FPL Gameweek 36 | Everything you need to know.

The Stuff You Should Know

🚨 Gameweek 36’s deadline is Saturday, 10th May, 13:30 BST.

✅ Spurs vs Aston Villa has been moved to Friday, 16th May - which keeps it within Gameweek 37.

🏆 Man United, Spurs and Chelsea reach European finals. Arsenal are out of the UCL.

📢 If we get pre-deadline team news, it’s posted on the LazyFPL Premium Broadcast WhatsApp group immediately, saving you from having to search it out yourself. Join LazyFPL Premium and get the link to join in the welcome email.

Keep reading to find out what to do if Erling Haaland is a confirmed starter this week.

Alright?

If the season is a boxing match, we’re entering the final round. Eyes are swollen, lips are bloodied, and there’s a high probability that we’re all concussed from the psychological pounding that owning Cole Palmer since February has delivered.

But plenty of fights are won and lost in their final moments, and we mustn’t drop our hands yet. There are still body blows to endure from picking the wrong captain, watching our players getting unexpectedly rested and losing clean sheets in the sixth minute of stoppage time.

If you think you’re finished yet, think again.

Put ‘em up: Gameweek 36 has entered the ring.

Today's menu 🍔

• Gameweek 36's Fixtures

• Teams to focus on

• Under the radar players

• Erling Haaland's return

• If you've still got chips...

• The best captain

• The Professor's plans

• The key stats

• Other stuff we found interesting

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Gameweek 36’s fixtures.

The teams to focus on for the run-in.

Summary for the Lazy: Brentford, Man City and Bournemouth.

There are three ingredients we love in an end-of-season cocktail: form, fixtures, and a garnish of something to play for. Delicious. Apparently, you can order a pitcher of it in Spoons.

Brentford, Man City and Bournemouth have all three of these.

Brentford: Ipswich (A), Fulham (H), Wolves (A)

Man City: Southampton (A), Bournemouth (H), Fulham (A)

Bournemouth: Aston Villa (H), Man City (A) - just days after the FA Cup Final, Leicester (H)

We’re not getting any additional doubles or blanks this season, but if we pretended for a second that Gameweek 36, 37 and 38 were rolled into a Triple Gameweek, it’d be these three teams that we’d be advising you to stack up on.

Under-the-radar players to consider for the run-in.

Summary for the Lazy: Wissa, Haaland and Bournemouth attackers.

Right, so we’ve got the teams. Who do we like from them?

Brentford:

Fun fact: Yoanne Wissa has scored just one fewer goal this season than Bryan Mbeumo, despite not being on penalties and playing 500 fewer minutes.

Here are some more fun facts: He’s only blanked twice since Gameweek 26 and has 34 points from his last four games.

Mbeumo is a good pick and he ought to be in your team, but Wissa is still under 20% owned (currently 17.9%) and is outperforming his colleague.

Man City:

At Man City, it’s all eyes on Erling Haaland’s return. The possibility of a start in Gameweek 36 (against Southampton) begs three questions for FPL managers:

1) Do you sell Omar Marmoush?

2) Do you buy Erling Haaland?

3) How do you free up those funds?

Calm down, dear: we’ll answer all three of these questions in a later section.

Bournemouth:

Remember that phase when everyone owned every Bournemouth attacker? My Nan owned Dango Ouattara and she doesn’t even play FPL.

Well, managers have been quiet-quitting them since then, and suddenly none of them are particularly popular. What’s that smell? Oh yeah, it’s the sickly sweet stench of opportunity. Get a load of these ownership stats:

Justin Kluivert: 11.2%
Dango Ouattara: 1.7%
Antoine Semenyo: 7.2%
Evanilson: 3.7%

All differentials. All fighting for something.

We particularly like Evanilson, who must feel hard done by that his ownership isn’t higher. He’s on a “dry spell” for his standards, and he still has six returns in his last eight fixtures.

The big question: Erling Haaland’s return.

We don’t know if Haaland will be back in time for the Southampton game. He played 0 minutes in Gameweek 35, but he was in the squad, which suggests he might’ve theoretically played if Pep had considered it necessary.

As things stand, we’d advise against taking the risk on him. Unless we get clarification that he’s starting (via a leak or, far less likely, comments from Pep), you might spend £14.8m on a player who doesn’t play.

But let’s imagine that we get news that Haaland is definitely starting against Southampton. Just indulge us for a second…

Q: Do you buy him?

Summary for the Lazy: All eyes on news or a team leak, but he’s not a bad buy.

He’s not for everyone, Erling. Those of you who read last week’s newsletter will remember our FPL risk-taking scale, which essentially makes the case that the better you’re doing, the fewer risks you should take.

Haaland is a risk. He costs a lot of money and he might do very little.

But still, we expect a lot of top managers will pull the trigger if news comes out that he starts against Southampton, partly because our own ecosystem of top managers plans to do exactly that.

He’s probably our differential of choice for the remaining three gameweeks, providing he starts them all.

Do you get rid of Omar Marmoush?

Summary for the Lazy: If Haaland starts, Marmoush is an easy transfer out.

Marmoush isn’t necessarily a like-for-like replacement for Haaland. He regularly plays on the wings, even in Haaland’s absence, and scored a hat-trick earlier in Gameweek 25 with Haaland very much still on the pitch.

Sorry, but there is a but. And not the good type of butt (water butts, obviously - what were you thinking of?). Marmoush has gone from Man City’s new talisman to a peripheral threat. His last two games have seen a combined expected goal involvement of just 0.58, and many attribute that to him being consigned to the wings.

It’s easy to imagine a line-up without him, where Haaland is flanked by Jeremy Doku and Savinho, for example, with Kevin De Bruyne playing behind them.

If we knew Haaland was starting, we’d suggest that Marmoush is the obvious player to make way.

Q: How do you free up funds for Haaland?

Summary for the Lazy: Getting rid of Salah would be the only option for many of you.

Just like that friend you’ve got whose parents still pay their rent, FPL managers haven’t really had to worry about money in recent months. With Cole Palmer out of form, Haaland out of action and De Bruyne an apparently decrepit pensioner, the template team is “Mohamed Salah + whoever you fancy”.

If you decide you want Haaland, that’ll have to change. Compromises will have to be made. The severity of those compromises will hinge on how much you have in the bank.

The most obvious compromise - perhaps because it’ll be the only option for many - is to get rid of the best-performing FPL asset of all time.

Salah’s run of Arsenal (H), Brighton (A) and Crystal Palace (H) could be riddled with rotation, both of him and key team members that facilitate his hauls.

If the choice is Haaland vs Salah, a differential, bold but potentially profitable play is to go with the Norse God. He has the fixtures and he plays for a team with more at stake.

If you’ve still got chips.

Here’s a brief guide to using your chips between now and the end of the season. With no doubles, a lot of this will come down to luck and gut - two things we generally disdain around here. Still, there are ways you can maximise your chances of success as outlined below:

__

🔱 Triple Captain

🔥 Best Option: Haaland vs Southampton (Gameweek 36 — if confirmed as starting)

✅ Safe Option: Mo Salah vs Crystal Palace (Gameweek 38)

__

🪑 Bench Boost

🔥 Best Option: When your bench has great fixtures

✅ Safe Option: When your bench has great fixtures (Trust your fixture tracker!)

__

🧠 Assistant Manager (Hits Table Bonus)

🔥 Best Option: Right now! (West Ham, West Ham, Manchester United)

✅ Safe Option: Right now! (Manchester City x3)

__

🆓 Free Hit

🔥 Best Option: Gameweek 38 (Go bold with differentials to chase the lead)

✅ Safe Option: Gameweek 38 (Stick with high ownership players to protect your rank)

The best captain for Gameweek 36.

The CAPS (Captain Anyone Playing Southampton) rule will be popular this week, but as is often the case with Man City, it comes down to who actually starts.

Omar Marmoush, Kevin De Bruyne (who is the most transferred-in player this week, btw) and Erling Haaland (if he starts) will all be popular picks. But the existence of doubt is enough to put us off sticking our flag in any one of them, unless/until we have clarity over who starts and who doesn’t. You just never know with Pep.

Bryan Mbeumo visits Ipswich, and given his 43.5% ownership, we’d expect him to be amongst the most popular options this gameweek.

Meanwhile, Mohamed Salah - a regular in these parts - plays Arsenal, so he isn’t being given as much consideration as usual. Arsenal have conceded in four of their last five, so they definitely aren’t infallible, but Salah only has two attacking returns from his last six, which doesn’t help his cause.

Our verdict:

If he starts, Erling Haaland gets our vote.

If he doesn’t - or we’re not sure - Bryan Mbeumo is the safe option.

Looking for a differential captain? It’s got to be Yoanne Wissa.

Another green arrow in Gameweek 35 continued The Prof’s strong finish to the season, putting him at 39k overall.

His transfer and captaincy decisions come down to the Erling Haaland conundrum. In his most recent newsletter, he stated that, should we get news on the Norse God, he would be willing to take a -4 to bring him in and captain him.

Alexander Isak would probs get the boot.

As it stands, Bryan Mbeumo is captain and he’s rolling a transfer.

Here’s his team at the time of sending:

If you want to be in on his moves as they happen, and the moves of our other experts, you can upgrade to LazyFPL Premium for a fiver a month. It’ll give you access to our WhatsApp community, two extra weekly emails, exclusive mini-leagues and loads more.

The key stats for Gameweek 36.

Other stuff we found interesting.

1. Trent Alexander-Arnold will leave Liverpool at the end of the season.

2. Conor Bradley “will start” on Sunday - Slot.

3. James Maddison is expected to be out for up to three months, so he may miss next season’s pre-season.

4. Youri Tielemans likely to miss the rest of the season.

5. Cole Palmer’s goal in Gameweek 35 was his first since January.

The rescheduled Villa vs Spurs fixture actually moves the Gameweek 37 deadline to 18:00 on Friday. So we’ll be back in your inbox on Thursday.

Stay lazy,

The LazyFPL Team.