BLANK GAMEWEEK 31 IS UPON US - AND YOU SHOULDN'T PANIC!
There are only 10 teams playing this weekend due to the FA Cup fixtures and this might come as a shock for a lot of people! Imagine opening your Fantasy Premier League app/ website to find out half of your team are unavailable! The key point in this is - a lot of people will be in that position!
You just need to be cool about only playing eight or nine players this gameweek. I'd advocate taking one hit to field an extra body - bringing in one of the players Nick or I will be talking about this week - but don't go mad and start taking three or four hits just to field 11 players.
Serious FPL players (me included!) have been planning for the last few weeks for this round of fixtures. 'Chip Strategy' has been the talk of the town and a couple of mainstream strategies have came to the forefront.
Personally, I've planned my team for BGW31 & BGW33 - so I plan to play my Free Hit chip in GW32 - meaning I get to pick a dream team for that week and protect my value. Many players will be playing the Free Hit this weekend - but I feel the better time to play it is in GW32. The players who will play in GW31 will also play in GW33 - and you'll have one or two more transfers to boost up to closer to 11 players by that point.
In summary, don't take any more than two hits (one if you can) this weekend as there will be a lot of players in the same boat who are only fielding eight or nine. If you play your free hit chip this week, and you haven't planned for it, then you may struggle to:
A) Maximise those with two fixtures in DGW32
B) Field 11 players for BGW33
So take it on the chin and make a plan moving forward!
We’re always happy to help you out so if you have any queries or are interested in hearing our plans, pop us a DM on twitter and we'll get back to you (@ndolamore or @FPL_Jim).