🚨 GW21: The FPL cheat sheet 🧠

⏰ Gameweek 21’s deadline is Tuesday, 6th January, 18:30 GMT ⏰

🚫 Man United sack Ruben Amorim as head coach. Darren Fletcher will take charge for the next few games, but they’re intending to appoint a caretaker manager for the remainder of the season.

🤦‍♂️ Hugo Ekitike has a “slight hamstring injury...hopefully he will be back for the Arsenal game.” - Slot.

🧤 Robert Sánchez has a “small muscle issue” (don’t we all). He should be back for Gameweek 21.

🤞“I expect to have some minutes of maybe Bruno [Fernandes] and Mason Mount, maybe. So, we'll see." - Amorim on Gameweek 21.

🤕 Joško Gvardiol will be out for several weeks due to injury - Fabrizio Romano.

Alright?

If FPL is indeed a marathon, not a sprint, then the festive period is surely the big-bastard hill in the middle of the route.

Your feet are blistered. Your hamstrings moan. Your farts are getting riskier by the minute.

But you’ve almost made it.

We’re not wrapping you in a foil sheet and force-feeding you isotonic gel just yet, mind you. After this climb, there’s still almost half the race left to run, and the arsehole in the revealingly tight running lycra ahead of you ain’t slowing down anytime soon.

Grab a cup of water from the lanyard-wearing volunteer and put on a song that makes you angry. Gameweek 21 awaits, and whilst it doesn’t look too steep to the naked eye, it’s got quite the hidden incline.

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Lazy summary: Remain calm and stand by your decisions.

To non-FPL managers - or Fuggles, as we call them - rice is a grain that provides a staple carbohydrate for over half the world’s population.

But for FPL managers, Rice is the second-highest points scorer and the most-transferred-out player for the past three gameweeks.

The second-most-transferred-out player last gameweek was Igor Thiago, who also punished non-believers in the most emphatic way possible by notching a season-high points haul.

Gameweek 20 was a gameweek for the transferred-out players to exact vengeance, making it a painful watch for a lot of FPL managers.

Don’t panic.

If you were one of the actual millions of managers who got rid of Rice or Thiago recently, it’s fine. It’s crap and miserable, obviously, but this is what you signed up for when you decided to create a team. To FPL is to suffer, as Nietzsche once said. Move on.

The good FPL managers make these mistakes, but they’re able to find the right moves afterwards.

Here’s a three-point plan to follow:

1) Leave your team alone.

2) Seriously, just leave it alone.

3) Congrats, you’re a good FPL manager again.

You had a good reason for making your decisions. Give it some time to breathe.

Lazy summary: Do nothing for now, but observe. New managers usually bring about change, for good or for bad.

With Ruben Amorim the latest name added to the list of “long-term projects” that have failed within two years, big questions linger over the futures of Man United and Chelsea.

We don’t always cover managerial sackings (beyond letting you know they’ve happened), but these two clubs feel FPL-relevant enough to warrant some coveted LazyFPL column inches.

What do we know?

What could it mean for FPL managers?

Just like that 2008 film with Meryl Streep (£5.8m midfielder, decent differential), the keyword here is doubt.

Obviously, we don’t know how a new manager will impact our FPL assets. Will Bruno Fernandes continue to perform under a new manager? Will the new Chelsea boss get more out of Cole Palmer?

It’s impossible to say at this point, but the answers to these questions could yet define the FPL template for the second half of the season.

The managerial changes are an extra variable, and in FPL, variables = doubt. Previously nailed players can fall out of favour, assets can swap positions, form can dry up or spark into life.

Whenever new, permanent managers are installed at a club, nothing is guaranteed.

So what should you do?

You probably own at least one Chelsea and Man United player, and you’re likely keeping an eye on Fernandes’ fitness, too.

As is the lazy motto, do nothing for now. It would be bizarre to make any hard-and-fast decisions based on nothing more than speculation.

Wait, observe, and move quickly if a trend emerges.

Lazy summary: Get him in eventually, but don’t desecrate your team to bring him in immediately.

A quick note on Gabriel. The lad is the highest-scoring defender in FPL, and he’s missed virtually seven games (fine, six games + 71 minutes).

The Lazy take? He isn’t a red herring. Gabriel is just a good pick. Sometimes FPL is simple. You ought to think about getting him in soon.

The trickier problem is when.

Should you buy Gabriel this week?

If you can use a free transfer to bring Gabriel in this week, you could do far worse.

But you probably can’t. Either you can’t afford to upgrade an existing defender to Gabriel, or you already own three Arsenal players (our guess would be Bukayo Saka/Declan Rice, Jurrien Timber and David Raya).

And that’s okay. Arsenal have Liverpool next - hardly a guaranteed clean sheet - and two domestic matches between Gameweeks 21 and 22 (the FA Cup third round vs Portsmouth and the second leg of the EFL Cup semi-final vs Chelsea).

Anything can happen. If you can’t make the transfer this week, don’t move mountains (i.e. take hits) to force him in.

I own three Arsenal players already. Who gets the chop?

Owning an Arsenal attacker feels worthwhile, and Timber is two points away from being the second-highest scoring defender in the game.

If you own him, Raya is the obvious sacrificial lamb when the time comes. Arsenal’s strength is also Raya’s problem: He’s £6.0m and has only registered four save points and four bonus points all season. He just doesn’t usually have that much to do.

This low ceiling means that, despite his quality, goalkeepers like Spurs’ Guglielmo Vicario are only six points adrift of him, and both Robin Roefs and Jordan Pickford are outscoring him.

Lazy summary: It’s Erling Haaland.

With three blanks in a row for the first time this season, there will be some who are starting to doubt the Norse God.

But as was written in Norse mythology, it’s when you start to doubt Erling Haaland’s power that it becomes most vehement.

He was unlucky not to score against Chelsea and has Brighton at home in Gameweek 21. He’ll be the most popular captain amongst competent managers for good reason.

The Professor is considering an extreme move this gameweek…

…not really - he’s potentially swapping out one budget defender for another.

Maxime Estève > Gabriel Gudmundsson

Sometimes, the art of good FPL management is in the small, housekeeping moves that keep your team watertight, and that’s what the Professor is thinking here.

But, if he gets positive news on his Brentford assets before the deadline, there is also the potential to roll.

Erling Haaland gets the armband.

1) Erling Haaland’s blank in Gameweek 20 means he’s blanked for three games in a row for the first time this season.

2) Declan Rice has been the most sold player for each of the last three gameweeks.

3) West Ham sign striker Valentin Castellanos from Lazio for £26m.

4) 46% of Declan Rice owners in the top 10k overall benched him last gameweek.

5) John McGinn owned himself in FPL for his brace in Gameweek 20.

Okay, we won’t be back until next Friday (16th) now.

Try not to miss us too much, and remember,

Stay lazy.

The LazyFPL Team.