🚨 BGW34: The FPL cheat sheet 🧠

⏰ Blank Gameweek 34’s deadline is Friday 24th April, 18:30 BST.

🚫 Man City, Chelsea, Bournemouth, Brighton, Burnley and Leeds will not play this gameweek.

👀 Most active managers will be using their Free Hit to navigate it, though plenty will use free transfers.

🤦 Chelsea have sacked Liam Rosenior. Calum McFarlane will take over as interim manager until the end of the season.

⬇️ Wolves and Burnley have been relegated.

⬆️ Coventry have been promoted to the Premier League.

🧤 Giorgi Mamardashvili will miss at least a fortnight. With Alisson expected to be out until Gameweek 35, it means Freddie Woodman (£3.9m) is likely to play against Crystal Palace this gameweek.

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Alright?

Just as a night of excessive alcohol consumption induces a hangover, so too does a gameweek of excessive fixture consumption induce a blank.

Double Gameweek 33 was debauched. Your ears are still ringing. The taste of FPL points still lingers on your lips (don’t ask how we know, we just do).

But now we must repent for our gluttony. The FPL Gods demand it, and so the teams that doubled last week will blank this week. It means seven games rather than the usual 10, and six fewer than last gameweek’s bloated schedule.

It’s a fixture detox. A boring glass of blank Berocca.

But that doesn’t mean we have to cut back on the points. Blank gameweeks are disruptive and challenging, but for the in-the-know manager, that means opportunity.

Blank Gameweek 34 has been served. We hope you’re thirsty.

Live score notifications are the lifeblood of an FPL manager’s weekend - particularly when watching the games live is either impossible or extortionately expensive (i.e. particularly if you live in the UK).

FotMob is our go-to live scores app. But calling it a live scores app is like calling Erling Haaland a kicker of footballs - it’s technically true, but it doesn’t come close to doing it justice.

Their latest feature is a line-up builder. Not as valuable to an FPL manager as, say, their live FPL points toggle, or real-time defensive contributions, but still a fun addition.

We used it to build a Free Hit team purely comprised of differentials:

Nice.

FotMob is totally free. When we got a new phone around Christmas, it was the first thing to get reinstalled. Click the button below to start using it.

Lazy summary: Avoid clashes, feel free to steal our draft as a starting point if you need one.

A lot of you will be playing your Free Hit - just like the Professor. If you’re not, don’t worry - we’ve got a section for you next.

Playing your Free Hit during a blank gameweek reduces the pool of viable options, which should make life a little easier (if a little less exciting).

Still, Blank Gameweek 34 presents a few intriguing challenges. Firstly, the league’s second-worst team (sorry, Burnley) isn’t playing, which rules out the “pick anyone playing Burnley” strategy we’ve come to lean on this season.

Secondly, the league’s first-and third-worst teams play one another. Wolves vs Spurs is hardly appetising from an FPL perspective.

The opportunity appears to be at Liverpool, Arsenal and Man United, but, whilst it might be hard to comprehend in the football-less sterility of a quiet Thursday night, clean sheets or goals will happen in every match this weekend.

Let’s look at an embarrassment-proof draft.

Should you play a 5-4-1?

There’s a stronger case than usual to back defenders over forwards this week. We don’t know about you, but we find it much easier to trust Arsenal’s defenders as a source of FPL points than their forwards.

The same applies to Liverpool, who are lacking a talismanic goalscorer, particularly with Hugo Ekitike injured. Two of the three best forwards this week (probably Igor Thiago, Ollie Watkins and Jarrod Bowen) play away from home against unpredictable defensive units.

Backing a 5-4-1 is incredibly hipster, and it doesn’t always make for nice football viewing. You might opt for a 4-4-2 or a 4-5-1 if you want to blunt the sharp extremities of five-at-the-back.

But it’s hard to find seven exciting attacking assets this week. The fixtures don’t volunteer them like they might’ve done if Burnley were in the mix, or if Wolves and Spurs had better opponents than each other.

A reminder to avoid clashes.

The observant amongst you will have noticed that there aren’t many clashes in the above team. Jordan Pickford clashes with Bowen, but he’d likely be benched in this scenario anyway.

Otherwise, this team gives us the maximum chance of scoring lots of FPL points, because our players aren’t forced to take them from one another.

Lazy summary: Make sure you have the popular players covered, particularly Bruno Fernandes. If you’re going to take a hit, don’t make it a one-gameweek stand.

If you don’t have a Free Hit this week, it’s probably because you played it in last week’s double. Regardless, you ought to be well prepared for Blank Gameweek 34.

Any moves you make should be aimed at covering the popular picks that Free Hitters in your mini-league might be backing.

Bruno Fernandes will be the most popular captain, so if you don’t have him, he ought to be your first port of call.

Gabriel, Virgil van Dijk and Ollie Watkins (the most transferred-in player this week) will also be popular - if not because of transfers in, then because they were already in a lot of teams to begin with.

The case for a points hit.

We usually don’t condone a -4 points hit for extra transfers. But in blank gameweeks, the maths is a little bit different.

If we’re removing a blanking player for a player with a fixture, we only need that new transfer to play 60 minutes, and suddenly that -4 becomes a -2. If they get DEFCON points, it’s break-even, and if they get even one attacking return, it’s pure profit.

Of course, there are no guarantees. Surprise benchings happen (we’re looking at you, João Pedro) and, even if your new player does play, he might get a booking and an early substitution. This is FPL, after all.

With that in mind, if you do want to take a hit this week, we’d recommend it’s for a player you want to keep for the remainder of the season. The risk of a one-gameweek stand is too significant, but if that player can reward your faith in him for the rest of the season, that feels like a move worth taking.

If you still have your Bench Boost.

Some of you will still have a Bench Boost, particularly if you used your Free Hit in Double Gameweek 33.

You ought to be targeting the likely Double Gameweek 36 (in which Man City and Crystal Palace will probably play twice).

Either you’ll still have a Wildcard, in which case you can shape your team around a Gameweek 36 Bench Boost that includes maximum doublers, or you’ll need to start saving free transfers so that you can adequately prepare for it with FTs alone.

If you’re in the latter camp, and you can roll a free transfer and still field 11 players this gameweek, it might be worthwhile.

Lazy summary: Beto, Salah and Mavropanos.

Remember, the strategy around differentials is heavily dependent on where you are in your mini-leagues. If you’re defending a lead, be very careful of differentials.

If you’re chasing down a rival, picking differentials is a high-risk tactic that probably won’t pay off, but gives you the best chance of closing a large points gap.

Picking a differential is lower risk if you’re on a Free Hit, because you’re not burning a free transfer to bring them in, and you don’t have to deal with having a differential in your team for the remainder of the season.

Here are three we’re looking at (and, not to be that newsletter, but our last three differential picks all scored in Double Gameweek 33. Just saying.)

Beto | FWD | 3.4% owned.

Beto is one of the most in-form forwards at the moment. If that feels weird to read, just imagine how weird it felt to write.

Four goals in three games and 32 points in that time is about as good as it gets for a £5.0m forward. He’s 10th for expected goal involvements (xGI) over the last six gameweeks, too. A visit to West Ham is hardly the plum fixture it was during the first half of the season, but it’s still a good chance to continue his run.

Mohamed Salah | MID | 15.3% owned.

Although 15% ownership wouldn’t usually qualify as a differential, it’s fair to assume that most of Salah’s owners are the abandoned ghosts that linger at the bottom of your mini-leagues, last acknowledged by a human in Gameweek 3.

Clearly, it has not been a good season for Salah. But a goal in their last game, and improving underlying stats (he’s 12th for xGI over the last six gameweeks) pairs well with a nice home fixture against Crystal Palace.

Konstantinos Mavropanos | DEF | 1.5% owned.

If FPL were won on the number of syllables you could squeeze into your team, West Ham’s Mavropanos would’ve surely been essential a long time ago.

The headline is that he’s scored three goals in the last four games, which is outrageous for a defender. He had a decent chance to score last gameweek, too. It appears that West Ham’s relegation battle is the perfect impetus for the Greek centre-back to channel his inner Gabriel, and he’s become emblematic of West Ham’s spirited resurgence in recent months.

A home game against Everton is a decent enough fixture for defenders. Just ignore the fact that we’ve also backed Beto in this section.

Lazy summary: There might be a double and blank gameweek in Gameweek 37. But it’s unlikely, and you shouldn’t change your plans to accommodate it yet.

There’s a high likelihood that Man City and Crystal Palace will both have a double gameweek in Gameweek 36. This is the conventional wisdom, as it stands.

But, because of some comments that Peter Drury made on a podcast with Gary Neville (yes, really), there’s now a tiny suspicion that, instead of a Man City/Crystal Palace double in Gameweek 36, it could be a Man City/Bournemouth double instead.

In that scenario, Crystal Palace would then double in Gameweek 37 whilst Bournemouth would blank.

It’s very confusing.

We should know for sure after the FA Cup game between Man City and Southampton on Saturday, and for now, this is nothing worth planning for. Proceed as normal until we hear otherwise (we’ll let you know because you had the decency to subscribe).

We’re merely highlighting the possibility so that you can’t sue us if it later comes to fruition.

Lazy summary: It’s Bruno Fernandes.

The captaincy is made easier this week by the fact that Erling Haaland, who might well be returning to a semblance of his former best, won’t play.

It leaves very few reliable options.

Bruno Fernandes is certainly one of them. He’ll play at home and, as an added bonus, it’ll be the last game of the gameweek, meaning if he does disappoint us, we won’t have to lament it for long.

No need to overthink this one, but if you’re the sort who will overthink anyway, Mohamed Salah is probably the best differential captain. How times change.

Lazy summary: Free Hit active.

The Prof’s team is far from set, which, given he’s on a Free Hit, isn’t a huge surprise. There’s something about unlimited transfers that really brings out the tinkerer in us all.

As with all of the Prof’s more significant team reveals, we’re blurring his team this week. If you’d like to see his final Free Hit team - and unlock a whole host of other benefits ahead of the run-in (including the new podcast), you can support the newsletter by upgrading to LazyFPL Premium.

We will say this much: Bruno Fernandes gets the armband.

🤝 If you’re playing your Free Hit, your balance of template stalwarts and cheeky differentials should reflect where you are in your mini-leagues. The happier you are with your league position, the fewer differentials you should pick.

💰 Those not on a Free Hit should use any free transfers to cover the most popular picks. Bruno Fernandes, given his expected captaincy popularity (xCP) feels like a must. If you can roll a transfer, do it.

🚨 Remember, it’s a Friday night deadline. Get your team locked in.

Hey, this could be nice. Seven mini-disappointments instead of the usual ten.

Next gameweek - Gameweek 35 - is a regular 10 fixture affair. The square. It starts on Friday evening, so we’ll be back in your inbox at the same time next week.

Stay lazy,

The LazyFPL Team.