FPL Gameweek 38 | How to finish with a flourish.

The Stuff You Should Know

🚨 Gameweek 38’s deadline is Sunday, 25th May, 14:30 BST. Another weird deadline.

🤕 Timber and Saliba will miss Gameweek 38 due to injury.

🩼 Guehi and Wharton will also miss Gameweek 38 with injury.

👀 Isak has the “opportunity” to play in Gameweek 38, but he isn’t a certainty.

🎁 Back by popular demand, our FPL Chips are now available. Achieved a top 250k rank this season? Commemorate it with a collectable poker chip.

Keep reading for The Professor’s final team reveal of the season.

Alright?

First things first, we’ll take this opportunity to say “cheers”.

We’ve done our utmost to send you something worth reading every gameweek this season, and we appreciate everyone who has obliged us.

Whether you’ve quietly enjoyed these emails during toilet breaks, responded to our polls, clicked on our ads, signed up for LazyFPL Premium or even sent us some mild-mannered abuse, we’re glad to have enjoyed this wacky season in your company.

Right then.

Make no mistake: Gameweek 38 might only last about 105 minutes, but the points count just as much as the ones you scored in Gameweek 1.

For some of you, it’s a final opportunity to make up ground. For others, it’s a bum-clenching defence of a slender lead. There’ll be more still who are fighting for nothing more than a fleeting shred of dignity in an otherwise undignifying campaign.

Mr Brightside’s sickeningly familiar riff starts playing. Someone (probably your obnoxious mini-league leader) fashions his tie into a headband. The dancefloor fills for a final time. Maybe destiny really is calling you.

Let’s find out with one last sing-along.

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Gameweek 38’s fixtures.

Our free Gameweek 38 strategy tool.

Summary for the Lazy: You’ll need to analyse your rival’s teams and play smart. We’ve built a free tool to help you.

Gameweek 38 strategy is different from other gameweeks because there are no repercussions. It’s a Free Hit mentality: We can buy players we wouldn’t ordinarily own, safe in the knowledge that we don’t have to deal with the tricky HR implications of dismissing them later on in the season.

Those defending a lead or overall rank position must block possible usurpers. Those looking to usurp are arguably in a more fun position, because they’re the ones who get to attack this final gameweek with a bit of gusto.

Regardless of your standing, you need to know the teams of the managers in your immediate orbit. Which players do you both own, and, crucially, where are the differences?

Option 1: Make a spreadsheet.

Like this one that The Professor made:

Option 2: Use the tool we built.

Just when you were staring down the barrel of spreadsheet despair, your friends at LazyFPL come to the rescue.

One of our premium community admins (shoutout to James) “whipped this up” in a day like it was no big deal. It’s raw but powerful, like Rasmus Hojlund, only useful.

Step 1: Enter your team ID. That’s the number in your FPL URL, shown below:

Step 2: Select your league:

Step 3: Marvel at the information.

You’ll be able to see the main threats and differentials between you and selected rivals.

The “F*ck it, it’s Gameweek 38” differentials.

Summary for the Lazy: Kevin De Bruyne, Brighton and The White Album.

We’ve just shared a tool that gives you insight into who your mini-league rivals own. Maybe your main FPL rival doesn’t own Mohamed Salah, so bringing him in and captaining him is a big differential play for you.

But the differentials below are based on top 10k ownership, which is a pretty good reflection of ownership amongst active managers. They might not be differentials for you, but they’re differentials in general.

Kevin De Bruyne - £9.6m

It’s his last game for Man City, but Kevin is more than just a vibes pick.

He’s fifth for expected goal involvements over the last six gameweeks, and might just be on penalties, given that Erling Haaland gave his last one to Omar Marmoush (who dutifully missed).

Away at Fulham, which is one of those fixtures that could be 0-0 or 5-5 depending on which Fulham and which Man City show up. They need a win, so don’t expect a second-string team.

Every Brighton Player

Pretty much all Brighton players are differentials at the moment, which is notable because they’re playing a Spurs team that will still be nursing a post-trophy hangover.

Here’s their top scorer, Brennan Johnson, on Friday.

Brighton - who could still theoretically qualify for European football next season - will see this fixture as an opportunity to maximise their chances. Danny Welbeck, with two returns from his last two games, is particularly tempting.

Ben White - £6.1m

He’s only owned by about 8 managers in the Top 10k, but having started Arsenal’s last three, the perma-tanned White is all the more likely to start against Southampton since William Saliba and Jurrien Timber were confirmed as out.

Often a goal threat, he hasn’t really done much by way of attacking stats since his return, but opportunities to change that don’t get much better than Southampton.

Morgan Gibbs-White - £6.5m

Continuing the White trend, Gibbs-White is quietly outscoring the likes of Antoine Semenyo, Eberechi Eze and Leandro Trossard this season, so it’s surprising he’s owned by only ~2% of active managers.

Nottingham Forest, who still have a slim chance of qualifying for the Champions League, will host a Chelsea team that has a better chance of qualifying for a coveted UCL spot. It is, in the words of every commentator that has ever existed, all to play for.

Not an easy fixture, but with three attacking returns from his last two games, Gibbs-White is in a great run of form.

Alfie Whiteman - £3.9m

Alfie Whiteman has not played this season, and barring some miracle, won’t play in Gameweek 38. He’s a Spurs goalkeeper.

He makes it into this section purely because he has “White” in his name. Don’t buy him.

Do more goals get scored on the final day?

Summary for the Lazy: Yes.

The data shows that the last gameweek of the season is more prone to goals than the average gameweek tally. As football fans, we already know this instinctively, but let’s have a look at Gameweek 38’s underlying stats since the 95/96 season to confirm it:

• 14.5% increase in goals per game

• 10.7% increase in games where both teams score

• 30.1% increase in over 3.5 goals

• 13.3% increase in home wins

• 18.2% decrease in draws

Why does this happen?

Who cares? It does. That’s all you need to know.

What does it mean for FPL managers?

The data suggests we should expect fewer clean sheets and more emphatic returns from our outfield players. But choosing players from teams with something to play for, who face teams that are on the proverbial beach, should increase your chances of an outsized Gameweek 38 points tally.

A classic 3-4-3 or 3-5-2 might also be on the cards. Defenders might not be the priority this Sunday.

Blimey, the sophistication of our analysis is sometimes bedazzling.

The best captain for Gameweek 38.

It’s another week where mini-league tactics will have a big impact on captaincy picks.

If we were on a Free Hit and had zero consideration for tactics, we’d probably pick Mohamed Salah at home to Crystal Palace. Safe and obvious. He’s the one you pick if you’re defending a lead or happy with your current position. The fact that he’s one attacking return away from a record, and Marc Guehi and Adam Wharton are ruled out, definitely helps his cause.

Jarrod Bowen is the most popular transfer in at the time of writing, and he’s a popular captaincy pick for those who need to do something rogue, but don’t want to go so rogue that they completely destroy their season. Away at Ipswich, in great form, will almost certainly start.

Kevin De Bruyne, Bukayo Saka and Evanilson are our favourite differential picks. These are for those of you who are desperate. We refer you once again to our FPL differential scale:

At 31k and with another consecutive top 100k finish surely already assured, The Prof would be forgiven for throwing caution to the wind and having some fun on the last day of the season…

But the only thing The Prof throws to the wind is irrationality, and making foolish decisions just because it’s the last gameweek is certainly irrational.

At the moment, he’s targeting Antoine Semenyo in place of a departing Eberechi Eze.

Mohamed Salah gets the armband.

There’s a big caveat this week. Every match starts simultaneously this gameweek, so we could theoretically get early team news on every team. Early news might influence his picks, particularly if he gets early news on Arsenal.

Here’s his team prior to making any transfers:

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, weekly pre-season emails from The Professor and invites to all of next season’s exclusive premium mini-leagues.

The key stats for Gameweek 38.

Other stuff we found interesting.

1. Jeremie Frimpong signs for Liverpool.

2. Brentford’s Nathan Collins is the only outfield player this season who has played every minute.

3. Chelsea will play in the Conference League final on Wednesday.

4. Jorgen Strand Larsen is a doubt for Sunday.

Remember, if you finish the season in style, our FPL chips are a nice way to reward yourself. Take a look at them here.

We’ll be switching into our off-season schedule of weekly emails that keep you up to speed with transfers, injuries, any other need-to-know team news, the Club World Cup and the build-up to Gameweek 1 of the 25/26 season.

Who’s excited?

Whether you’ve had a bad season or a great season, you’ve stuck it out, which is worth at least a self-congratulatory pint of your preferred liquid.

Enjoy the break and…

Stay lazy,

The LazyFPL Team.