🧠 GW24: more doubles announced 👀

🚨 The stuff you should know 🚨

⏰ Gameweek 24’s deadline is Saturday 10th February, 11:00 GMT.

👀 Double Gameweek 28 confirmed: Bournemouth and Luton play twice.

✅ Liverpool’s double in DGW25 also confirmed.

👌 South Korea are out of the Asian Cup, and Son has trained with Spurs.

🚑 Gordon is “unlikely” to play against Forest this weekend (The Athletic)

Keep reading to learn what a chipster is.

Alright?

Fair warning: this newsletter is mostly (though not exclusively) about chip strategy.

Not the potato-sort. This isn’t a newsletter about whether it’s better to fry, grill or oven bake.

It’s a newsletter about when to play your Triple Captain, Bench Boost, Free Hit and second Wildcard.

Every transfer decision you make should be coherent with the chip strategy you’ve landed on, so as much as there might be some disappointment about a lack of specific player recommendations, it doesn’t make FPL-sense to talk about players in isolation at the moment.

Their value is inextricably linked to how many fixtures they’ve got left and when they play ‘em. The best thing we can do for your team right now is to talk about how to use your chips to maximise that value.

Roll up your sleeves, attempt (and fail) to do that neck-crack thing you see in films and exhale for dramatic effect.

We’re going in.

The sponsor that never was.

This week we were supposed to have a newsletter sponsor which, to be transparent, we would’ve earned money from.

But the copy we had to include was totally minging, so we sacked if off.

This is just a reminder that we’ll always try to work with ad partners that we think you’ll be genuinely interested in.

On with the newsletter.

Gameweek 24’s fixtures.

What the top managers are doing this week.

It’s all about Liverpool and Man City, who both play twice in Double Gameweek 25.

Gameweek 24 is all about getting your team in shape for that. It’s little surprise, then, that four of the top six transfers IN this week play for one of those two sides.

Despite massively over-performing recently, Diogo Jota and Phil Foden are very popular, and you’ll probably want both in your team by the Double Gameweek 25 deadline.

Double trouble.

Double Gameweek 28 has been confirmed, and considering the doubling teams are Bournemouth and Luton, it’s remarkably juicy.

Luton will play Crystal Palace away and Bournemouth away. As has always been the case this season, we can probably live without Luton players in Double Gameweek 28.

But Bournemouth will play Sheffield United at home and Luton at home. Yes: there will be points.

Here’s what we know:

• you’re probably going to want at least two Bournemouth players for those fixtures.

• one of those players will be Dominic Solanke if he stays fit.

It’s probably a little too soon to get into the pros and cons of the other Bournemouth options. Their attacking midfielders are a merry-go-round of early substitutions, unexpected rests and patchy form. Their defenders are sturdy enough but offer little attacking threat.

But time is an underrated assistant manager, and we’ll consult with her in due course.

__

Meanwhile, Liverpool’s double in Gameweek 25 has been confirmed. They’ll play Brentford away and Luton at home. This from Ben Crellin:

Are you a Chipster?

They say that the particular order of a shuffled deck of cards is so mathematically improbable that it has never - and will never - be shuffled into existence again.

I don’t know whether that’s true or not, and just like every assertion in these newsletters, I’m too lazy to verify it. Still, it’s a convenient metaphor for the near-infinite moves you can make between now and the end of the season.

There are three big variables that make your chip strategy unique:

1) what your team looks like now.
2) the chips you have left.
3) your current rank or mini-league position and where you aspire to finish.

But a plethora of other micro-variables can also play their part in exactly when you pull the trigger on each of your remaining chips. These include, but are not limited to:

• how much you’ve drank the night before a Double or Blank Gameweek.

• whether you’ve had a dream about any of your players hauling.

• whether the universe has given you a sign. Perhaps you get cut-up on the roundabout by a car that has the letters “TC” in the number plate, or maybe your morning poo looks remarkably like Alejandro Garnacho.

• xVibes.

Like any FPL decision, when to play your chips is up to you and you alone, but there will be conventional strategies that the majority of competent, engaged managers adhere to. Those who go against them - who bend conventions and break the mould - are called chipsters (not officially, but it’s our name for them).

Let’s take a moment to talk about the conventional chip strategies this season.

Chunky, skin-on or curly?

We’ve tried to distill the often complex and brain-aching debate around this season’s chip strategy into four digestible facts about each chip:

1) If he stays fit, using the Triple Captain on Erling Haaland in Double Gameweek 25 will be the conventional move.

2) Double Gameweek 37 (likely the biggest Double Gameweek of the season) will almost certainly be the most popular target for the Bench Boost.

3) The second Wildcard will most likely be used in either Gameweek 30 (after Blank Gameweek 29) or Gameweek 36 (to prepare for the Double Gameweek 37 Bench Boost).

4) The Free Hit will most commonly be used in Blank Gameweek 29 or Double/Blank (Dank) Gameweek 34.

The chip debate.

And so two schools of thought - expertly outlined and analysed by The Professor in last night’s Premium newsletter - have emerged.

They are united in their stance on the Triple Captain and Bench Boost, but divided by their stance on the second Wildcard and the Free Hit.

The first school says you should navigate Blank Gameweek 29 - this season’s biggest banana skin - by using free transfers and points hits. By Wildcarding the gameweek after (Gameweek 30), you can effectively reset your team ahead of the run-in. That means you’ll be armed with a Free Hit for Dank Gameweek 34, in which a few teams will likely blank and a few others will likely double.

The second school says you should just use your Free Hit in Gameweek 29, which means you don’t have to spaff free transfers on preparing for it. That’ll mean you won’t theoretically need your Wildcard until much later, where it can be used to build the ultimate Bench Boosting team ahead of Double Gameweek 37.

There is no right answer here. Some managers already have plenty of Villa, Spurs and Brentford players, and are confident they can field a decent enough Blank Gameweek 29 team without the need for a Free Hit.

Others will be a long way from fielding a half-decent team in Blank Gameweek 29 and will probably need some chip intervention.

Luckily, you don’t need to make a decision yet. Just bring in a Man City or a Liverpool player.

The best captain for Gameweek 24.

Erling Haaland at home to Everton.

The bookies like him and he’ll start.

The key stats.

Here are the key stats for Gameweek 24.

The Professor’s team.

The Prof managed (yet another) green arrow last week, albeit a small one.

Current rank: 281k.

Current plans (two free transfers):

Pedro Porro -> Trent Alexander-Arnold
Ollie Watkins -> Darwin Nunez

Captain: Erling Haaland.

Here’s what his team looks like, courtesy of Fantasy Football Hub’s MyTeam.

Fancy trying MyTeam? Fantasy Football Hub are running a 7-day free trial, with 30% off after that. It’s a beast. Try it here and you’ll be helping us out too.

Other stuff we found interesting.

• One of our OG Premium members, Carole, has her birthday today. Happy birthday Carole.

• Eberechi Eze is expected to be out for between 2-3 weeks with a hamstring injury.

• Please reply to this poll:

Big one next week. See you at the same time? Nice one.

Until then, stay lazy.

The LazyFPL Team.