
Newcastle (nor)
West Brom (sun)
Poor fixtures
Liverpool (TOT)
Man Utd (EVE)
Now exploring the poor fixtures requires a little more thought. Before I talk about Liverpool players I want us to consider the situation with Man Utd, Everton, Watford and West Ham. These four teams are packed with fantastic double Gameweek options but unfortunately they also suffer from blanks in Gameweek 35. As a result we are limited to only four players from these teams where one must be a goalkeeper, so they can be benched in Gameweek 35.
I imagine many will have their eye on Dimitri Payet and Romelu Lukaku. Payet has a great fixture, while Lukaku not so much. Taking into account one spot being a goalkeeper, that may leave one other player who might even be another West Ham player with an easy fixture. It could even be a Manchester United defender who you’d probably want to start due to their strong home defensive record (nine clean sheets in 14). Lukaku might be the only player you have from these teams that has a bad fixture in Gameweek 32. The fact that people are considering selling Vardy for Lukaku ahead of Gameweek 31 with a free transfer confirms many consider him fixture proof anyway.
So what about our three Liverpool players? Again we need to consider what sort of players we will have from Liverpool. Will we even have three Liverpool players? Will some of them be bench-able?
Statistically Liverpool’s defence is very good. They have conceded just 16 shots inside the box in the last  four Gameweeks, second only to Man City. This doesn’t bode particularly well for our Tottenham assets. I imagine most of us have Dele Alli and Harry Kane, whom we will likely drop when we Wildcard. But if we wait until Gameweek 33 then we’d have to play them against Liverpool: not an easy fixture.
To me this cancels out getting in two Liverpool players in Gameweek 32 as you are swapping two players with a tough fixture and no double Gameweek for two with the same tricky fixture but crucially key players for double Gameweek 34.
To me the biggest attraction of a Gameweek 32 Wildcard is the strong fixtures for Arsenal (WAT) and West Ham(CPL). Of these two teams I only have Mesut Ozil so the chance to have say five players from these two teams is worth exploring. The players we will be looking at will likely include Alexis Sanchez and Dimitri Payet: potential captaincy options. Gameweek 32 might also include some easy clean sheet opportunities for a West Brom (sun) or Newcastle (nor) defender, not to mention Man City (bou) as well.
Price Changes
Secondly, there is the issue of price changes. By jumping the gun early you’ll be ahead of all the price rises for Double Gameweek players giving you time to think carefully about your players without having to be rushed into rash moves.
How this works with transfers is that it leaves you with two free transfers until the double Gameweek. One of these you will need to save for the Gameweek 35 blanks, leaving you with a ‘floating transfer’. This can be used in either Gameweek 33 or 34, perhaps either to swap out an injured player or to use it strategically perhaps to hold onto Riyad Mahrez (sun) for one more Gameweek.
