Gameweek 27 | The essential news.

The Stuff You Should Know

🚨 Gameweek 27’s deadline is TUESDAY 25th February, 18:00 GMT.

🤞 Emery is “hopeful” Rogers can start against Crystal Palace.

👀 Haaland trained but was not deemed fit enough to feature against Liverpool. His injury is not thought to be serious, according to Guardiola.

The Prof is making a double-transfer. Keep reading to find out who.

Alright?

As is customary whenever there’s a quick turnaround between gameweeks, today’s newsletter will be a bitesize version of the regular chocolate bar. Something that you can pull out of your pocket and snack on surreptitiously when you think nobody’s looking.

Still, we’re going to cram it with as much glucose syrup as possible.

Let’s peel off the foil wrapper that hides Gameweek 27 and give it a little lick.

Gameweek 27’s fixtures.

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What are the best managers doing this week?

Summary for the Lazy: Not much, but The Prof is using two transfers.

Last newsletter, we explained that most of the top managers are in saving mode. Not the superhero kind of “saving”, but the transfer kind.

Nothing happened in Gameweek 26 to change that.

Those suffering from a Morgan Rogers-shaped hangover from Double Gameweek 25 might be moving him on, with Bryan Mbeumo being the most popular cure for those who can afford him. The Villa man is the most transferred out player this week.

With that being said, Emery is “hopeful” Rogers will be fit for Crystal Palace. I’m hopeful I’ll finally get that England call up after I scored a freekick in PE back in 2003 - it doesn’t mean it’s going to happen.

Still, he might not be the urgent transfer that the yellow flag suggests.

As you’ll soon learn, though, The Professor is making moves.

Does Salah make FPL boring?

Summary for the Lazy: This is non-essential and can be skipped if you’re busy.

Here are five quite remarkable facts about Mohamed Salah’s form this season:

• With 285 points, Salah has scored 108 points more than the next-highest points scorer (Palmer).

• He’s already had his second-best season ever, and only needs 19 more points in his remaining games to surpass the 303 points he scored in the 17/18 season. Which also happens to be the most points ever scored by any player in a season.

• He has been the Player of the Week six times this season. The previous record was two.

• Salah has 16 double-digit returns from 27 games: the most in a single season ever.

• Even if you only counted Salah’s points away from home, he’d still be the highest scoring player.

Even the boomers who used to play FPL via postage haven’t witnessed FPL scoring like this before. Indeed, Salah is so good, some have suggested it’s making the game itself bad.

We’re interested in your thoughts. Does Salah’s dominance make FPL less interesting for you?

The best captain for Gameweek 27.

Earlier in the season, Cole Palmer at home to Southampton would’ve been the obvious move.

For The Professor, it’s still the obvious move. The bookies and the prediction models all point to Palmer and The Professor trusts in those indicators more than recency bias or “vibes”. Whilst “Cold” Palmer might’ve warmed up a little in recent months, he’ll still play the leakiest side in the league this week.

Still, there’s a reason why the phrase “don’t get fancy” has been enshrined into FPL lore this season, and most managers will be captaining Mohamed Salah.

In his most recent newsletter, The Professor fully acknowledges the risk of a Palmer captaincy, but for him, opportunities like this don’t come about too often.

It’s a classic conundrum. Form vs fixture. Co vs Mo.

Reasons to go with Cole Palmer:

• He’s got the capacity to haul

• He plays the worst defence in the league

• The bookies and the prediction models love him

Reasons to go with Mohamed Salah:

• He scored 18 points in the reverse fixture

• He’s the best player the game has ever seen, in the form of his life

• Newcastle have conceded seven in their last two games

In an ideal world, we’d captain both of these players simultaneously. But unless there’s a player called Mole Salmer that we’ve missed, that’s just not possible.

Salah is the safe pick. If you’re looking to take a risk, Palmer presents a rare opportunity for outsized gains.

It was a good week for The Prof, who, aided by an Oliver Glasner 20-pointer, now sits at 183k overall.

To consolidate this momentum, he’s doing everything he’d ordinarily advise against: buying and captaining differentials. To find out why The Prof is abandoning his usual sensible style of play, you can read his full workings here.

Morgan Rogers -> Pedro Neto
Ollie Watkins -> Matheus Cunha

Cole Palmer gets the armband.

The key stats.

Other stuff we found interesting.

• Bournemouth’s Evanilson is nearing a return according to Iraola.

Right, Gameweek 28 is on Saturday 8th March, so you’ve got some time to dust yourself off after the midweek madness. Something tells me we’re going to need a break.

We’ll see you on Friday 7th, as usual.

Stay lazy.

The LazyFPL Team.