Special Piece: GW 29 - Transfer Planning + Talk of the Town

With Projections and Verdicts out of the way, time for a game of Candy Crush and I can start this.

OK let's go. Level 101 woohoo.

Much has been discussed about the dreaded blanks this season. While the past 4 FPL blanks for Sunderland/Reading, Chelsea/Southampton, Liverpool/Swansea and Arsenal/West Ham have been relatively straight forward, the coming FA Cup/EPL clashes  have affected multiple Gameweeks in advance, and the first blow has been landed already.

Gameweek 29. United, Chelsea, Wigan, Everton, Arsenal, City, Fulham and West Ham all didn't play due to the former 4 playing in the FA Cup Quarters. The butterfly effect has caused Arsenal v Everton to resurface at Gameweek 33, which is the only confirmed DGW so far.

Due to Wigan and City beating Everton and Barnsley respectively in the FA Cup, Wigan's game against Swansea, as well as City v West Brom in Gameweek 33 has also disappeared, making Lukaku, any City forward and Kone/Maloney decent pickups after then.

So with this being the only information available so far, this article will serve as a "tracker" of all info available, but I'm hoping to split this into "Transfer Planning' and "Talk of the Town" later in the season (or next season) so that people can see the logic behind my transfers, whether short term or mid term. Expect lots of speculation and fixture planning in the rest of this article.



Right, firstly I'm writing up this article to tell people what they don't already know. I'll attempt to section this post so that people with ample knowledge can skip what they (assume they) know and go to bits where they are interested in.

Talk of the Town

1. How to bring the DGW players back in

Many sold RVP, Mata, Fellaini (myself included) and Walcott going into GW29 due to the fact that they picked up these players quite expensively and they expect to buy them back for cheap. This does make sense if say I buy RVP for 13.8, and when I sell RVP to get 13.9 he drops back to 13.7 and I make a 0.1 profit off him. Sensible.

Devil's advocate for this policy is that people are using 2 transfers in 2-4 Gameweeks to make "so called "redundant" transfers as they could be used to bring 2 really solid players in anyway.

The solution? Not having the right players at the right time. GW29 was actually a blessing in disguise because there were a few "must have" players for GW29. Bale, Suarez, Sissoko, Lukaku/Benteke/Remy, and a Norwich defender (or even Samba if you're optimistic enough) were essential for the Gameweek, so if you didn't have any of those players, bringing them in would've been perfect for GW29 as you would keep these players for the rest of the season.

2. How to sell Deadwood

In truth, this should have been covered in the previous section, but I would like to ask a very important question that wouldn't have been picked up if I put it there: How do you define deadwood? Reading defenders? Cheapos who were dropped recently like Taarabt and Tevez? (Tevez is a cheap elite player)

To tell you the truth, anyone that doesn't have a 100% chance of starting (bar goalkeepers) is deadwood to me. I'll have to do something about Clyne that means. I don't want Southampton keeping another clean sheet in a Gameweek full of blanks and I don't get my 6 points due to Clyne losing in rock-paper-scissors to Danny Fox.

Transfer Planning - Gameweek 33

With that in mind, let's take a quick look at Gameweek 33 to see how we can maximise this opportunity.

Tier 1 (Teams with Double Gameweeks, try and get bolded teams)
Ars v Eve
Ars v Nor
Eve v QPR

Tier 2 (Games with no risk of cancellation so far, try and get bolded teams)
Rdg v Liv
Avl v Ful
Sou v Whu
New v Sun

Tier 3 (Games with risk of cancellation depending on FA Cup Replay result)
Sto v Mnu
Che v Tot

Tier 4 (Games that have been cancelled)
(Mci v Wba)
(Wig v Swa)

So looking at this Gameweek (so far) you can tell that the Must Haves are Arsenal players, obviously.

Now, moving on to what's new. Planning for this Gameweek would firstly require you to field 11, if possible. You're gonna have to count how many of the teams from the bottom two "tiers" you have to depict a real picture of how many players will be rested. Ideally (excluding keepers) you'd want 1 Man united/Stoke or 1 Chelsea/Spurs outfield to be rested, as well as 2 players out of the 4 remaining Tier 4 teams to field 11.

Looking at the fixtures again actually, chances are you'll have 2 players from the Tier 3 fixtures (I have RVP/Wilson and Mata/Bale myself) so you would want to limit yourself to having 1 (or even none) of the tier 4 players. Thankfully I have only Zabaleta at the moment, and I'd actually have to reconsider bringing Rafael in pre-Gamweek 32 and I'll have to get an Arsenal defender instead. Or even a Newcastle one. Eww. My plans of bringing Maloney in as well is out the window lol. Tough times.