Fantasy Premier League planning now crucial with blank and double gameweeks on the horizon

If you follow our twitter feed, you will know what we made a late switch last week, from Diego Costa to Ibra, following all the furore surrounding the Chelsea frontman. While the big Swede delivered again by getting himself on the scoresheet, a hat-trick for our vice-captain wasn’t rewarded as handsomely as it might have been. Diego Costa may add further insult to injury, if he’s recalled to the starting XI this weekend but overall we recorded green figures for GW21, in what turned out to be quite a high scoring round.

Experienced Fantasy Premier League managers know how important the upcoming period is, since the correct use of the wildcard and those precious bonus chips can really pay off in spades. Predicting when blank and double game weeks are likely to happen is absolutely critical, so that you can plan around them.

The EFL Cup final is likely to trigger the first bout of rearranged games, while teams progressing to the quarter-finals of the FA Cup are also likely to miss a gameweek.

Our intention is to keep transfers to a minimum during the upcoming period, while ensuring that we get 11 players on the pitch in each round, before playing the wildcard in the week before the first double gameweek is scheduled to take place.

GW22 FPL Transfer

Arsenal players obviously make plenty of appeal with their high goals expectancy but due to budget constraints we’re going to skip them and focus our attention elsewhere.

The 4 players that caught our attention ahead of GW22 are Henrikh Mikhtaryan, Romelu Lukaku, Matt Phillips and Fabio.

Mkhi played the full 90 minutes and was on corners against Liverpool, so it’s tempting to bring him in but we’ve decided to pass him over, since it might not be the best time to ‘triple-up’ on United players. The Red Devils are likely to have a blank gameweek soon, assuming they squeeze past Hull City in the EFL Cup semi-final.

Lukaku has a terrific set of fixtures approaching but there isn’t too much to choose between him and Álvaro Negredo this weekend, so we’ll probably look to bring in the big Belgian striker ahead of the next round of games.

Fabio could be an interesting differential now that Boro have added some addidional firepower, especially if manager Aitor Karanka sticks with a 3-man defence. He looks one to keep an eye on and could be a low budget defensive option if injuries hit.

We may be a bit late to the ‘Matt Phillips Party’ but his upcoming fixtures are just too good to ignore and the additional bonus is that West Bromwich Albion, like Everton, are not involved in the FA Cup. He comes in and just misses out on the vice-captaincy, which goes to Eden Hazard due to the possibility of him leading the line again if Costa starts on the bench.

Of all of our squad members, Zlatan Ibrahimović is the best ranked in terms of likely goals contribution, so he retains the armband.

Chris Brunt is an injury concern but is included in the provisional starting XI.

This is the perfect time to make up ground in all of those mini-leagues so don’t miss the opportunity!