The international break has arrived and if you have been following our tips so far this season, you should have saved your wildcard to play now, ahead of gameweek nine. To give you the wildcard advice you need ahead of some major changes to your squad, we’ve put together three top tips to help you maximise this crucial chip.
Use it early
The beauty of this chip is that you can make unlimited changes as many times as you want. Using it early allows you to get ahead of any potential price increases and maximise the time you have to make decisions. Keeping an eye on @FPLPricechange can give you an advantage to get those players in before they go up in price.
Remember, you only make profit on players if they go up by 0.2m or more once you own them, but this is a good way to stay ahead of the curve and potentially maximise the funds you have. One example is Mo Salah who, if you have right now and are on a wildcard, is probably worth getting rid of.
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He is one player who could lose value as more managers begin to make big decisions ahead of the next week. If you get rid of him now, you can bank his £11.9m and potentially bring him in, should you want him, at a slightly cheaper price. Make yourself a draft made up of players that are likely to be brought in, with good fixtures. They will become popular with managers as we get closer to the deadline and therefore go up in price. Be smart.
Only focus on fixtures up to World Cup
This might sound simple but in case you didn’t know, over the duration of the World Cup every FPL manager will be able to make unlimited transfers for free. Essentially, to cope with a winter World Cup, managers are being given another wildcard.
So the decisions you make to your squad now will only be for the next eight gameweeks, from nine through to 16. Take a look at the fixtures difficulty on FPL and footballfallout, and target the teams with the best fixtures. Over the next six gameweeks, Crystal Palace, Aston Villa, Bournemouth and Fulham have the ‘easiest’ fixtures which could lead to some major differentials as managers move away from the template.
It’s an exciting time and below we have picked out a few key players you should consider including for the next stint of FPL fixtures.
Player picks
So, which players should you be targeting? Well, we’ve already touched upon those teams with good fixtures. Let’s start with Palace’s key man Wilfried Zaha (£7.2m) who has a beautiful run of fixtures and could start to find his feet. For unpredictable Aston Villa, Philippe Coutinho is now just £6.7m and back to fitness while Aleksandr Mitrovic is Fulham’s in-form forward at £6.9m.
Other options up front worth considering are Ivan Toney (£7.2m) and Alexander Isak (£7m) who both have shown excellent form in front of goal recently. James Maddison (£7.8m) at Leicester has a good run of fixtures, while Son-heung Min may be worth a gamble at (£11.7m) having broken his goalscoring drought with a hat-trick.
Arsenal and Man City currently have a blank gameweek 12 after their fixture was postponed which is worth considering, while we should see some more risk taking after a fairly boring start to the season. The Liverpool assets are being sold but is now the time to stick with them? Everyone owns Erling Haaland, is it time to go against the grain?
Look at the fixtures and look for those big points scoring gems. They are out there.
