Aguero on the bench as Sterling and Sane start on the flanks for City

I'm too happy with my team to WC now. So you're not getting any advantage!

(except for Salah, but there's nothing stopping any other late WCer from having Salah, or from me buying Salah tonight with 2FTs!).

Don't see why I'd have a B team at the end of the season. I have chosen all 15 of my players in GW34. You haven't had the same choice.

Good post. Early wildcarders unite!

I can say I see the problem. Last season your issues were:

"
- The pathetic DGW score
- The fact that the team was not then optimised at all for the final, crucial, three weeks
- The weeks and weeks of missed opportunities to overhaul and improve my team whilst I doggedly hung on for a monster haul which did not materialise.
"

For me, a single low scoring gameweek for one manager (or even all managers) in one season is nothing to base a decision on. It doesn't even mean that you made the wrong decision last season. Scores are variable, you may get unlucky or lucky, but you just want to give yourself the best chance.

The final three weeks may not have been optimised, but nor will the team of a non-WCer. At least with the WC you have a choice to balance the DGW team and the final weeks, rather than struggling to do either without a WC. If you BB before the WC, you won't need to put money on the bench either, but I suspect you won't need to put much money on the bench this season for a BB anyway.

The final point is exaggerated by repeating the first point, but I don't see why an early WC would stop you missing opportunities. You would be under more pressure to adhere to a specific strategy or limited balance, knowing that you don't have the WC to save you.

But yeah, if your team is trash, WC away, but the benefit of saving it is real imo, regardless of your disaster last season 😉

It may be that another strategy is better, but most people will want to buy DGW players for DGWs, and it's not more restrictive to WC those players in, but less restrictive. The fact I'd be looking to bring in DGW32 players using FTs has little to do with the WC because others with no WC will likely do the same (but perhaps to a lesser exent, which means they lose out on potential points!). The options are more open with more chips, and we also have the option to NOT buy a DGW player if we don't want him, just like early WCs, so we are not restricted in that sense either.

A goodscoring bench might be a little cheaper this season if we're lucky!

How are you going to avoid Salah when using your FH though? 😀

nice post, good to get the thinking cap on soon!

Thanks Rumor Mill and Redlightning. Very helpful to have last year's analysis.

Thanks for bumping this, good thread.

More than one way to skin a cat! I employed one of the more favoured strategies last year of WC32, BB34, FH35 and TC37, and it served me well.

I think you have to look at the fixtures and where they fall and work backwards from there, personally.

I did "build up team for GW31" two seasons ago.

I rammed my team full of crap Everton players, ignoring decent players who were scoring heavily because of fixture blanks.

Probably cost me 100pts over 6-7 gameweeks in the run up

DON'T do it...use the Free Hit chip to negotiate the blank gameweek

Let's say the 4 most likely blank fixtures are blanks, that leaves:

Bournemouth 15:00 Newcastle
Brighton 15:00 Cardiff
Burnley 15:00 Leicester
Fulham 15:00 Liverpool
Watford 15:00 Southampton
West Ham 15:00 Huddersfield

With free hit, I could get out a team like this:

Ryan (Button)
Robertson Pereira Chilwell (Holebas Duffy)
Salah Anderson Nasri Pereyra (Deulofeu)
Vardy Firmino Wilson

I could play around and give myself another Pool attacker, and other things. I could even make a B team with backup options, which ain't too bad:

Fabianski (Heaton)
Alenander-Arnold Dunk Balbuena (Ake Kiko)
Mane Shaqiri Fraser Maddison Brooks
Deeney Arnie (Rondon)

How many of these players are you likely to bring in and carry on your bench before GW31? Maybe Camarasa is the only current popular bench option who would be of use, and that requires removing a midfield starting slot from your team prior to GW31 (which I wouldn't be keen on). Getting the right 3 players on the bench might take 3 transfers, and might get in the way of other, more important transfers you want to make. And then there's the keeper, which for many may require another transfer. There are only 8-10 FTs from now till GW31 and only 4-5 from BGW27 to BGW31.

Even if you do get 3 on your bench plus a playing keeper to go with your Liverpool triple, that's only 7/11 players. If you want 11 players, you'll still need some of the above players in your team in the lead up to GW31 as well as in GW33 (although it depends on which teams blank). But I really think it will take hits for most people following this strategy to even get 7 players in GW31 unless we get better fixtures.

Players you'd want for DGW32 are more likely to match up with the players I actually want prior to the DGW anyway. This particularly works well for me as I don't own, nor plan to own, any Liverpool attackers at the moment, and I'd like to triple on City as soon as possible as I think their players are better value (and I have 2 mids already). I may also already have a DGW player in Alli, though I haven't even bought him yet and he might not blank in GW27.

At the end of the day, there's no one-size-fits-all strategy. As we found last year there are multiple ways to go about it. If you plan to have lots of money invested in Liverpool I think that makes your proposal more doable than if you don't. But a lot still rides on the information we don't yet have, so I'll admit that my plan could yet be the worst one available, even for my team. 😀