Gameweek 26 | The inside scoop 🍦

The Stuff You Should Know

🚨 Gameweek 26’s deadline is Friday 21st February, 18:30 GMT.

👀 Double Gameweek 32 confirmed for Newcastle and Crystal Palace

🤕 Erling Haaland misses his UCL game with a knee injury.

🤦 “It will be a close call” - Slot on Cody Gakpo’s availability this weekend.

🏥 Amad Diallo to miss the rest of the season.

Keep reading to find out if Ethan Nwaneri is too good to be true.

Alright?

Gameweek 26 marks the beginning of a three-gameweek run of “classic gameweeks” - by which we mean, gameweeks where all 20 teams play once.

They’re a bunch of normies. Inbetweeners, if you like. We made a guide that might help:

But that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t remain alert. This gameweek - another Friday night deadline - is followed quickly by a midweek Gameweek 27. It’s this sort of rocky terrain that trips up complacent managers.

Perhaps you’ll give your mini-league rival a polite heads up about the weird deadlines this week.

Or maybe not.

Let’s pay a rather brief visit to the care home that houses Gameweek 26.

Gameweek 26’s fixtures.

For the lazy runners.

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Double Gameweek 32 - some more news.

Summary for the Lazy: Newcastle and Palace are confirmed.

Back when I was young, stupid and trendy (fine, I was never trendy, and I’m still stupid) I used to care deeply about who would headline Glastonbury festival. I would listen out for rumours, search for gaps in touring calendars and crawl forums that speculated on such matters.

For anyone familiar with Glastonbury, you’ll already know how the search would end: with the inevitable announcement that yes, Coldplay would once again be taking to the Pyramid stage.

In my older age, it’s not Glastonbury headliners but Double Gameweek participants that really get me excited. And Ben Crellin is my Michael Eavis.

Here’s the latest fixture table, condensed for extra convenience:

Oh and here’s the key:

The exciting development is those yellow rectangles in Double Gameweek 32.

Newcastle will play Man United and Crystal Palace at home.

Crystal Palace will play Manchester City and Newcastle away.

Our first headliners have been announced. Beyonce and Coldplay. Newcastle and Crystal Palace.

Newcastle in particular are worth a serious look, but blank in Blank Gameweek 29 first.

What are the top managers doing this gameweek?

Summary for the Lazy: Moving their Assistant Manager or rolling.

Ah yes, it’s our weekly dose of telling you what you probably ought to be doing, so you can acknowledge it, absorb it and then completely ignore it.

Most of the top managers played their Assistant Manager in Double Gameweek 25, which means they’ve got one more week before their chosen man hands in his notice (or storms out in a fury after a pattern of erratic - and at times offensive - behaviour from his employer).

For those managers, a switch from their current AM (probably Arne Slot or Unai Emery) to a more appetising prospect is a sensible move. Optimising the potency of the chip is worth a free transfer, particularly given the points ceiling.

For managers not on the Assistant Manager chip, rolling a transfer is sensible. That’s because of Blank Gameweek 29, in which Aston Villa, Liverpool, Crystal Palace and Newcastle all miss out. Remember, there’ll be a bigger blank later in the season (Gameweek 34 or Gameweek 37) so it’s paramount we save the Free Hit for those.

The more transfers we have in the bank to calmly step around banana skins like Blank Gameweek 29, the better.

The best Assistant Manager.

For those on the Assistant Manager chip, here’s a great graphic we found from @robtfpl:

We like this because it balances top managers (like Mikel Arteta) with those managers who might pull off a surprise (like Kieran McKenna vs Spurs).

Who you pick will hinge on your appetite for risk. If you’re the sort to turn up to the airport an hour before your flight, perhaps you’re suited to a Kieran McKenna. But if you’re there five hours early, nursing a coffee as you wait for your gate to open, you’re probably more a Mikel Arteta sort of manager.

Penetrative Stats.

Summary for the Lazy: Nwaneri is worth a short-term punt for those looking to free up cash.

Ethan Nwaneri is a player for the football purists. He’s the sort of talent that prompts pundits into drawing from a special reserve of football cliches that can only be used on raw, young talent - all of which include the word “kid”. This kid is something else. The kid is a player. I can’t wait to see this wonderkid in an England top.

But at £4.5m, there’s a different demographic of football fans also looking carefully at him: FPL managers. These are a different breed. They care little for flair, football IQ or attitude off-the-pitch. They care only for FPL points. They are the impurists.

Can Nwaneri score FPL points? If you’ve read the “Summary for the Lazy” at the top of this section, you’ll already know our answer to that question. But where’s the theatre in that?

The stats

Let’s be very clear: Nwaneri has only played 90 minutes once this season. We’re not getting the graphics out for one full match.

He registered a very healthy 0.75 xGI (expected goal involvements) in Double Gameweek 25 - his first 90-minute stint for Arsenal. But it was the manner of his performance - hitting the post twice, delivering 10 of Arsenal’s 18 crosses and notching an assist - that really caught the eye.

His minutes

There’s a reason why Nwaneri is priced at just £4.5m. He’s a big minutes risk. His inclusion in Arsenal’s XI vs Leicester was in no small part to a deluge of injuries to Arsenal’s front line:

Kai Havertz - out for the season

Gabriel Jesus - out for the season (and beyond)

Gabriel Martinelli - suspected to miss Gameweek 26 and Gameweek 27, and potentially Gameweek 28 and Blank Gameweek 29

Bukayo Saka - expected back around Gameweek 30

Of these, Saka’s return is naturally the biggest threat to Nwaneri’s starting berth, but even a Martinelli start could throw a spanner in the works. If Arteta has demonstrated one thing since Saka’s absence, it’s a willingness to experiment with his ensemble cast of attackers.

In the short-term, however, it seems likely that the 17-year-old will continue to start for Arsenal. As The Professor observed in his latest newsletter, that assertion is based on little more than “pub talk”, but since when has that been a poor indicator?

The fixtures

Arsenal’s fixtures are a mixed bag, but every game is winnable here.

The summary

For all the hyperbole surrounding this youngster, we’re confident he’s most proud of being described as “absurd value” by The Professor.

Opportunities like this don’t come along too often. In Nwaneri we have a £4.5m attacking midfielder, in excellent form, likely to start for one of the best teams in the league.

That doesn’t mean he’s an instant buy. His ownership will likely be comfortably below 5% by the deadline. But if you’re in the market to replace the injured Amad Diallo, or perhaps looking to free up some funds to splash elsewhere, Nwaneri is very low risk, very high reward.

The best captain for Gameweek 26.

It’s Mohamed Salah.

As FPL managers, we’re conditioned to believe that a visit to the Etihad is a guaranteed blank. But that’s simply not the case anymore.

Salah is breaking every FPL record under the scorching Egyptian sun this season. Keep your faith in him.

(Or you could just transfer in, and captain, Ethan Nwaneri as a differential).

A decent gameweek moves The Professor to his highest rank of the season so far, 305k. He’s bouncing around the 300-400k region like a pong ball for some time now. We even went to the effort of creating a graphic:

To free himself from this monochrome prison, he’ll be focusing on his Assistant Manager this week, moving from Arne Slot to Oliver Glasner.

Here’s his team:

If we’ve told you once we’ve told you a thousand times: join LazyFPL Premium for up-to-date news on The Prof’s moves, extra emails and loads more perks.

The key stats.

Other stuff we found interesting.

• Mohamed Salah becomes the first player to score+assist in 10 games in one of Europes “big 5” leagues since Lionel Messi at Barcelona in 2014/15.

Like we said, it’s a midweek gameweek next week, which means we’ll be back in your inbox on Monday. Try to contain your excitement.

Stay lazy.

The LazyFPL Team.