🚨 GW27: The FPL cheat sheet 🧠

⏰ Gameweek 27’s deadline is Saturday, 21st February, 13:30 GMT ⏰

⛔️ Thomas Frank (Spurs) and Sean Dyche (Nottingham Forest) have both been sacked.

🤝 Igor Tudor takes over as caretaker manager at Spurs until the end of the season.

🔄 Vítor Pereira appointed Nottingham Forest manager.

🤕 Bruno Guimarães is expected to be out until mid-April.

👍 Pep Guardiola nodded when asked if the yellow-flagged Erling Haaland is “back fully fit”.

‼️ We’ve heard reports that managers who sync FPL with their calendars are seeing an 11:00am GMT deadline on Saturday. This is an error.

Alright?

In true FPL fashion, everyone’s Triple Captain did something he’s never done so far this season: Score fewer than 8 points across two consecutive games.

It’s another reminder - as if we needed one - that whilst you can agonise over underlying stats, clean sheet probabilities and expected minutes, sometimes Hugo Bueno will score his first ever Premier League goal and lay ruin to your best made plans.

But hey, at least our clubs can’t sack us.

Onwards to Gameweek 27, which, whilst it might not feel like it in the post-coital regret of Double Gameweek 26, is still just as important as its chunkier predecessor.

The fart at the funeral is Blank Gameweek 31, which looms, unobscured by a double gameweek now, on the not-so-distant horizon. If you’re not thinking about it yet, you probably should be.

We’ll cover that, and everything you need to know ahead of the weekend, throughout the rest of this toilet rag.

Long-time readers of LazyFPL will know that our “advice” tends to revolve around the moves other managers are making. That’s because the wisdom of the crowd is one of the most reliable ways to make good decisions in FPL.

We use a game called CrowdFPL to help us source that information. Here’s how it works:

1) Pick a 50/50 decision. Maybe you’re stuck between bringing in Cole Palmer vs Bryan Mbeumo ahead of Gameweek 27.

2) See who other managers are picking. Choose the one you prefer.

3) You get points if you’re right. What FPL manager doesn’t enjoy fictional points?

It’s a great tool for making those 50/50 calls, but it’s also fun to play. Best of all, it’s totally free. Click the button below to give it a try:

Lazy Summary: Surprisingly little, but injuries to Bruno Guimarães and Maxence Lacroix will be an inconvenience for some of you.

Aside from a Double Gameweek’s worth of Premier League action, we were treated to a set of standard-issue FA Cup fixtures, in which everything went pretty much as expected. By which we mean, every Premier League team that played a lower-league club progressed. Apart from Burnley.

There was also some European action. Newcastle thrashed Qarabağ 1-6 (Anthony Gordon scored four goals), Crystal Palace drew 1-1 away at Zrinjski Mostar, and Nottingham Forest beat Fenerbahçe 0-3 in Turkey.

If you want to know the gory details: line-ups, underlying stats and just about anything else about the games, just visit FotMob.

The injury room.

The big story is Bruno Guimarães, whose hamstring injury is expected to keep him out until mid-April. As the Premier League itself wrote last week, this doesn’t bode well for Newcastle. They’ve literally never won a Premier League game without him.

Maxence Lacroix was withdrawn in the 64th minute during Palace’s European fixture on Thursday. Glasner is concerned, saying it was a muscular issue and that muscular issues are “never good”.

Erling Haaland is also yellow-flagged with a knock at the time of sending, but Pep nodded in his Friday press conference when asked if he was “back fully fit”. We’ll assume he plays in Gameweek 27 unless we get definitive news to the contrary.

Other than that, it’s been an uncharacteristically uneventful week-and-a-half at the time of sending. Touch wood. Not that wood, ffs.

Lazy summary: You’ll probably need to use free transfers to navigate Blank Gameweek 31, which means thinking about it now is important.

As Newton’s seventh law of motion proves, for every double gameweek, there is an equal and opposite blank gameweek. There is no hiding from them.

Here’s a reminder of the schedule:

Double Gameweek 26 - Possible Triple Captain
Blank Gameweek 31 - Possible Free Hit
Double Gameweek 33 or 36 - Possible Bench Boost
Blank Gameweek 34 - Possible Free Hit

There are two blank gameweeks heading our way: 31 and 34.

Blank Gameweek 34 will be the biggest. So most good managers plan to use their Free Hit to navigate it.

If you’re in that camp, it means you’re going to have to handle Blank Gameweek 31 like our ancestors used to back in the old days: With nothing but free transfers and your own, fragile mind.

How to prepare for Blank Gameweek 31.

You have five free transfers between now and Blank Gameweek 31, plus whatever you already have in cold storage.

Arsenal and Wolves will definitely blank. Crystal Palace and Man City are “very likely” to blank in Gameweek 31, according to Ben Crellin, but this hasn’t been confirmed yet.

So, in reality, planning for Blank Gameweek 31 isn’t a huge headache, but it might require some telegraphing.

Here’s the non-idiot checklist:

✅ Keep Arsenal and Man City players for now.
✅ Use free transfers to remove any non-playing bench fodder.
✅ Save transfers where you can, for the time being.
✅ Think twice about bringing in Crystal Palace, Man City, Arsenal and Wolves players.

Lazy summary: It’s Cole Palmer if you own him, and João Pedro if you don’t.

You know a team is bad when FPL Towers feel the need to introduce a new shade to their fixture tracker.

Burnley’s away form is so mediocre, it’s unlocked a new Pantone.

Pedro hasn’t blanked in his last five games - three of them were double-digit returns. With ownership now over 45% (and only going one way), he’s not just in form, he’s a danger to non-owners.

But according to predictive models, bookies’ odds, expected minutes and just about every other measuring stick, Palmer is who you pick if you own him.

Why Palmer?

Palmer’s three penalties in his last two games won’t sustain. But penalties aside, his non-penalty expected goal involvement (NPxGI, for the acronym enthusiasts) is still the highest in the league over the last couple of games.

In other words, he’s getting open play opportunities, too.

He’s also more likely to play 90 minutes than Pedro, and enjoys the benefit of an extra point per goal and clean sheet in all.

Ultimately, if you can’t captain your in-form £10.6m midfielder at home against Burnley, when can you?

What about Erling Haaland?

Haaland will play Newcastle at home 150 minutes after the Chelsea game kicks-off. If Chelsea weren’t playing Burnley, the Norse God would likely be the best captaincy pick against a Guimarães-less side that has just stepped off the Ryanair from Azerbaijan.

But whilst he’s showing signs of a return to form (he has 4 returns from his last 3 games), his trickier fixture will probably be enough to warn off managers who have the luxury of picking between him and Chelsea assets.

The Professor is making two transfers this week. Steady on, Prof.

Jurriën David Norman Timber (yeah, those are his middle names) → Marcos Senesi

Eli Kroupi Jr → Igor Thiago

But he hasn’t made them yet, which is why the team below still features them both.

Erling Haaland gets the armband.

It represents the beginning of a tectonic shift towards various fixture swings and his preparation for Blank Gameweek 31.

He’ll be taking no further questions (unless you’re subscribed to LazyFPL Premium).

1) Only one doubling player (Gabriel) made it into the team of the week this week.

2) Oliver Glasner on whether he wants to remain at Crystal Palace until the end of the season: "Let's see."

3) Here’s a list of players who might be impacted by Ramadan, which started this week.

Gameweek 28 kicks off on Friday night if you’re in or around the GMT timezone, which means we’ll see you next Thursday. There’s an immature joke there, but you’d never catch us cracking one of those.

Stay lazy,

The LazyFPL Team.