🚨 DGW25: what you need to know ✅

⏰ Double Gameweek 25’s deadline is Saturday 17th February, 11:00 GMT.

✅ Man City, Liverpool, Luton and Brentford all play twice.

👀 Mohamed Salah back in training and could feature in DGW25.

💔 Haaland’s grandma has died, but he’s played a game since.

🤕 Alexander-Arnold ruled out for a “number of weeks” and will miss DGW25.

🚑 Porro and Udogie missed training, Porro has a “muscular issue” that’s being assessed.

⛔️ Next gameweek is a blank (Liverpool, Spurs, Chelsea and Luton).

📈 Over half a million Triple Captain chips already played…and counting.

Keep reading if you want to stop stressing about whether or not to Triple Captain Haaland.

Alright?

Today I was reading about some Pompeiian scrolls buried underneath the ash of Vesuvius. A team of American scientists are using sub-atomic physics to decipher these 2,000 year-old texts.

It’s a long and arduous process. In fact, they’re only 5% through. Still, after two millennia, a small fraction of these ancient words can finally be read.

It’s remarkable.

More remarkable, however, is what these texts actually say.

A press gathering of journalists, historians, archaeologists, scientists, anthropologists and linguists held their collective breath, waiting for a monumentally rare glimpse into the psyche of a lost society.

Finally, the opening words of the first scroll were read out for the world to hear:

Should.
I.
Triple.
Captain.
Haaland.
In.
Gameweek.
25?

It feels like we’ve been telegraphing this gameweek for centuries. Let’s talk about it.

It’s a Double Gameweek. Have you heard?

Liverpool will play Brentford (A) and Luton (H).

Man City will play Chelsea (H) and Brentford (H).

Brentford will play Liverpool (H) and Man City (A).

Luton will play Man United (H) and Liverpool (A).

The passing of Erling Haaland’s Grandma is indicative of the almost diabolical flair that FPL has for throwing us weird curveballs prior to big gameweeks.

We pass on our condolences to the Haaland family (because I’m sure they care), but this is an FPL newsletter, so let’s talk about what it could mean for our teams. Peak FPL has been reached.

Firstly, this is what we know:

It appears as though Haaland is happy, or at least willing, to play despite any grief he might be dealing with. The ambiguity around the date of the funeral, however, is causing anxiety for some managers.

So, should you be worried about Haaland’s minutes this gameweek?

We’d say no. It appears Haaland is prepared to play on, so unless we hear something conclusive, it’s business as usual.

Is it a bad decision to Triple Captain the best Premier League goalscorer in recent history for two home games? No.

Could it still go horribly wrong? Of course.

Last week we talked about the near-infinite number of chip strategies to choose from. Something about a deck of cards? Probably nonsense.

Still, one thing holds true: they’re your chips. Not ours. We wish we had ‘em, but they’re yours. So whilst we can stare enviously at them from across the table, salivating as you sprinkle over a paper sachet of salt, silently judging as you dunk them into an adjacent pot of HP sauce, they’re still yours to do with as you please.

The Triple Captain is the weakest chip of the bunch. It’s the weird little overly-crispy one that could pierce through armour. If you choose to use it this week, you join over half a million managers who have also decided to use it.

The decision is sound. What happens after that is out of your hands, so you might as well enjoy the ride.

Trent Alexander-Arnold has aggravated his knee. Apparently he eats too loudly and his knee finally snapped.

It’s not expected to be too serious, but he’s been ruled out of the Carabao Cup Final (25th Feb) which implicitly rules him out of the Double Gameweek 25 fixtures that precede it too.

Much has been made about possible replacements, with the most popular like-for-like swap being Virgil van Dijk.

Van Dijk is 10th for xG amongst defenders this season, but with just 1.8xG to his name, it’s worth taking that with a pinch of salt. One great chance can flatter a whole season’s worth of stats when you’re a defender.

More important than that, perhaps, is that he’s nailed on to play both games, assuming he stays fit.

There’s been some mooted discussion around Connor Bradley. He’s expected to rejoin training this week after mourning the sad loss of his father.

At £4.1m, he’s mightily tempting, but there are rightfully questions over whether or not the young talent will be drafted straight in to replace Trent, particularly after a break. Joe Gomez is more than capable of filling that gap too. Given he’ll definitely miss Blank Gameweek 26, it’s probably not a risk worth taking.

What you do with Trent will largely depend on how desperate you are for a Liverpool defender. If you’re certain you want some Liverpool defensive representation, Van Dijk is your safest pick.

Speaking of Liverpool…

It might sound like the next instalment in The Mummy franchise (less scarab beetles but around the same amount of incredibly good looking Egyptians), but it is, in fact, a klaxon: Mohamed Salah is back in full training.

The majority of managers are just quietly trying to ignore this fact, because bringing him back in is incredibly inconvenient.

He’s expensive, and, in case the message hasn’t quite gotten through yet, he also blanks in Blank Gameweek 26.

That’s probably why his transfers this week are still net-negative (70k in, 74k out at the time of writing).

Full training doesn’t mean he’ll play at the weekend, or even that he’ll certainly play next Wednesday. But it’s looking likely that we’ll see Salah on grass at some point over Double Gameweek 25. That could have big implications on the complexion of Liverpool’s attacking three.

Right, we’ve picked at the bones. Let’s sink our teeth into some proper meat.

Tripling up on Manchester City, who visit Bournemouth in BGW26, feels like a sensible and easy decision. We won’t dwell too much on that: you’re probably going to have three of:

Phil Foden
Kevin De Bruyne
Erling Haaland
Nathan Ake
Julian Alvarez
Kyle Walker

We don’t have a problem with any of those, as long as you have at least two from the first set of three and one from the second set of three (please Carole).

Liverpool players are slightly more challenging, because - and I hope you’re sitting down for this bombshell - they will blank in BGW26. Darwin Nunez is fun to own, and whilst Luis Diaz and Diogo Jota are capable of rewarding investors, the looming shadow of Salah’s barnet means none are totally assured 180 minutes in DGW25.

We wouldn’t advise succumbing to the excitement and taking multiple hits for three Liverpool players. You’ll hate yourself for it next week.

What about Brentford and Luton?

Anyone who has ever played FPL will tell you that Double Gameweeks are weird.

That’s because of the Improbability Principle. The premise is simple: in any situation where loads of outcomes are possible (like a game of football), it’s highly likely that something incredibly unlikely will happen. We just tend to notice these weird outcomes more.

As such, it’s totally feasible that the top scoring player this week ends up being a Luton defender, or that Ivan Toney ends up outscoring Haaland.

But should we plan for these odd outcomes? No.

The best FPL managers always assume that the most likely thing to happen in a game will happen. Even if, in football, it rarely ever does. It’s why we love the sport.

And it’s why we hate FPL.

Here are the key stats for Double Gameweek 25. The asterisk next to a player’s name means they double - the percentage shows their combined odds of scoring at least once in Double Gameweek 25.

In typically boring fashion, the Professor managed yet another small green arrow in Gameweek 24. Here are his plans for Double Gameweek 25:

Current rank: 261k.

Current transfer plans: Trent Alexander-Arnold > Nathan Ake.

Captain: Erling Haaland - Triple Captain.

Sound the alarm: the Prof is eating a chip.

The Trent > Ake transfer was actually suggested by Fantasy Football Hub’s monstrous AI tool, MyTeam, too.

Aside from suggesting transfers, 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.

Here’s his team (Triple Captain on Haaland) ⬇️

Have fun this week - these sorts of gameweeks are why we play FPL. Right?

We’ll be back next Friday afternoon. Until then, stay lazy.

The LazyFPL Team.