Building Free Hit and Wildcard 33

The chips will be flying this week...

It only took one game for some mavericks out there.

But the real carnage began after Saturday’s Premier League slate.

Yes, that was enough time for some people to claim that one of the chip strategies “has won”, even though some weren’t even deployed – such as Wildcard 33, which we’ll discuss today, among other things.

1️⃣ You cannot claim which route performed better after half a gameweek
2️⃣ You can’t berate someone’s team without knowing its nuances

Anyway, the data clearly showed that people, once again, were overreacting:

Anyway, rather than drawing dumb conclusions from small sample sizes, let’s focus on improving our decision-making process and learning to work with data properly.

The chip season is still in full swing, and there are still so many moves we need to make.

Let’s do this:

Free Hit 33: You start with the obvious one (but you can let loose a bit)

Last week, I published a detailed Wildcard 32 analysis that discussed all the key players who will feature heavily in the Free Hit 33 team, as one of the perks of that strategy was to be prepared for what’s coming up this Saturday.

If you still haven’t had the chance to read it, I highly recommend doing so before you play your Free Hit this week.

I believe it gives you a good feel for all the viable picks you could use this week:

Step-by-step guide to building the Wildcard 32 draft

Alright, let’s build an exciting draft.

As last week, the backbone will be Manchester City players.

There are several ways to handle them, but given that one of the games is against Burnley and the sheer volume of attacking talent in Pep’s team, you want to chase that upside.

Another argument is that there are enough other defenders who:

• have a pretty solid attacking threat

• can deliver DEFCON 2-pointers

💡 It’s the current meta: defensive contributions stem not from defensive quality but from the volume of these actions, meaning Premier League defenders across the league table are achieving a high success rate. It also somewhat alters match-up analysis, as the defcon defender’s floor is now higher, even in tougher games.

A nice example of the current enshittification* of an FPL product.

*This term came to my mind as I recently read a great article by Nikola Vuković – subscribe to his newsletter for some nice analysis on investing and building in sport.

At the same time, this doesn’t mean I wouldn’t play a balanced 1 DEF - 2 ATT stack, as City’s clean sheet odds are highest in Double Gameweek 33. Despite Nico O’Reilly’s (£5.0m) potential injury, there are still players to choose from.

Marc Guéhi (£5.1m) is a boring and obvious choice, but for a very good reason.

Since he became City’s player in Gameweek 23:

• No other City player has more set-piece shots, and it’s not even close

• He averages 1.50 shots and 0.18 non-penalty xG per 90 minutes, which is simply amazing for a centre-back

• He’s heavily involved in the build-up with 69 passes per game, which is 3rd most, just behind Rodri and Bernardo Silva. He scores highly in all VAEP passing models (which measure how his actions increase the probability of scoring a goal and decrease the chance of conceding), and he can draw the ball forward with his runs – meaning he often plays a dangerous pass that leads to a shot.

Guehi is certainly an enough-EV play. The only instance I’d snub him is if his effective ownership (EO) is too high for your liking and you prefer to differentiate in this specific position (for example, when chasing in a mini-league).

In that case, Matheus Nunes (£5.3m) is there for the huge volume of final passes, but it comes at the cost of almost no goal threat and an even lower DEFCON hit rate.

Rayan Aït-Nouri (£5.7m) is riskier, but – when it comes to attacking threat – probably a better-performing version of Nunes. Let’s wait for more information on him later in the week.

💡 While we needed to play sensibly when building Wildcard 32, when it comes to a Free Hit, you can be more creative and adjust your aggression to suit your current needs. Of course, you can’t go overboard and pick differentials just for the sake of it, but a few novelty picks certainly won’t hurt.

There’s little disputing that the highest-upside City triple-up is Erling Haaland, Antoine Semenyo, and Nico O’Reilly. However, doubts about the young Englishman opened another route to a great Free Hit punt – Rayan Cherki (£6.3m).

Let’s face it – I will never find a better comparison for him than the one I used during the pre-season:

That’s the fact.

Now, when I look at his creative data, it’s even better than I’ve ever imagined…

He’s not shooting as much as he could from more advanced areas, which is a bit of a shame, given how amazing his striking technique is. But do you want to know why the volume is low?