FPL GW2 - wildcard

Reviewing GW1

My own team was on a flyer with 88 points especially due to Monday night clean sheets from the newly promoted Leeds team – the 4.0 combination of Rodon and Gudmundsson was pure gold.

That is not speaking about losing CS from Frimpong and Verbruggen by seconds due to early substitute and a late-late equalizer from Muniz. This would have added a special achievement badge for me – a legendary “full house” of 7 clean sheets on bench boost.

That’s for another time then.

 

Other than that, no spectacular news. Salah scores late, Haaland starts the season well.

General thoughts

 Well, it’s GW2 so you should be on either:

-          A planned transfer, such as Porro to Muñoz

-          Rolling your FT

…or WC/FH like me!

 

From my perspective, there is no news that should change your team. Biggest bandwagon is Reijnders, who will likely do a double price rise. Unless you have a major issue that needs a transfer out, I would say it’s not worth a transfer. His underlying xG/xA performance was lower than predicted, and Pep still loves to play the roulette.

 

I don’t even expect to put him in my wildcard team.

 

Generally, just roll your transfer if possible.

My team - wildcard

As discussed last week, I decided before the season to wildcard in gameweek 2 to take advantage a bench boost in gameweek 1 with full freedom of choice and a lot of high value players with good fixtures starting from gameweek 2 (CRY/BOU).

GW2 Wildcard team

Above is my current draft team, and most players are locked and are the same as planned before the season started.

 

The only ones I’m not completely settled on are:

1.      The 2nd forward

Strand Larsen is a bit of a transfer risk, and I could go to Kroupi Jr., who would be more certain of minutes (still few) in the case of an Evanilson injury and thus I would not have the case of no one subbing on

2.      5th midfielder

Tavernier could go in a lot of different directions. With a 4.5 2nd forward, he could be Semenyo, or otherwise players like Arias could be considered. I do like Tavernier, and it seems Iraola favors him. Arias was not chosen against Man City, which is a worry, but manager comments suggest it was due to expecting a low possession game, and I only want to start him in the “easy” games anyway.

3.      5th defender

Andersen is the outstanding pick in this category in my opinion. I could consider going Agbadou as he rotates well with the team until GW9. That decision will likely go down until the deadline.

As for the rest of the team, it’s basically locked – the value is very good especially paired with FH6, where ARS and CRY have poor fixtures, and I can get Haaland in against Burnley. Guiu could be a lower ownership 4.5 FWD to protect against a price drop.

What I find the most important here is to set up a safe team that is not exposed to much risk especially from transfers. The transfer window does not close until before GW4, so picking players that are 1) very unlikely to leave and 2) not likely to receive more competition from new signings is ideal.

My current draft also has no planned transfers until around GW9, and a lot can happen until then, but it's good to be planning to stack up a high amount of free transfers to be able to act on opportunities later on.

 

I’m not going to cover all potential picks, but in general I like very few forwards, and captaincy rotation fixes the midfield premium picks, which dictates most of the team. Defenders are of too high value this season to ignore in my opinion.

 

Best of luck everyone!