🚀 DGW34: what you need to know 🧠

🚨 The stuff you should know 🚨

⏰ Dank Gameweek 34’s deadline is Saturday 20th April, 13:30 BST.

👀 It’s both a Double and a Blank Gameweek. I.e. A Dank.

⛔️ Spurs will not play in Dank Gameweek 34.

😍 Seven teams will double.

🤕 Haaland and De Bruyne were enforced withdrawals in Man City’s midweek game.

🤦‍♂️ Bradley is ruled out for up to three weeks.

👋 Man City, Arsenal, Liverpool and West Ham out of their European tournaments.

Stick around the the treble: the best Free Hit team, the best Wildcard team and the Professor’s team.

Alright?

I’m coming to you from the bowels of a Brick Lane Airbnb in the early hours of a cold and drizzly Friday morning.

I’ll be candid: due to various commitments, including a work event that starts in exactly 383 minutes from the time of writing, I’m not in a position to be as elaborative in this particular newsletter as I’d like to be. I’m confident you’ll understand.

Luckily for me, LazyFPL is supposed to be concise. Today I’ll be taking full advantage of that USP and keeping things to a minimum.

Including in this intr-

Dank Gameweek 34’s fixtures.

Such a long fixture list.

To be clear, Spurs will blank and seven teams will double. They are:

Liverpool (ful, eve)
Arsenal (wol, CHE)
Crystal Palace (WHU, NEW)
Everton (NFO, LIV)
Bournemouth (avl, wol)
Wolves (ARS, BOU)
Sheffield United (BUR, mun)

It’s a double and a blank. A Dank, if you will.

Three Double Gameweek differentials.

Remember when we explained the concept of “dead-ending”?

If you know you’re playing your Wildcard in a certain gameweek, you can afford to be a little more reckless with your decision making the gameweek before. A lot of managers will be Wildcarding in Double Gameweek 35, which means they can buy players in Dank Gameweek 34 knowing that they won’t necessarily be a permanent feature.

We’ve already mentioned the likes of Luis Diaz, Brereton Diaz and Jean-Philippe Mateta, but here are three more to wet your whistle.

1) Pablo Sarabia (£4.8m, MID)

The Wolves man eclipses trendy players like Eberechi Eze, Rodrigo Muniz and Kai Havertz for expected goal involvements over the last four gameweeks, yet he’s still only 1.4% owned. With a juicy double at Molineux, he’s a textbook dead-ender.

2) Andy Robertson (£6.4m, DEF)

It’s weird to be writing about Andy Robertson as a differential, but he’s only owned by 4.1% of FPL managers. Just like a classic vinyl record, the once-popular FPL asset is now a collector’s item, displayed on the dusty bookshelves of fantasy football hipsters.

But despite only playing two-and-a-third games, he’s in the top 10 for expected goal involvements amongst defenders over the last four gameweeks. With Connor Bradley ruled out, Trent Alexander-Arnold is the obvious replacement, which is why we haven’t included him here. If you’re strapped for cash but still want some Liverpool representation, you could do far worse than the Scotsman.

3) James Tarkowski (£4.6m, DEF)

It’s an Everton player, we get it. But four things are true:

• James Tarkowski has played every minute of Premier League football this season.

• Only two teams have more clean sheets than Everton this season.

• His recent expected goal involvement is up there amongst defenders (see below).

• He has a Double Gameweek of Nottingham Forest and Liverpool at home.

Say what you want, but buying Tarkowski feels a bit like buying a waterproof poncho: grotesquely unsexy but still a potential game-changer if it ever starts raining.

The ultimate Free Hit team.

Whilst we’d love for every Lazy reader to be aligned on chip strategy, it’s never going to be a reality. There will always be those artisinal few who feel compelled to buck the trend.

So in that spirit, we asked the Prof to put together the optimal Free Hit team for Dank Gameweek 34.

Just subscribe to LazyFPL premium to see it.

…

…

Nah just kidding it’s here:

What if you’re on a Wildcard?

The Prof was kind enough to put together a Wildcard team in his latest newsletter too. I’ve stolen it:

What are the top managers doing this week?

For the Christians it’s baptism. For Muslims it’s Wudu. And the Japanese Buddhists use a tsukubai.

But for most of the top FPL managers this week, a different cleansing ritual is observed: getting rid of Spurs of players.

In their place, they’ll be looking to teams like Wolves and Crystal Palace in search of Dank Gameweek salvation.

Expect this week to be one of the few times in which some of the top managers will flirt with a differential. It’s the swinging 60s of FPL: a time of exploration and experimentation. The summer of love, if love means punting on an Everton centre-back and watching him get sent off seven minutes into the gameweek.

Dig out your old pair of flairs and stick on some Hendrix: it’s going to be a trip.

The best captain for Dank Gameweek 34.

Mohamed Salah will be the most popular captain over Dank Gameweek 34, which won’t come as a surprise to you.

Given his recent form (1, 7, 1, 8, 2 since returning from injury), there is an opportunity to back a differential for those needing a rapid rank increase.

The beauty of a Double Gameweek is that any player with two fixtures is a potential captaincy consideration. Bukayo Saka, Eberechi Eze, Dominic Solanke and Darwin Nunez are all interesting options for those of you who don’t fancy the Egyptian.

The Professor’s Team.

The Professor has yo-yo’d from 297k, to 278k, back up to 297k over the last three gamweeks. It really is thrilling stuff.

Like a lot of managers, he’s bringing in Eberechi Eze this week. The out-of-form Cole Palmer makes way.

Mohamed Salah get’s the armband.

Here’s his team - it’s built with Fantasy Football Hub’s AI-powered MyTeam tool. Try it free for 7 days here and you’ll be helping us out too.

The key stats for Dank Gameweek 34.

Other stuff we found interesting.

• With 20 Premier League goals, Palmer is now the joint-top scorer with Haaland.

• Saka hasn’t created or received a big chance from open play in his last five games (credit: u/BillOakley).

• Garnacho has apologised for his criticism of Ten Hag.

• If you’d picked this team in Gameweek 1 and just left it, you’d be second in the world right now:

1,096 words. Not bad.

Enjoy the Dank Gameweek. We’ll be back around 12 hours after it concludes ahead of Double Gameweek 35’s deadline.

Stay lazy,

The LazyFPL Team.