🤐 GW30: the moves to make ✅

🚨 The stuff you should know 🚨

⏰ Gameweek 30’s deadline is Saturday 30th March, 11:00 GMT.

😐 It’s a regular, banal 10-fixture gameweek.

😍 Double Gameweek 34 has been confirmed, with Double Gameweek 37 also a near-certainty.

👀 Spurs will also blank in Gameweek 34.

🎮 FPL HQ launch Fantasy Challenge, a new game format.

Keep reading for a cracking Venn diagram.

Alright?

Let’s just acknowledge the elephant in the room, like these AI-generated humanoids are doing:

Blank Gameweek 29 was the worst gameweek in history. That’s official. The average score has never been lower.

It is yet another feather in the cap of a season that has been, for the majority of dedicated managers, an unrelenting procession of misery and despair. FPL at its very finest: the distilled, uncut, x-rated version.

But just like Commodus throwing a gold-drenched gladiatorial spectacle to appease the starving people of Rome, so too have our great overlords tossed the masses a small bone during this international break. We’ll talk about Fantasy Challenge in due course but, spoiler, it ain’t exactly men fighting to the death.

Besides that, there are more Double Gameweeks to discuss and the small matter of what the hell to do in Gameweek 30.

Let’s get this sorry show on the road.

A quick poll.

Gameweek 30’s fixtures.

The remaining fixtures this season.

The main man, Ben Crellin, has updated his spreadsheet. Someone sound the spreadsheet siren. When English people talk about a green and pleasant land, this spreadsheet is surely what they’re referring to:

Isn’t it beautiful?

Double Gameweek 34 is mostly a double, but it’s not a thoroughbred. The blotch in the DNA is Spurs, who will miss the gameweek entirely. In that sense, Gameweek 34 is a Dank Gameweek - both a Double and a Blank combined.

The teams doubling are:

Liverpool (ful, eve)
Arsenal (wol, CHE)
Bournemouth (avl, wol)
Crystal Palace (WHU, NEW)
Wolves (ARS, BOU)
Everton (NFO, LIV)
Sheffield United (BUR, mun)

So it’s not as exciting as it might sound.

Arsenal and Liverpool are the pick of the bunch, and I can see a Palace attacker picking up steam amongst the hipsters, but nothing about this Double Gameweek - other than, perhaps, Spurs’ blank - calls for a huge upheaval in strategy.

Double Gameweek 37

Whilst this hasn’t been confirmed by the official sources, it might as well be confirmed because Ben has decreed it so.

The teams that double here are:

Chelsea (nfo, bha)
Spurs (BUR, MCI)
Man City (ful, spurs)
Brighton (new, CHE)
Man United (ARS, NEW)
Newcastle (BHA, mun)

Chelsea, Man City and arguably Spurs jump out here. Newcastle could be interesting if their form picks up.

But again, it’s not exactly Luton and Sheffield United, is it?

A quick note on Chelsea and Spurs

Chelsea have played 27 games. Every other team has played 28 or 29.

Spurs have played 28 games, but they’ll miss Dank Gameweek 34.

It means both will have two Double Gameweeks before the season comes to an end. One of those will be in Double Gameweek 37: the other will be either Gameweek 35 (most likely) or Gameweek 36 (less likely).

Spurs’ double fixtures are hard, but they’ve only failed to score once this season, and that was, of course, last gameweek. Which doesn’t really count.

Chelsea’s fixtures are better, but still not that exciting. Nonetheless, owning their players from Gameweek 35 til the end of the season means you’ll get six fixtures for the price of four.

When to use your remaining chips.

The Professor has explained (by way of a voicenote to yours truly) that the best way to approach chip usage is as follows:

• Dead-end to Dank Gameweek 34.

• Wildcard out the excess, prepare for Double Gameweek 37.

• Bench Boost in Double Gameweek 37.

That doesn’t mean it’s right for you. You might have different chips, a different strategy or different end-of-season priorities. But it’s probably what a lot of good managers will be doing.

This tasty graphic from FPLMate illustrates your options nicely.

What is dead-ending?

A bit of FPL lingo for you now - a dialect virtually guaranteed to seduce the opposite sex within seconds. Luckily for us, the Premier League themselves have a whole page dedicated to explaining FPL glossary. Here’s what they say:

“Managers often “dead-end” their teams in the run-up to a Wildcard. This means targeting players who you would not want to own long-term, likely because they have a Double Gameweek or do not blank, who are then immediately sold on Wildcard.“

Truly the language of love.

Translation: we can bring in the likes of Eberechi Eze in Dank Gameweek 34 guilt-free.

Why Bench Boost in Double Gameweek 37 over Dank Gameweek 34?

The Bench Boost is at its most deadly when it’s combined with a recent Wildcard. For most managers, a 15-man Bench Boost in Double Gameweek 34 would mean wildcarding now, but that would leave them scrambling for Spurs and Chelsea players for their double-double between Gameweek 35 and 37.

The possible negative about Bench Boosting in Double Gameweek 37 is that, for some teams, the season might already be a foregone conclusion. And that means potential rotation. That can work both ways though: if your doubling players face teams already on the beach, the upside can be huge.

Gameweek 30.

Your moves will obviously depend on your team, and there’s a chance your team looks something like this:

Things probably aren’t as bad as they look.

Most of this international break’s injury concerns have been precautionary withdrawals, which is our favourite brand of injury concern. Bukayo Saka, Gabriel and Kevin De Bruyne are all hopeful of making a return according to most mainstream media outlets.

Trent Alexander-Arnold probably won’t be ready for this weekend, and it’s been radio silence on Darwin Nunez since his withdrawal against Man United in the FA Cup.

Mohamed Salah is the most popular transfer in, which, by financial necessity, means the yellow flagged De Bruyne is the most transferred out at the time of writing. The logic is simple: even if Kev does play, he still has to play the defensively impressive Arsenal.

But economic obligation isn’t the only reason to oust the Belgian: since his 7-pointer against Burnley in Gameweek 22, he’s only scored 19 points across seven games. Salah, meanwhile, will double in Double Gameweek 34 and will play Brighton (H), Sheffield United (H), Man United (A) and Crystal Palace (H) before then.

So yes, stockpiling Liverpool and Chelsea players feels sensible this week, starting with the Egyptian King if you’re without.

Fantasy Challenge.

We won’t spend long on this, there’s actual FPL to take care of.

Nonetheless, it would be remiss of us not to at least doth the proverbial cap to FPL’s newest concubine: Fantasy Challenge.

What is Fantasy Challenge?

Last week we talked about DFS - Daily Fantasy Sports. Here’s the proof:

Fantasy Challenge is basically this, but each week there’ll be a new restrictive challenge for participants to overcome (like limited budget, only left-footed players or only players that have been mentioned in LazyFPL, for example).

What are the rules?

The full rules are here, but in short, you get an unlimited budget every gameweek to build the optimal team. You can pick a maximum of five players from any given team, and you can enter a team so long as there are at least three clubs still to play in a gameweek. You also get unlimited transfers during the gameweek too, so long as both incoming and outgoing players haven’t played yet.

Are there loopholes?

Heck yes. The fact you get unlimited transfers during the gameweek itself means you can manipulate automatic subs to your advantage, like so:

What do I get in return for this labour?

Every time you enter a team your name gets put into a raffle for a trip to New York, and there are some pretty mediocre prizes on offer each week too, like t-shirts and footballs.

Our verdict

Who gives a toss what we think? If this format has you salivating, go for it.

Personally, I already get my weekly dose of misery from my main FPL team, without having to wrestle with different deadlines, mid-gameweek transfers and novelty rules. Different strokes or something.

The Professor’s Team.

The Professor is bringing in Mohamed Salah and removing Kevin De Bruyne.

Notably, he’s also benching Bukayo Saka who faces Man City.

Salah gets the armband. Current rank: 297k.

His team below is built with MyTeam, Fantasy Football Hub’s planning tool. It’s one of an arsenal of tools Hub offers that only exist to help FPL managers score more points. Try it here and you’ll be helping us out too.

The best captain for Gameweek 30.

It’s Mohamed Salah.

Cole Palmer presents an intriguing differential option if you’re really trying to gain ground, and the ever-present temptation of Erling Haaland continues to loom large.

But Salah at home to Brighton is too good to miss. The Egyptian has scored 28 FPL points in his last 165 minutes of Premier League football, and remains the second-highest scoring midfielder despite missing most of 2024.

The key stats for Gameweek 30.

Other stuff we found interesting.

• Next week we’re going to start including regular differentials as standard, given how close we’re getting to the end of the season.

• This beautiful Venn diagram from Reddit user u/cguinesstout:

  

Okay, we’ll be back on Monday evening ahead of Gameweek 31. No rest for the wicked and all that.

Until then, keep an eye on the pressers and stay lazy.

The LazyFPL Team.