🚨 GW15: The FPL cheat sheet 🤫

⏰ Gameweek 15’s deadline is Saturday, 6th December, 11:00 GMT ⏰

🎁 We all get our free transfers topped up to five immediately after the Gameweek 15 deadline passes, due to AFCON.

🟡 Declan Rice has a yellow flag, but has confirmed he’s “fine” and can play this weekend.

🧤 Nick Pope is out until Gameweek 18.

👉 Subscribe to the free 1440 newsletter for unbiased news in a quick email.

👀 Keep reading to find out why the Professor has already made his moves.

Alright?

Another day, another deadline. It’s like school all over again, only instead of an essay about Lenny from Of Mice and Men, we’ve got to hand in a squad of 15 players and hope we don’t totally arse it up.

Here’s the festive schedule, posted by FPL towers:

Fear not: this is why we exist. Less Steinbeck, more Welbeck.

Let’s read between the lines of Gameweek 15 and see what it’s really saying.

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Lazy summary: Make a transfer this week, because next week we all get our free transfers topped up to five.

We know, we know. It’s a lot. If we could stroke your hair and tell you it’s going to be okay, we would. But alas, it would take us ages to get to you - the traffic is a nightmare. A crap email will have to suffice.

Whilst back-to-back gameweeks can induce panic amongst some managers, they’re actually easier to deal with. There’s less time between deadlines for weird, disruptive stuff to happen.

So, with that in mind, here’s your five-step guide to approaching Gameweek 15 if you’re cosplaying as a calm, rational person:

1) Take a deep breath.
2) Pour yourself a cup, glass or flagon of your favourite drink.
3) Find the player in your squad that brings you the least joy and get rid of him.
4) Replace him with the player that brings you the most joy.
5) Take a sip from that drink: You’re an FPL manager now.

This is an oversimplification. Don't get rid of a good long-term pick just because he blanked last week.

Still, the free AFCON transfers we’re getting next week give us license to gamble, safe in the knowledge that we can amend that punt painlessly if things don't go to plan.

Remember, there’s ZERO advantage to rolling your transfer this week, unless your team is already perfect. Let’s talk more about those transfers.

Lazy summary: We get our free transfers topped up to five immediately after the Gameweek 15 deadline.

This Saturday, as soon as the Gameweek 15 deadline passes, our free transfers will be topped up to the maximum quota of five. It’s TransfersGoneWild.

We’re all very excited for our AFCON ration packs, not least because it creates a rather unique situation: Managers should only roll a transfer this week if their team is already perfect (and whose team is perfect?).

What are smart managers doing?

With Mohamed Salah’s lack of form, injuries to Ismaïla Sarr and Yoane Wissa, and players like Yankuba Minteh failing to qualify, it feels like the only thing smart managers aren’t doing is using their bonus transfers for their intended purpose: to get rid of AFCON assets.

1) The mini-Wildcard.

These bonus transfers don’t have to be spent in one go, but some managers are treating them like a “mini-Wildcard”. Their plan is to make multiple transfers simultaneously.

This might be particularly helpful if you’re combining them with the Bench Boost, for example.

2) Saving them like Smaug.

Barring anything drastic, most good managers won’t need to do any significant surgery on their teams, which means, if they continue to make one transfer a gameweek, they can hoard five free transfers until they need them. Smaug style.

This is a remarkably privileged position to be in, and if you can afford to hold them, we’d recommend it. You’ll almost certainly need to call upon them eventually.

The players going to AFCON.

Here’s a table that we definitely didn’t steal from the Premier League’s website.

Lazy summary: Plenty of good managers are getting rid of him, but don’t prioritise his exit over more rotation-threatened assets.

Antoine Semenyo’s owners are abandoning ship, and, to put it in ship-related terms, he’s gone from an Icon of the Seas to the Poop Cruise.

He’s the most transferred-out player ahead of Gameweek 15, which is hardly surprising given he hasn’t registered an attacking return since Gameweek 8.

What should you do with him?

We’ll pull the plaster off: Plenty of good managers are getting rid of him as we speak (we’re not speaking, but y’know, as you read). Nobody is ridiculing you if you want to use this week’s YOLO transfer on removing him.

He has Chelsea and Man United next - two defences that even Cystic Greg can’t predict at the moment - followed by a nice home fixture against Burnley in Gameweek 17.

We wouldn’t recommend taking a hit to get rid of him, mind you. His stats have actually picked up in recent games, and whilst he’s been out of sorts for his standards, he’s clearly still a very good player. Semenyo isn’t bad enough to take priority over minutes-threatened players.

The best Semenyo replacements.

Phil Foden, Yankuba Minteh and Eliott Anderson are all interesting options.

As you’ll shortly discover, the LazyFPL boffins also like the look of Kevin Schade and, if you’re on a budget, Kiernan Dewsbury-Hall.

In a gameweek where everyone ought to make at least one transfer, it feels like a good time to put together a “this is the team we’d pick if we were Wildcarding” team.

Thankfully for us, LazyFPL’s inner sanctum (which sits adjacent to the outer rectum) includes some of the finest FPL brains on Earth. So we asked them.

(Health and Safety Disclaimer: It’s important to clarify that none of the LazyFPL team are playing a Wildcard this week. The aim here is to give you a sense of the players trending upwards right now.)

Here’s what they spewed out:

Some accompanying notes:

This team bakes in a few transfers. For example, Bryan Mbeumo is off to AFCON, so whilst the boffins like him for this week, they suggest swapping him out for Bukayo Saka ahead of Gameweek 16. If you can’t afford to make a direct swap, you could save money in the following areas:

Daniel Muñoz > Marc Guéhi
Jurrien Timber > Riccardo Calafiori
Nick Woltemade > Raúl Jiménez (the braintrust thinks he’ll be a good short-term punt)

Lazy summary: It’s Erling Haaland.

If you had to semi-permanently tattoo the captaincy armband onto a player for the remainder of the season, you’d be hard-pressed not to pick the Norse God.

An emphatic 14 points in midweek has reminded any doubters that, yes, despite two consecutive blanks, he’s probably still a good player.

He plays Sunderland at home this week, who haven’t kept a clean sheet since their Gameweek 8 fixture against Wolves (and, unless you’re one of the three little pigs, it’s relatively straightforward to keep a clean sheet against Wolves).

The Professor graduated from the Gandalf school of timekeeping: He is never late, never early.

So when we tell you that he’s already made his transfers this week, you know it was because he absolutely had to. Phil Foden’s buzz-cutted star (and price) has been rising all week. Antoine Semenyo’s has been doing the opposite.

The Prof’s moves:

Nordi Mukiele → Maxime Estève (to create the funds for Foden)

Semenyo → Foden

Erling Haaland gets the amrband (he’s not a total psychopath).

If you’ve been tailing the Professor and are now priced out of matching his team, join our WhatsApp Broadcast group*, where he shares all his plans ahead of confirming them.

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1) Stefanos Tzimas (Brighton forward) will be out for “months”, which should be good for Danny Welbeck's minutes going forward.

2) Every one of Crystal Palace’s back five is in the top nine scoring defenders, and Daniel Muñoz is the second-highest scoring player in the game (behind Erling Haaland).

There’s a whole week between Gameweeks 15 and 16 (what a treat), so we’ll see you next Friday, 24 hours before the (slightly later) Saturday deadline.

Which leaves only the small matter of European football to navigate during midweek…but since when has that ever been an issue?

Stay lazy.

The LazyFPL Team.