🚨 BGW26: how to avoid firing blanks 📈

🚨 The stuff you should know 🚨

⏰ Blank Gameweek 26’s deadline is Saturday 24th February, 13:30 GMT.

❌ Liverpool, Chelsea, Spurs and Luton will not have a fixture.

🤕 Jota out for “months”. Nunez and Salah missed last game but issues don’t seem to be long-term. Keep an eye on updates ahead of GW27.

🚑 Hojlund - this week’s most transferred in player - has suffered a muscle injury. Expected to be out for 2-3 weeks.

🤯 Haaland had highest ever “effective ownership” last week - 269% (meaning his 10 points were worth ~27 points to the rest of the field).

🤦‍♂️ Mohamed Salah is the third-most transferred in player this week. He won’t play in Blank Gameweek 26.

Keep reading to meet the TWAT.

Alright?

The writhing bodies of FPL managers lay strewn across the battlefield. Cries of “MEDIC!” get lost amongst the pain-induced groans. One soldier, managing a team for the first time this season, cradles his knees and stares into the distant void. “Triple captain Haaland” he mutters, again and again and again.

Double Gameweek 25 encapsulated the entire 23/24 season for a lot of us. So full of promise, yet so disappointing.

In fact, it was odds-defyingly dispiriting. Erling Haaland had a combined expected goals of 2.57 across his two fixtures. No player this season has registered a higher xG and failed to score than the Norse God in that Chelsea game.

Meanwhile, early injuries to Jota and Darwin - who were at least good enough to register a return before their premature departures - and data-bending blanks from Foden and De Bruyne, really helped to rub salt in the gaping wound.

We’re here to stitch you up and get you back on your feet. There are still 13 more gameweeks still to play (more than a third of the season) and we’ll be damned if you’re not ready for the next fight.

Onto Blank Gameweek 26. Surely things can’t get worse?

Blank Gameweek 26’s fixtures.

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The blankers.

There’s a reason why Blank Gameweek 26 has earned its name: it’s because Spurs, Chelsea, Liverpool and even Luton will miss a game.

This will be an inconvenience for you.

Depending on how much planning you’ve done, the size of that inconvenience will be somewhere between realising you’ve forgotten your bags-for-life at the exact moment that you join the checkout queue in Aldi, and realising you’re sat next to an empty loo roll right as the acrid toilet water splashes back onto your gooch.

The former can be solved by a small but annoying purchase. The latter is an elaborate web of disgusting improvisation.

What are the top managers doing?

The top FPL managers have a one track mind. Just like an obese seagull, they spend the majority of their time thinking about chips.

So their decisions this week will largely hinge on what they’re doing in Blank Gameweek 29: will they be playing their Free Hit, or preparing for it by using a sequence of carefully telegraphed free transfers?

One thing is for sure: this week they’ll be benching their solid blankers and likely removing those who have succumbed to injury.

Anyone who owns Diogo Jota has an easy decision. Plenty will have Darwin Nunez and Pedro Porro in the proverbial crosshairs too.

Despite being the fourth-most transferred out player this week, it feels like a mistake to get rid of Richarlison. Those getting rid of Cole Palmer (6th most transferred out) are probably also being too hasty.

The best Diogo Jota replacements.

Diogo Jota will be the most-transferred out player this week by some margin.

Whilst it’s not normally our style to get too prescriptive with which players to buy (we like to think of ourselves as the opinionated news source rather than the analytical pundit), sometimes we like to flex our puny player-picking biceps to impress the chicks.

But rather than plucking insights from the furrowed brow of a civilian, we’ll ask the Professor instead.

Option 1: Hwang Hee-chan (£5.6m)

It’s easy to forget about players that take a leave of absence. Prior to Hwang Hee-chan’s departure to the Asian Cup, he’d scored 20 points in his last two games.

Last week he returned with a not-so-triumphant 2-pointer against Spurs, but reader, he’s back. And his fixtures are about as good as it gets.

Sheffield United (H), Newcastle (A), Fulham (H) and Bournemouth (H) comprise his next four. Don’t forget that Newcastle are still posting underwhelming defensive numbers:

Wolves have been great this season, and Hwang has reached near-talismanic levels.

Option 2: Martin Odegaard (£8.4m)

In the super-group that is Arsenal’s attacking assets, Martin Odegaard is the virtuoso bassist: absolutely essential to the ensemble, but often overlooked in favour of his more limelight-hogging colleagues.

A pricier option, Odegaard has scored 24 points in his last two games. Despite five blanks prior to that, his creative stats have been consistently impressive.

Odegaard is never going to be the sort of player to enjoy an embarrassment of clear-cut chances. But his ability to create such chances, combined with his underrated finishing, makes him an interesting pick. If Arsenal score goals, Odegaard usually scores points.

Option 3: Leon Bailey (£5.6m)

I know you lot love a differential, so here it is. 3.7% owned - that counts.

Look, Leon Bailey isn’t going to post Salah-like numbers anytime soon, but he’s £5.6m. Nobody should be expecting anything other than a reliable three points each gameweek at that sort of price.

Bailey is more than capable of contributing more. He’s started seven of the last eight Villa games, chipping in with two goals and two assists in that time.

Like Hwang, buying Bailey frees up funds for more lavish expenditure further down the line. Particularly with the likes of Salah close to returning.

Another great string to his bow is that he defintiely plays in Blank Gameweek 29 - if you’re planning to use free transfers to plan for it, you could do much worse than an enabler like Bailey.

Btw, if you want more of this sort of analysis, The Professor sends two emails per gameweek (a review and a preview) to our Premium members. His latest involves an analysis of Hwang, the ill-fated Hojlund and DGW34/37, amongst other good stuff.

Sign up here for less than a pint a month.

Last week’s TWAT.

A quick story: one of my first forays into writing about FPL was a regular post on Reddit called the TWAT.

TWAT stands for The Worst Active Team (obviously). The premise was simple: at the end of each gameweek, I’d find the FPL team with the worst score amongst those who, prior to the gameweek starting, had been in the top 10k overall.

My aim was to shine a light on the fact that even the best managers in the world are vulnerable to a terrible gameweek. Ultimately, seeing really good teams score an absurdly low amount of points seemed to make some managers feel better about their own misfortunes.

After such a shambolic Double Gameweek, I’m bringing the TWAT back.

Meet Gilbert from England, whose team xiao Ming went from 4,500th to 50,000th by scoring just 45 points in Double Gameweek 25. Here it is, courtesy of fpl.page.

That Gilbert has managed to infiltrate the Top 10k with a team like this is, on the surface, quite remarkable. No Saka, no Watkins, no Solanke, to name a few.

But a look at his chip usage makes his ascendency easier to explain. Gilbert has used every single one of his chips already, including his Free Hit in Gameweek 7, his Bench Boost in Gameweek 15 and his Triple Captain in Gameweek 17.

Whilst he remains top of his only mini-league, confusingly named Loic nego appreciation (Loic nego, it turns out, is a Hungarian right-back for Ligue 1 club Le Havre), it seems clear that the only way is down for xiao Ming, who must try to find a way back to top 10k glory without a single chip to use for guidance.

A true TWAT if ever there was one.

Always remember, you might’ve had a terrible Double Gameweek 25, but at least you’re not a TWAT.

The best captain for Blank Gameweek 26.

Erling Haaland will be the most popular captain this week when he visits Bournemouth.

But there is a growing trend towards Bukayo Saka at home to Newcastle and, depending on how close you are to your season’s target, it’s a temptation worth considering. Let us not forget that, as already mentioned, Newcastle’s defensive stats are pretty abysmal.

Bournemouth’s, meanwhile, are in the top-10 most robust since Gameweek 20.

If we cast aside our pre-conceived notions about a team’s defensive reputation and focus only on the stats, who actually has the better fixture here? And who has the better form? Saka wins both of those categories for us.

If you’re winning your mini-leagues, a Haaland captaincy is the pricy life insurance policy you should probably take out. Most of those chasing you will be captaining him too and he is, as always, the bookies’ favourite to score.

But if you’re playing a catch-up, rarely does a better opportunity pop up than Saka at home to Newcastle.

The key stats.

The Professor’s team.

Another gameweek, another small green arrow for the Prof. It means that, since Gameweek 7, he’s had just 1 red arrow. 12 consecutive green arrows. Pretty good really.

Current rank: 245k.

Current transfer plans: Darwin Nunez > Ollie Watkins.

Captain: Erling Haaland

Here’s his team courtesy of Fantasy Football Hub’s MyTeam. MyTeam helps you to plan for future gameweeks and gives you easy access to stats, fixture difficulties and loads more.

Sign up for a 7-day free trial here and you’ll be helping us out too.

Other stuff we found interesting.

• Trent Alexander-Arnold isn’t likely to return until after the March international break.

• Kevin De Bruyne will “hopefully” be able to play against Bournemouth [@FPLToni, a usually reliable source].

• The latest spreadsheet from Ben Crellin, showing the odds for each potential double fixture in Gameweeks 34 and 37:

It’s another 13:30 deadline next Saturday, so we’ll be back in your inbox at the same time next Friday.

Until then, stay lazy you bunch of blankers.

The LazyFPL Team.