How I’m planning for the FPL Blank Gameweek 1

With a Blank Gameweek up first in Fantasy Premier League this year it makes planning a little more tricky.

I wanted to share some thoughts and strategies ahead of the new season. Does the blank add more randomness or are we going to get a more competitive game right from the start.

Early Wildcard

With this stragegy you set up your team for Gameweek 1 only. All of your budget is spent on the starting eleven, with as cheap a bench as possible. Then you activate the Wildcard and set up your team for the long term. Some people do not like Wildcarding early although I think it really depends on the situation. We’ve seen plenty of people do this in the past, even former FPL winners.

The reason I don’t like this one is due to the fact that the season is starting late and teams will have a lot of matches to tackle.

Manchester City, Liverpool, Manchester United and Chelsea are playing in the Champions League this season. It’s safe to say that you would like to have at least one player from each team. From the end of October to beginning of December (six weeks) all of these teams are going to be playing midweek in the Champions League, meaning they’ll play 12 games in less than a month and a half. Injuries due to fatigue or rotation to avoid that, are inevitable. Pep of course he has a deep bench to do as he pleases but the same can’t necessarily be said for the other three teams.

For example if Liverpool are playing Fulham on a Saturday, and then have an important Champions League match midweek, will Klopp go full force on Saturday? There might be a couple of changes, or a greatest chance of reduced minutes. After the Group Stage is done we are in December and they have to play eight matches in 30-something days. So Wildcarding early leaves you exposed to a lot. I am not saying it can’t work, I know it can, but you need to be more lucky than usual to get through 12 Gameweeks without needing an overhaul.

Playing the wait and see game

This would involve setting your Gameweek 1 team up for the long term. Find a goalkeeper to set and forget (my preferred strategy for goalkeeper as I don’t want to use a transfer on them too often), a good pair of rotating defenders and the rest of the team that can survive at least three Gameweeks, and have a rough plan of who to bring in from Gameweek 3 onwards. For example, you can have Aubameyang in the first 2 Gameweeks and you could replace him for someone like De Bruyne in just one more. Another example could be Vardy to Martial. For this to work you need the following:

• Aubameyang to perform in at least one of the first two Gameweeks, preferably Gameweek 1 so people won’t be keen to ship him out to prevent any lost value
• Man Utd and Man City to not go wild in Gameweek 2, to prevent any rush to buy their players which could see them increase in price
• Your team needs to do well enough in the first 2 Gameweeks in order to avoid fear of missing out. If this doesn’t happen some managers will get cold feet with their strategy.

There is another thing you need to do which is a lot more difficult. Let’s say you are scheduling your transfers for the first 9 Gameweeks, we will call this the “Best Case Scenario”. What I mean by that is you are going to be able to move players around without any problems caused by price changes or injuries etc. Then you must account for the unforeseen events which will transform the “Best Case Scenario” to “More Realistic Scenario” or “MRS”. How to form the MRS? with a decision tree. Split the decisions for each Gameweek into injury, price change and form. Then ask yourself:

• Injury: If I have an injury in my team, can the transfer wait another Gameweek? What if the injury can just be benched?
• Price Change: If there is a price change between the player you own or want to buy, so the transfer cannot be done in one move, can I do it with two? Can I afford to take a hit? Or will the second transfer unbalance my team? are the fixtures/form good enough to keep?
• Form: I don’t just mean scoring goals. I also look for other stats like volume of shots, or xG delta to determine whether a player is just being lucky or in form. I understand that stats like xG are sometimes frowned upon by many, but I rely heavily on them. You can take or leave it. You can of course also use the eye test to determine form.

You will need to assess these at the end of each Gameweek as these are variables that will be changing constantly. Using these forms a decision tree on courses of action for each combination of variables. I know it is a lot.

So, if you had an ultimatum which of the two would you do?

There’s also a couple of other things I wanted to mention before ending the article.

I don’t like leaving money in the bank to make the transfers easier later on. I am a believer that you need to put as much money on the pitch as possible.

I also don’t like getting someone that will not play in Gameweek 1 to then bench and have available for Gameweek 2. The reason is the same as above, as much money on the pitch as possible.