Wildcard 35 Guide: How to (sensibly) differentiate in the last four gameweeks?

Mixing the template with a creativity

New life goal unlocked. I want my content to be as exciting as PSG vs Bayern last night. I mean, this was exclusive stuff! Quite literally, I was on my feet at times during the game.

Anyway, the chip season continues, and two things are clear.

Number one, the Premier League rejected Manchester City’s proposal to move the Bournemouth game to Gameweek 36, so there are no more unanswered questions about fixtures:

The Premier League have also confirmed that City’s visit to Bournemouth and Chelsea’s home match against Spurs will remain in Gameweek 37. No more blanks this season.

Number two, it’s the last big opportunity for a wildcard.

It’s an exciting part of the season when you know how far you are from completing your rank and/or mini-league goals, and what risks you need to take. That means it’s impossible to build a single draft (the best draft, as they say) that suits everyone’s needs.

Also, your selection is heavily dictated by two factors: when you play, you Bench Boost (those two chips usually go hand in hand), and how many FTs you have on a scale from 1 to 5.

This article can provide a sensible, signal-not-noise analysis of players and teams, giving you all the important information you need to work with.

City & Arsenal: You can gain an edge by being boring sometimes

The happiest people are often those who know how to find joy in the ordinary.

Wildcard 35 gives you the chance to go for the full dose of ordinary while gaining a proper edge over the rest of the field – loading up on players from two elite teams battling for the Premier League title.

Plus, you can properly load up on Palace if you wish, but let’s discuss that later…

There’s a large group of managers who wildcarded in Gameweek 32 and will struggle to field all the City, Arsenal, and Crystal Palace players due to a lack of free transfers, so there’s an edge even with template picks.

In the top 100k rank group, 85.2% of managers have already used their second wildcard.

In the 100-200k, it’s 80.6%.

In the 200-300k, it’s 73.5%.

In the 300-400k, it’s 74%.

In the 400-500k, it’s 70%.

These figures are from LiveFPL.net. Not an ad, just appreciating the best fantasy tool that exists.

Most use it each week, but I’m more than happy to make that shout-out.

Manchester City’s player pool is straightforward. Just pick 3 from:

• Erling Haaland (£14.5m)

• Antoine Semenyo (£8.2m)

• Rayan Cherki (£6.4m)

• Nico O’Reilly (£5.1m)

… depending on whether you prefer a 3x ATT or a 2x ATT/1x DEF structure.

Not only does Cherki create an absurd volume of passes that lead directly to a shot, but he also started to shoot in the box more often… (source: theanalyst.com)

With just four gameweeks left, the right approach is to go for the maximum upside those players offer, rather than trying to pick City’s differentials.

It might be tempting to go for someone like Jérémy Doku, but I feel you’re leaving EV on the table. The edge is in not doing it.

💡 If you need to, you can always differentiate elsewhere in your draft.

Shield yourself with players who can go big at any time. The season can come down to goal difference, and they are certainly capable of scoring with Everton, Crystal Palace, Brentford, Bournemouth, and Aston Villa coming up next.

With Arsenal, being at least partly boring is a sensible strategy.

Including Gabriel Magalhães (£7.2m) in the wildcard draft is non-negotiable. I struggle to find a single reason not to do it, so I’ll just throw some basic numbers:

Across the season, Arsenal have conceded just 0.75 xG per game. In the world’s most competitive league, that’s frankly absurd. When it comes to total xG conceded, Manchester City, Arsenal’s closest competitor, has allowed 11 more expected goals so far.

When a TV presenter says “this was a 100% chance”, they often mean something like a 0.30 xG chance. To put it into perspective, Arsenal have allowed 37 fewer of those chances.

The Gunners have already scored 22 goals from set-pieces (and are 2nd for sp xG), three more than Manchester United. Gabriel is the most frequent recipient and the biggest goal threat among their defenders overall.

source: Scout Lab

When you own Gabriel, you’re betting that the Gunners will keep a few clean sheets.

But if he’s your only piece of their defence, David Raya is always a rank threat to you because of his 34.0% ownership and likely a massive effective ownership around your rank.

And because Jurriën Timber (£6.1m) is still not fit, Saliba’s lack of the final product, and uncertainty over minutes with other defenders, Gabriel & Raya double-up has a lot of merit.

The last piece of the puzzle is where it gets interesting.

You can double down on the set-piece threat with Declan Rice (£7.2m). Even though he averages just 0.85 shots per 90 minutes over the last fifteen games, he adds solid open-play creativity and DEFCON numbers, so it’s hardly a bad move when in a 3-man stack.

A hardly exciting pick, but a good price point to pivot to someone else towards the end of the season.

But let me tell you something.

One thing I love about FPL is that a single week of action can change a lot. That’s partly why I don’t like artificially adding elements like chips in the first half of the season, or DEFCONs, as they increase variance for no reason – football already involves a lot of it, and it’s unnecessary to add more to FPL. Those natural unpredictables create decisions.

They create FPL moves.