Not a wild-carder so the damage wasn't as brutal. Here's my story though.
Sold Toby for Sakho instead of Williams - Lost 9 points (9 only as Williams came in first sub. A real schoolboy error since i sold Toby due to his value going doing, while Williams was not.)
Benched Alli for Firmino - Most would have done that on a normal week
Kept Vardy - Win

Also, i think you will have always played Lukaku anyway even if with no chips.

58 points (-4) + Lukaku(c) and Bolasie left. Average. But with a wildcard in hand.

But case in point. We all got greedy and blinded. We sold the highest scorers in the league actually fighting for their lives.

so glad I held off playing my wildcard this week. It was an accident waiting to happen really, taking out Leicester and Spurs players who are the form teams in the league.

Can't be judged until after the doubles in 34.

Retaining balance looks to have been important, not getting sucked into to the 15DGWers BB madness, but hey, it hasn't happened yet....it could be absolutely spectacular and maybe that bad luck that most of you had this week will be repaid in 34.

From previous years, I've learnt we shouldn't get upset before the GW has finished & in this case until the huge DGW has occurred.

Even playing conservatively Vardy and Alli would have gone. Kane and Mahrez would have been kept.

The chips really messed us all up. Without chips we would all be WC34 and keep the good SGW players on the bench. Because of the chips we have lost c.30-40 points in GW33. Time will tell if we make up in 34 or lose more in 35.

Independently played these chips are valuable, but forced into combining them did not work well with hindsight. Maybe after all these chips were introduced to help the "casuals"?

If I'd been locked out of my account/in a coma and hadn't been able to make a single transfer/bench/captain change to my team from last week I'd have scored 73 with 14 points on the bench.

With the 'benefit' of a wildcard and my wily managerial skills I currently have 46 points with 6 on my bench.

Boom 😎

Im feeling slightly smug in that I said it was all madness and that we needed to keep some single gw players, which is why I kept Fuchs and Alli.

Less smug about about swapping Toby for Rose, although the number of Toby points I've missed already this season is comical anyway. Siggy was a shame and purely the WC's fault. Vardy was on borrowed time anyway with his form.

I lost out didn't I?

I think we are reading too much into the outcomes of a gameweek.
In truth, there is no 'good' time to play WC or the chips. If the likes of Lukaku, Bolasie and Jagielka scored well over the last weekend, we won't be lamenting playing the WC for this past GW.

The fact is fpl is 80% luck, 20% skills. This is what I feel and probably just me.

I've seen so much negative reaction today! But.....we always knew it was a risk! I ditched all LEI and TOT players on WC in 32 and it worked out very well. Not so much this week. But the real question is what was your total points with WC team over 33/34/35 compared to your pre-wildcard team.....or even 33-37. Because that is what all the planning was for.

still think you have to add on gw35.
Strong sides pre-WC contained a lot of Leicester & Spurs who are still performing strongly and will probably continue to do so.
The mantra is form over fixtures which has largely been ignored by the thoughts of DGWs & BB.
It might still turn around but in what way should players like Bolassie & Barkley really be being picked ahead of Mahrez & Siggy.
Form said B&B 5 games at just over 2ppg maybe 11pts against Siggy & Mahrez 3 games@7ppg = 21pts.
From WCing to GW35 there are 2 FTs which means getting back to the strong form players from pre-WC is impossible (without hits) whereas there's every chance that the issues from GW33 will reappear in GW35.
So the whole WC/BB scenario should really be evaluated at the end of GW 35 if not GW36.

Next year I'll be WCing in GW2 and GW20. Screw this waiting around 😛

Let's not over react to one (so far) bad week. I thought it would be wise to keep a Leicester and Tottenham player, rather than go all out for the doubles and I did. It just happens that this week Mahrez and Kane were not the two assets from those teams to hold. Some weeks go your way, other weeks don't. C'est la vie.

To start I think directly comparing our GW32 teams to GW33 teams is skewing our thoughts a little. Even without a wildcard there's no way we weren't getting in Lukaku for the double double game week, and as most of us probably stuck with Aguero it would have been Vardy or Kane to go.

Considering Vardy hadn't scored for 6 weeks I don't think most people would have argued too much about getting in Lukaku (although it was Sunderland Vardy was playing). As Kane was in the form man he would probably have stayed and we'd have gotten rid of Vardy so we can probably discount his points.

As mentioned we still have to wait and see what GW34 has in store for us but the full on 15 DGW player wildcard does look like it's going to do more damage than good.

I think I've messed my team up enough that I can't realistically get in Kane without a good few points hits, I'm going to have to go without. I might look at bringing in a Leicester defender and Alli though.

My actual GW32 team score probably wouldn't have been that high. Clean sheet for Schmeichel but nothing for my defence - I think I'd have played Azpilicueta, Daniels and Bertrand. Not sure I'd have played Danny Rose against my own team but we'll never know.

Then in midfield it was Sigurdsson, Payet, Mahrez and Alli. It's Alli doing the damage here because in my wildcard team I bought in Sanchez who I didn't have before.

Then up front - Vardy, Aguero, Kane. Again....never would have gone without Lukaku so no use worrying about Vardy's points and Kane blanked.

Taking Lukaku out of the equation it wouldn't take too many points from Bolasie, delaney and Robles to match my GW32 team I don't think.

To be quite fair i would have done everything the same if i had to do it again, bar only 2 different transfers.
I wouldnt ship Mahrez and i would have gotten Delaney instead of Coleman which was the plan up until last 5 minutes before the deadline.

I do not regret using the WC the way i did and there is no such thing " Coulda shoulda woulda" , whats done is done. At that moment you thought you were doing the right thing.

Eventho Mahrez didnt do anything, he is the only one i should have kept.

I don't think the problem was wild carding this week, the problem is everyone on here suggests getting the exact same players e.g bolasie firmino and Robles. I wild carded and growth in Milner Puncheon and Hennesey so I'm happy!

For the last 6-8 weeks of the season Mid Table sides with nothing to play for are worth avoiding.
Exceptions can be players returning from injury and one or two other circumstances.
Sides fighting for Chumps League, Europa or to avoid relegation will (on the whole) put in some effort.
There are obvious exceptions when the players turn out to be gutless. But we have seen those over the last few weeks.

Be wary of teams still in latter stages of cup competitions.

I shall of course forget all this again next year. Hopefully next year it won't cost me my £ MLs.

I think WCers will also have to factor in the changes they would have made if they hadn't wildcarded. The majority of the FTs would have probably been used to bring Lukaku in.

Most important thing i learned this GW is not to load up (3 players) from teams that have nothing to play for in the league, but are still in some cup competition. It is obvious now (and it should have been obvious after Pool played 2-2 in Dortmund) that there will be big rotations in Liverpool squad and that having 3 of their players is a big risk. A lot of people (myself included) are now stuck with bunch of expensive players who may not even play every game, while players like Vardy, Mahrez, Lei defenders and pretty much whole Totenham team are cheap,are playing at 100%, will play 90mins every game and are getting lots of points, like they have been getting whole season.
Like Jonty said, big lesson learned, and i'm looking forward to play this combo (WC+ BB) next season.

Also, this is just one of those GW where everything goes wrong, some other GW Martial will score his chance and Alder's shot will be saved, Lukaku will score from his big chance and Klopp will decide to rest some other players...just saying that if 2-3 things went the other way we would probably be talking about WC success.

Wildcarded 32, did about the same as the gw33 wildcarders. My gameweek 31 team would have scored 72 so far which equates to a +24.

20-25 points is what I estimated yesterday was worth to non-wc teams so that fits about right.

Absolutely battered. The points I made up in GW32 have now been obliterated.

I need about 30 points from the Pal/Eve match to recover the week (inc a Lukaku hattie)

Particularly concerned about the fallout for GW34 where the non-wc teams are already sitting pretty, some have bench boost available with Spurs and Leicester players in their squads, + 7 or 8 dgw players.

Vs the highest scoring players this week we now need the BB in 34 to settle the 30-40 points lost this week, and then start on gaining ground on the high scorers with our extra players. Looking like a big ask.

Should have kept more high ownership players in to balance it out. Keeping Alli plus a Leicester defender looks very sensible now, only kept Mahrez.

Or, to build on the question another way - what will WC36ers do differently now (if anything) having witnessed what happened this week (LR12 I guess you can help with this one)?

Lost a 30 point lead in my ML due to my 'great' WC plans. Meanwhile my ML rival didn't touch his team, meaning he kept the usual suspects and more than doubled my GW score.

Not only have I lost the big ML lead but I fear this may put my out of trying to beat my own place of last season.

#teamwrecked myself and feel worse than I should about it.

*get up from psychology session sofa and leaves room*

Cost of wildcard: Loss of 38 points (Pre-WC team: 78 - WC team 40 pt) - That's a hard one to swallow!

Lesson learned, don't rip apart an 88pt team from the week before.

Even if you had not played wc you would have got lukaku in for his dbl so you need to take account of who you would have taken out and your capt would have been lukaku 100% so don't kid yourself.

I am 22pts down as I would have taken out kane for lukaku and brought in barkley for arnie benching alli.

Well, I went through this exercise yesterday. My pre-wildcard team would have scored 94 points, and that's with Williams benched. However I would certainly have switched Kane out for Lukaku with my FT and captained him so let's say 87 points with Hennessey and Lukaku(c) to play again.

That compares to 39 points with Robles, Bolasie and Lukaku(c) to go. A huge loss that has seen my team fall from 3k to 6k in the OR.

Did I see it coming? Yes, but not that badly. I knew I was weakening my team for GW32 but the Leicester and Spurs results were almost as damaging as they could be. And I had already come to the view that the wildcard/BB link is flawed.

The 2nd wildcard is the most powerful tool we have, it should be used when our team needs it and not to set up the BB chip. Ideally I'd like to use the wildcard in a DGW itself to have exactly 11 DGW players and 4 benched that I want going forward. That's almost certainly what I will do next season. The BB can be used when I just happen to have a good bench, alternatively I may use the 1st wildcard to set it up and then gradually unwind from that into the squad structure I want to have.

Like I said, I realised this going in. But by saving all my chips I had really left myself with little alternative for this season.

Even though I took out Aguero, Toby, Alli, Siggy and Vardy, what I find most annoying is that the players that I did keep (Mahrez and Kane) both blanked even though I thought they'd be the most likely to bring in significant points.

Well jonty I don't have the time unfortunately to work out what I could of had if I kept my team the way it was, but I will tell you I took out vardy, ali, dier, fuchs and Antonio as well as having fabianski with no sub keeper, GW 32 got 73, GW 33 I got 44 so far with doubles to play, I brought in the BIG NON STARTERS, KDB , coutinho and Wickham as well as benching moreno and Simpson, I have for GW33 28 points sitting on bench, coutinho didn't play and I'm getting..... wait for it ..... 2 points as lanzini was first sub, I'm 3rd in my cash league and the guy in first didn't have his wild card to play, I think it's worked out better for him as he is 10 points up on me this week so far and has lukaku as triple cap, although this week has been harsh I still can't help but feel when our team play twice in GW34 we will be the ones to benefit and it will be worth it, got to remain faithful as this is months of planing and the time is here now and we are all running under the chair hiding, just got to ride through this little storm before we see nothing but sunshine for the rest of the remaining games, I have no bench boost as I used it when I thought my bench looked strong early in season, I got 14 points extra from it. Anyway good luck for game week 34.

Haven't lost that much tbh. Would have had 65 (that if I C'd Kun) compared to 47 I've got now. My biggest upset is not getting Pelle on my WC. Was all set on doing the bold (and different) move, then I got too frightened about the "2 games are better than one" thing and bought Mitrovic instead. Really doubt he'll outscore him now, even with one game in hand.
My lesson is simple: Always go with your gut, don't listen too much to others and don't overthink simple things! In the end, FPL really is a simple game.

I feel disapppointed after this weekend. Most of all with myself, getting all hipstery about the idea of getting 14-15 DGW-ers in GW34.

The good:
Robles - 3 points already, might get a CS against a bad Palace side. Good.
Delaney - 6 points already, might get more against Everton. Good
Sanchez - 7 points. Good.
Aguero - 9 points. Had him pre-WC.

The ok:
Bellerin - 1 point. Had him pre-WC. No CS against West Ham wasn't a surprise
Payet - Had him pre-WC. Odd that he wasn't involved in three goals, but not a bad decision.
Lanzini - Was 1st on bench, came on for Sakho/Coutinho. Had a goal disallowed. Wasn't involved in any of the three goals.
Martial - Was 2nd on bench, came on for Sakho/Countho. Didn't expect much against Tottenham away.
Gabriel - Was 3rd on bench. Didn't expect CS against West Ham.

The bad (aka why did I have to be such a hipster instead of a dullard?)
Sakho - Didn't even play. Bad
Coutinho - Didn't even play. Bad.
KDB - Was subbed in. Bad.

A lot of the heartbreak came from my ML, where my main rival (who squandered his WC earlier for nothing) got 69 points - and beat me by 24 points! He had both Alderweireld, Alli and Vardy, who got 35 points. A bit hard to swallow.

My team for next week looks good, but the are major rotation risks. I'm really hoping Liverpool and City lose their EL/CL games. Really want KDB for those two juicy games against Chelsea and Newcastle.

Do you think I need to do anything about this team?
DDG - Robles
Bellerin - Gabriel - Delaney - Sakho - Simpson
Coutinho - KDB - Payet - Sanchez (C) - Lanzini
Lukaku - Aguero - Martial

I'm one of the rare ones who decided to WC this week (34) because I have no BB. Technically I should be reveling in the fact that GW33 wildcarders ripped up their excellent teams; but I can't - because I did too.

Sucked in by the notion of the CPL/EVE DGW, I decided to take out Walker (5), Siggy (11) and Vardy (13) to bring in Dann, Bolasie and Lukaku for a -4 hit. I also benched Alli (7) and Morgan (6). Essentially, despite not wildcarding, I made five moves which were all horrendous.

The plus point for me is that I scored better (53 so far) than my potential WC team would have done (Sakho, KDB, Payet etc.) With my WC currently active, I can benefit from the hindsight of the weekend just gone.

And I never thought I'd say this; my gameweek was saved by Alberto Moreno.

Didn't WC this GW, but still focused on getting DGW players (Jag, Lennon and Lukaku). OMG...
Transfers were :
Cook (10 points) to Jagielka (2 points)
Siggy (11 points) to Lennon (2 points)
Vardy (13 points) to Lukaku (2 points)
-28 points as the 3 of them would have been in the first XI.
Full GW32 team would have gotten 74 points, and 79 points with Captain Aguero.
I'm on 37 with Jagielka to deal with... ans -4 to be added cause of this 3rd transfer. Great 🙂
The real test for me will be DW37 though 🙂
But still : lesson learned is DGWers are good options if they show signs of form (as a team and individually). If they don't, just keep players in form.

im on 39 pts, lukC an bolassie to play.would of been on about 74,like most got rid of scoring players, mine likes williams moreno siggy vardy, brought in jags, kdb{sub} cout {didnt get on} sure its the same for most
the only problem with the chips is having to w\c the week before the dgw, jags inj, still got city and liv players to play european games, the ones who dont have chips but have the w\c will be able to pick from a better pool of players next week as they can wait till after the m/week games before finalising their teams,and still have the vardys siggy etc,which alot of us w\cers got rid of
i am top of both my m/l, but rivals made up 20-40+pts, one or two still have w/c, or bb or tc etc.think they may be in a better position with their w/c now, as we have m/week players with games, if theres injuries like jags, then our w/c teams will be short of the number of players we needed for bb
lets just hope the planning gets its reward next week ! good luck all

I've just worked it out and it's actually not as bad as I had feared. I'm on 49 (once Iwobi comes off my bench), with Lukaku (c), Delaney and Jagielka (ha!) to come.

My pre-WC squad would've picked up 78 points assuming Kun captain, or 73 not including my subs.

That's a bit of a cheat though, as I ditched Toby for a one week punt the week before, and so with Toby included I'd be touching 90...

I've just worked it out and i'd be looking at a score of 55 if I hadn't wildcarded, and would have kept the captaincy on Lukaku.

I'm on 37 atm, and have the extras of Robles and Delaney to play as well as Lukaku) so actually.. it's not quite as bad as I thought! This exercise has made me feel a bit better 😛

Still a grim week, but next week is what we have all broken our teams for. Don't panic, and lets see what the bench boosting, bumper double gameweek brings!

#keepthefaith

I had a sort of ‘game of two halves’.

Firstly, I have not wildcarded, I am using it in GW36 and then BB in GW37.

The rough: I got rid of Siggy (11) and Alli (7), and brought in Coutinho (didn’t play) and Lennon (2 so far)! So basically 16 points down. Bad!

The smooth: I kept Toby (15) and Fuchs (5) and captained Aguero (18). I didn’t bring in Lukaku which could still backfire on me! So I’m currently on 59 pts with only Lennon still to play.

So basically, could have been better, but could have been worse!

I think people are panicking too early. Most, I imagine, are probably about 40 points down on what they could have been. Still some points up for grabs this week and it was the big DGW BB next week that most WC'd for - could still be massive and easily outweigh this weeks nightmare.

Overall rank went from 15k to 30k

Currently on 35 - Lovren and Coutinho didn't play so i'll get 3 points off the bench from Gabriel and Lanzini. With Bolasie, Robles, Delaney and Lukaku to play again.

If I had stuck with my last week team I would have 77 points, but in reality I would have subbed out Vardy for Lukaku so would be sitting on 68 points

I'm still top of my mini leagues but the gap has been closed considerably.

GW 33 was a disaster! Currently on 38 points, had I played the same side from last week I would have got 91. Shattering!

the more I look at it I don't think I made too many bad decisions.
Upgrading Ozil to Sanchez made sense.
I saw Liverpool winning comfortably so 2 Liverpool midfielders and them winning 4-1 wasn't a bad shout - just rotation went against me.
Fuchs to Simpson was never going to be a disaster.
Vardy to Martial on form didn't seem a bad call due to his form and Leicester's run of low goal scores & slightly more cautious appproach recently.
Kept Lukaku, Kun, Mahrez, Bellerin & Payet.
Bournemouth defender to Delaney as a 1 week punt made sense.
Double Arsenal defence to the end of the season seemed okay as West Ham & Man City seemed the only difficult fixtures.
Had ended up with Hart & Courtois (a good 1 week punt in GW1 after Butland injury) so had to address this. But probably the major wrong changes as Darlow & Robles really aren't likely to keep clean sheets but the cash seemed too appealling. But then leaving 1.5 itb to upgrade Delaney to Utd defender this week seemed a good idea.
I have 10 starters & 2Fts for GW 35 unless Liverpool rotation kicks in again.
I'm a net 17 points down after autosubs and still have Robles, Delaney & Lukaku (c) to go so I may end up breaking even before GW34.

If I hadn't WC'd this week, I'd have been left in a situation where I benched Siggy and one of Rose/Cresswell. I'd have been about 8-15pts better off depending on (C) choice though. I'm not overly unhappy about how things have gone.

I'm late to this post but I'd like to suggest that if Kane and Mahrez had gotten hauls yesterday instead of Toby and Vardy people might be thinking very differently about things.

Of all the sgw names I saw in the slew of RMTs, Kane and Mahrez seem to have been held onto most often, but as they didn't score well yesterday we might be tempted to start drawing larger conclusions about overall strategy.

Squad overhauls this week were a part of an elaborate three game week sequence that is far from over. Many FFSers have 25-30 players scheduled from Wednesday to Wenesday, so the potential hauls still exist and in fact the results are far from conclusive.

The posts on here last week were consistently explaining how hard the planning was, so I find the declaration of failure after the simple part of the schedule is over to be a bit premature at this point.

Scores at the end of gw35 will be much more telling, and of course gw38 is the true test, especially with the chips still in play until then.

Hi Jonty,

Are you going to post a new article on how we should align our teams taking into account rotation risk?

Cheers!

Can't wait for TRACKING THE FANTASY FOOTBALL VETERANS - GAMEWEEK 33!

This game is a disgrace. I am going to write a letter to someone and strongly word my disgust over pretty much everything which has taken place over the last few days.

I think to me it is not a case of my wildcard under performing though it did. I am on 44 currently and my pre-wc team would have been on 60 or thereabout if I were being honest, that's a gap that I can live with. I also dropped in OR from 2k to 5k but again I can live with that.

What really bothered me is more which players did well this gameweek vs which didn't and how close those decisions were. The toss up between moreno and sakho for me was very close and I thought both could be rotational risks so i opted for mignolet instead. I really wanted to bring moreno back in given his stats but feared the rotation (which may still come). Ward vs Delaney was another close one and the majority went with Delaney but ward doubled his score (so far) even souare got bonus pts. Benching simpson to field jagielka seemed a no brainer given the dgw but of course that didn't pan out. Going double arsenal defence over double arsenal mids didn't work out as yet. But as many have mentioned, it is still too early to call this a failure.

The worst part though, of course my main money mini league rival went with moreno. He also used his bench boost earlier on in the season and luckily got a huge 30 pt boost or so therefore he chose Rose who did well, kept alli, kept and benched Simpson like I did but has him as first sub and coutinho didn't play. His lead over me went from 8 pts to about 40 pts now. With my only advantage over him being my bench boost and jagielka being out, things are getting tough

When you create a wildcard team which is so different to previous weeks, there is always a strong chance that it will have a big impact (good or bad).

I'm comfortable that I made sensible decisions in picking my wildcard team, and I would make them again. For example...

Vardy to Lukaku - Vardy hasn't scored in a number of games and Leicter's attack has been on the wane. On balance Lukaku is expected to significantly outscore with 2 games vs 1 and being in better form.

Simpson to Jags - Similar argument. In this case I felt Simpson had the better chance of a clean sheet in the first game, but this wouldn't be expected to match two sets of 90 mins points (4 baseline), plus the chance of a clean sheet in both Everton matches. So, on balance I saw Jags getting say 50% more points.

etc etc across my squad

Just because it didn't work out as I expected doesn't make it a bad decision. It's just the way things work out. It was a good decision, with a bad outcome. Can happen, and will happen again I'm sure!

I actually think the most dangerous thing to do would be to try to take too many lessons from this gameweek. It's too outcome driven and may lead to making bigger errors in the future.

Disastrous game-week for me, as for many of us.
32 points so far, red arrows everywhere, and only Lukaku (C) still to play, but at least I have Milner (Jonty should have kept his dullard faith in him!) coming off the bench to autosub for Coutinho.
It remains to be seen how much of the damage can be recouped in the next few game-weeks.

Big inquest needed to try and work out what I should have done, whether my second wildcard and other chips might have been better used at some other time, and which players I ought to have kept or brought in instead of the changes I did actually make.
Kings of Leon's end-season report on his 'Going out with a bang' mini-league should be instructive, as well as comparisons between our scores and those of the 'Casuals' who we have derided all season for throwing away their chips too early instead of saving them for DGW plans.

Agree totally with tisza above that you have to take into account GW35 as well.

So basically DGW34 has to pay us back handsomely for all the points lost in GW33 and all that we might fritter away fighting fires for GW35. Will it do that, well who knows, but I'm beginning to have my doubts it was such a good idea to embrace it fully.

Vardy hadn't scores an actual goal since GW26 and then scores two simple goals and Kane actually blanks for a change...so of course anything can still happen. I think all the stars aligned to make DGW33 worse than it should have been...and its not over yet!

Lessons learned, as ever don't get too greedy, buy a few tickets as they say but as ever play the long game.

A bird in the hand is worth two in the bush.

-Use BB early in the season when your 15 are nailed and your bench has decent fixtures. 15 points is a decent score.

-Use your second wildcard to set up a decent squad for DGWs and potential blanks.

-Always wear sunscreen.

-Do not pin your season's success on a risky strategy that most on here defined as 'cruise control past the hoard of dirty casuals'.

I'm 17 points down, but with 4 to play including Lukaku(c). I got 14DGW'ers in the end, sold Mahrez for Bolasie but held Simpson and played him. To be fair my old team scoring 71 with a likely Kun(c) is flukey as Wimmer didn't start, Nyom would have been second sub, with Cook third sub coming in for 10 points!

So Alli, Vardy, Cook, King and Ozil being sold was offset by Dann, Iwobe and starting Simpson. Hopefully I can get the 17 back and make up some ground next week!