Building a Gameweek 6 wildcard is a bit complicated.
But after the 3-week international break, no one thought it would be easy, right?
It’s not just the yellow flags signalling more or less serious injuries. It also feels like a restart, and we don’t really know what impact it will have on teams or which managers did their homework better than others.
We’ll pick up those things on the go.
The way I see it, we continue with the safe approach – sensible draft, good structure, and aim to save some FTs for the Christmas period that begins in Gameweek 12 (there’s also another IB after GW10). It’s also when much of the noise finally turns into a signal.
It’s annoying that I need to start writing this without information from press conferences, so where needed I’ll add a brief “edit” section.
Arsenal: What now?
Let’s start with the no-brainers and gradually work towards the harder calls.
Arsenal are both straightforward and tricky.
Straightforward in that you want their defensive double-up and, in most cases, a full stack that probably involves Bukayo Saka. Tricky because of injuries, squad depth, and potential ripple effects on other picks.
The best fixture runs according to the Solio Analytics model, ranked by expected goal difference
There’s an Ezri Konsa problem.
The £4.6m centre-back left the England team early, reportedly after picking up a knock rather than a serious injury. Still, there’s some uncertainty, given that William Saliba is expected back sometime in November, and Cristhian Mosquera, Piero Hincapié, Ben White, and Jurriën Timber all trained over the international break, so there’s no need to rush Konsa back.
Also, Arteta might not provide enough info during the presser. GW7 wildcarders will have a much clearer picture of the current state of things, but GW6 wildcarders won’t have this luxury.
Even if you’re confident Konsa will start, do you want to use a precious free transfer on him just before the busy Christmas period?
This narrows the pool of viable options to David Raya, Gabriel, and Riccardo Calafiori:
🔴 David Raya (£6.1m): Oh, man. You know I’m not a fan of paying that much for the lowest-upside position, but in FPL you simply have to adapt.
And when your options are limited, buying a safe way into Arsenal’s defence is fine. He’s also a bit of insurance if something happens with your ARS defenders in terms of minutes.
🔴 Gabriel (£8m): Again, you’re buying security, but it has a hefty price tag.
When you’re considering multiple drafts, or assessing whether buying Gabriel means too much sacrifice elsewhere, you should consider whether there are other routes to points outside clean sheets.
Gabriel’s points distribution according to the FPL Copilot model
So far, he’s averaging 1 shot per game: 2 of them were poor attempts outside the box and 3 from set pieces, all pretty dangerous. Arsenal are ranked 9th for set-piece xG so far, and Havertz, Konsa, and Calafiori all have more shots from corners.
That might improve gradually, and he remains a frequent target from other set pieces, but I’d ideally want a little more dominance going forward for £8 million.
Still, he’s a fine pick if you can build a team you like around him.
If not, then there’s…
🔴 Riccardo Calafiori (£5.7m): The day may come when he’s suddenly rested in the league.
However, he’s playing well, started all 5 games with an average of 84 minutes per match, and provides proper value for Arsenal – aerially, in the first phase of the build-up, with his carrying, and as a threat in the final third of the pitch, which is something we, FPL managers, like very much.
Calafiori averages 1.50 shots, 0.14 xG, and 0.13 xA per 90 (80+ percentiles for his position), and plays for the best defence in the world.
He allows you to forget about DEFCONs for a bit.
💡 I’d understand the temptation with Timber, but I don’t think you can go there in the current landscape.
It’s a spot where you’re exposing yourself to potential problems.
One important skill in FPL is intentionally avoiding those difficult spots.
It sounds boring, but it makes the game more fun in the end, because you spend your mental capacity attacking the upside rather than constantly solving issues.
As for Bukayo Saka (£9.6m), now that Arsenal has Tzolis’ creativity and Odegaard in the number ten position, we’ve been watching an entirely different Saka from last season: he’s doing very little creating in the final third, but he basically lives in the box, receiving extremely close to goal and generating a high volume of great shots.
In that area, he has Haaland-esque numbers not only in surface-level expected metrics but also in more advanced ones.
An extremely interesting pick right now.
Annoyingly, Tzolis is out now, and Rice and Havertz are reportedly injured too, so the dynamics will be a bit different and Saka’s penalty share might be lower.
But I don’t think that’s enough to suddenly snub him.
Erling Haaland: There are things you should not overthink
I can’t find a single sensible argument for leaving him out of the Wildcard 6 draft.
Having someone you can captain in most gameweeks without second-guessing yourself is huge. And if you do captain him enough, who cares that he costs £15.5m, especially when this season’s pricing doesn’t force a fight for every remaining bit of budget.
There are too many low-priced, high-performing picks at every position.
This is simply a work of art:
Perhaps the more interesting discussion is whether to include someone else from that City team. From a game-theory point of view, if you’re bullish on a player enough to captain him that often, you believe he’ll get goals and that other players will be involved. This creates a nice synergy within your team.
Unfortunately, it’s a classic xMins problem, and similar to what I just described in those Timber paragraphs. City have a clean bill of health in midfield. Well, almost, as Antoine Semenyo (£8.4m) withdrew from the Ghana squad, but it shouldn’t be a major issue.
With Doku back, the squad is crammed again. Semenyo, Doku, Ndiaye, Cherki, Foden (soon back after serving his ban)… Enzo Fernández and Elliot Anderson are also options. If I had to pick one, it would be Enzo, but is he a top 5 wildcard MID pick? Probably not.
It’s all too Haaland-centric and uncertain.
If we ignore that weird Sunderland game, the defence works okay-ish, and they create solid set-piece shots, so I wouldn’t be against Marc Guéhi (£6.0m) in isolation. He won’t make today’s final draft, though, as there are simply too many cheaper (£5 million…) DEFs with great value.
João Pedro problem
One of the biggest puzzles when building a wildcard.
As of now, we still don’t know how serious his injury is.
He might be back for GW6, but it wouldn’t be a surprise if he sits that one out. He might also be back as soon as GW7. And you likely want him when this happens, even with somewhat xMins upon his return.
Because he’s on an 8-month run of amazing performances, still in 64.4% of teams, and with the following run of fixtures:
I know we’re talking about just 5 Premier League games, but the Brazilian is among the league’s best and most influential players.
I’ll happily use the word ‘dominant’ here.