FPL Double Gameweek 32 | The full briefing.

The Stuff You Should Know

🚨 Double Gameweek 32’s deadline is Saturday, 12th April, 11:00 BST.

😍 Crystal Palace and Newcastle are playing twice.

👌 Alexander Isak confirmed as fit for Double Gameweek 32.

👀 Chris Wood and Anthony Elanga are among those being assessed ahead of DGW32 for Nottingham Forest.

Keep reading to find out whether it’s time to play your Triple Captain (if you still have it).

Alright?

To footballing civilians, a Double Gameweek is little more than a strange quirk in the fixture schedule. Nothing about this particular week of Premier League action ought to be remarkable, but the additional match hanging from the end of the fixture list like a stripey dingleberry transforms it into the stuff of FPL fables.

Newcastle vs Crystal Palace on Wednesday night makes Gameweek 32 a double. A modern royal stronghold faces a fancy royal residence.

That game will certainly hog more of this newsletter’s inches than the other 10 fixtures, but, as is always the case with Lazy, we’ll try to serve it with a slice of perspective too.

Here’s how to ensure that Gameweek 32 is all double and no trouble.

Double Gameweek 32’s fixtures.

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Chill your boots.

Summary for the Lazy: Doubles are exciting, but they aren’t always season-changing.

When it comes to Double Gameweeks, the LazyFPL team are the first to reach for the Kool-Aid. Seeing two fixtures underneath a player’s name is peak FPL for us - a flashpoint that can propel and repel managers up and down the rankings in equal measure.

But let’s remove the romance for a second. Extinguish the candles, bin those horrible roses and pause Chris de Burgh before he breaks into crescendo. When you gaze into the eyes of Double Gameweek 32 in the sober light of day, all you see staring back at you is one extra fixture.

Don’t let your double goggles blind you into making regrettable decisions. Rush not into getting rid of great players for the short-lived pleasures of a doubling asset. Doubles are often disappointing, and they inevitably find ways of doing something weird.

If Jefferson Lerma ends up being the week’s top scorer, nobody at LazyHQ will be hugely surprised.

Penetrative Stats: The Triple Captain edition.

In today’s Penetrative Stats, we turn to a chip that somehow manages to be the most exciting and the most ineffective in unison.

Lots of good managers - including The Professor - are playing their Triple Captain on Alexander Isak in Double Gameweek 32. But is it a good idea? Let’s look at the stats.

How does Isak compare?

Isak’s expected goal involvement (xGI), which combines his expected goals (xG) and expected assists (xA) is, unsurprisingly, the highest in the Newcastle side this season. But zoom in a little bit and, just like these dodgy jpegs, the picture gets a little blurrier:

So, what we can see here is a clear decline in Newcastle’s dependency on Isak. In recent games, Josh Murphy has stepped into his shoes.

Part of that owes to the fact that Isak has missed a game between Gameweek 25-31. But that alone isn’t enough to explain the drop-off. The reality is, Isak doesn’t appear to be in the sort of form that saw him string together a run of 11 goals in eight games earlier in the season.

This was perhaps at its most obvious in Newcastle’s last game, in which they swept past Leicester 0-3. All Isak had to show for it was a measly 0.16xG and 0 shots on target.

Home vs Away

Both of Newcastle’s fixtures this gameweek are at home, and there’s a narrative that Isak is a “home player”.

But this season, Isak has scored an equal number of goals (10) on the road and at St James’ Park. His average FPL points per game at home is still 1.7 higher on home turf, and that’s likely down to four extra assists.

Conveniently, FPL HQ has already published a comparison table. Which is nice, because we’re lazy:

So, on the evidence of his season so far, Isak is a safer bet at home. If he performs to his average across these two fixtures, he scores Triple Captainers a very decent 45 points.

The fixtures

Manchester United and Crystal Palace at home looks pretty good, doesn’t it?

As far as the underlying stats are concerned, it’s the Manchester United fixture that should interest you most here. Crystal Palace have the fifth-best defence across the season, and the second-best in the last 10 gameweeks.

Manchester United’s defence, meanwhile, is about where you’d expect: seventh-worst (though, it should be said, they have the seventh-best defence away from home).

This, combined with the fact that Newcastle actually have a better xG on the road than at home, means the complexion of these fixtures looks a little different when you study them under the microscope. They may not be the bankers that they seem.

The alternatives

Of course, Isak isn’t the only doubling player this week, and Newcastle aren’t the only doubling team.

Jean-Philippe Mateta has been in excellent form. Indeed, since Gameweek 20, his underlying stats have trumped those of Isak, as have his actual attacking returns (10 vs 9). Newcastle and Man City are mid-table for defensive stats at home, so whilst Mateta’s fixtures feel tricky, there may well be goals there.

The other tempting option is the aforementioned Murphy, who has become Newcastle’s most productive attacking outlet in recent games. Two big performances - last gameweek and Gameweek 26 - pad his stats significantly. He notched nearly 3xGI from those two alone.

But Murphy has demonstrated that he’s capable of regularly being found in the sort of positions that you want your captains to be found in. He might not be Triple Captain material, but he’s well worth his modest fee.

The conclusion

Alexander Isak is not in the best form at the moment, and his fixtures this gameweek might not be as easy as they first appear.

But as the old adage goes, ‘What else are we meant to do?’.

With a dwindling number of Double Gameweeks remaining and a lack of obvious alternatives, we’re left with the highest scoring forward in the game this season.

Poor old us.

A quick note on game theory and Triple Captains.

Summary for the Lazy: The Triple Captain is most powerful when used on differentials.

FPL points are great, but a successful gameweek isn’t defined by how many points you score. It’s defined by how many points you score relative to everyone else.

So if you’re playing your Triple Captain this week, you face a conundrum. If you pick the player that everyone else is captaining (spoiler: that’s Isak), your actual gain is diluted.

Let’s say Isak scores 12 points. Captainers get 24 points. Triple Captainers get 36 points. 36 points might look great on your team sheet, but in reality, your once-in-a-season chip has bought you a maximum of 12 extra points on every other active manager - and that’s assuming that none of them are using their Triple Captain.

With this in mind, if you’re chasing a dramatic jump in your overall rank or mini-league standings, you might consider looking for a player who:

✅ Has a high-upside
✅ In a favourable fixture
✅ And who isn’t widely captained

Your priorities this season matter. By triple-captaining a differential, you’re exposing yourself to the very real possibility of huge losses on the rest of the field. If you’re defending a lead, play it safe.

But if your current situation can’t get much worse, the game theory suggests that a well-thrown Hail Mary could be the play.

What comes next?

Summary for the Lazy: There’s another double and a blank after that.

Double Gameweek 32 is the complimentary welcome drink before a binge of eventful gameweeks.

Straight after this gameweek, we move into Double Gameweek 33, in which Crystal Palace will reprise their role as the Double Gameweek stars, joined by an ensemble cast of Man City, Aston Villa and Arsenal.

Those same teams will then stab us in the back by blanking in Blank Gameweek 34.

In case you’re suffering from spreadsheet withdrawals, here’s Ben Crellin’s:

The best captain for Double Gameweek 32.

Summary for the Lazy: It’s Isak.

We’ve already discussed this in depth, so if you’ve scrolled past it to get to this bit, we’d invite you to scroll back up to the Penetrative Stats section.

After a green arrow in Gameweek 31, The Professor sits at 148k.

This week, he’ll roll a transfer and play his Triple Captain chip on Alexander Isak.

In The Professor’s latest newsletter (which is a particularly good one, btw), he makes a compelling case for benching Morgan Rogers, despite the fact he’s playing the worst team in the league. With a second-leg against PSG around the corner for Aston Villa, a game against Southampton presents the perfect opportunity for Unai Emery to rest his key players.

To find out if he bottles it nearer to the deadline, join LazyFPL Premium for around the same price as some plain porridge from the Gatwick Wetherspoons:

The key stats.

Other stuff we found interesting.

• Every single premium player blanked last gameweek. The most expensive player with a return was Jean-Philippe Mateta.

• Mohamed Salah signs a new contract until 2027.

• Southampton are officially relegated.

• Kevin De Bruyne has announced he’ll leave Man City at the end of the season.

• Kaoru Mitoma is a doubt for Brighton.

• Cole Palmer was intentionally withdrawn at half-time in the Europa League.

There’s no early kick-off next weekend, so we’ll be in your inbox a little bit later. Enjoy the double and, remember,

Stay lazy.

The LazyFPL Team.