Heading into Gameweek 3 of Fantasy Premier League (FPL), two-time Indian FPL champion Lateriser talks us through the reasons for holding on to the Wildcard.

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This early in the season, I have made it a practice to contemplate a Wildcard every week. This helps you be more active as an FPL manager. You will have played out multiple scenarios in your head and contemplated different options.

It helps that there is a decent fixture shift with prime early fixtures for assets like Ollie Watkins (£9.0m), Cole Palmer (£10.5m) and Bryan Mbuemo (£7.0m), who will all be in Wildcarders’ thoughts. Even more so with the popular Newcastle United assets not pulling up trees.

I have decided to not pull the trigger on the Wildcard this week. With this article, I will list my reasons and some general reasons to hold on to the chip.

The value of information

This, in my opinion, is the most important factor. Information is everything in Fantasy Premier League and our perceptions are constantly evolving. New managers, new players and new tactics. This is something we need to absorb very quickly before we ‘assume’ conclusions and make our bed with regard to strategy and choosing our FPL team. I feel like it is too early to make firm conclusions.

There are players like Rico Henry (£4.5m) and a £5.5m Arsenal defender that I’m interested in who I can’t yet make a call on. How new signings will blend in is information we don’t quite have yet. Even drawing any firm conclusions from just two to three weeks of information is difficult, in my opinion – unless you’re picking players with a long history and not taking many risks with your draft, in which case it is fine.

If your team is in a mess – ie owning Jarell Quansah (£4.4m), Lewis Hall (£4.5m), Christopher Nkunku (£6.4m) and Dominic Solanke (£7.0m) – the Wildcard is absolutely justified. But if you avoid it, I think some more time to assess things will help make better long-term calls. Look at Southampton, for example. They did really well in the first 30 minutes against Newcastle United and people thought they might show some fight in the season only for them to concede six (!) big chances to Nottingham Forest in a very one-sided game. We simply need to watch a little more football before making picks based on our hot takes.

Short Pre-Season

One of my biggest problems with an early Wildcard is I believe that a lot of the teams are still in ‘pre-season’ mode. Look at Watkins, for example, who has twice been substituted early and looked a little off the pace. Rodri (£6.4m) hasn’t played a single minute of Premier League football. A lot of the teams that we are interested in have had late returnees due to deep participation in the Euros and Copa America and I feel like we might not be seeing the true colours of some clubs due to this.

The first Gameweek or two after the September international break might be enough to make this judgement if you are inclined to Wildcard early.

European Competition

There will be European ties between Gameweeks 4-5, 6-7 and 8-9. How different teams are treating Europe and whether that gives us any indication of some trends is information that might be worth waiting for.

This time, we have more European games and deeper squads amongst competing teams. Premier League managers will need to field stronger teams for a longer time in the competition, due to the new Swiss format where teams will probably need 15 points to qualify for the knockouts.

Keeping faith in Newcastle…

While the above reasons are generic when it comes to arguments for waiting, there are some more specific observations that I do not want to categorise as conclusions this early in the season.

For starters, there is a large perception that Newcastle United have started slowly. While there is nothing worthwhile we can draw from Gameweek 1 after an early red card, their poor performance against Bournemouth was down to a couple of things: a) Andoni Iraola drilling Bournemouth well and b) Eddie Howe’s team selection. Playing the likes of Lloyd Kelly (£4.5m), Sean Longstaff (£5.0m) and Jacob Murphy (£5.4m) didn’t really help his cause and there was a big change in the tone of the game in the second half once Kieran Trippier (£5.9m), Hall and Harvey Barnes (£6.4m) came on, in my opinion. Newcastle were far more dominant in the final third of the match.

If Howe gets his team selection right, there might be some points for the taking for Newcastle attackers in their next two to three matches against teams that aren’t exactly known for their watertight defences.

I currently have Anthony Gordon (£7.5m) and Alexander Isak (£8.5m) from the Magpies and want to give them a game or two against Tottenham Hotspur and Wolverhampton Wanderers before losing confidence in them. While Spurs have looked mighty impressive, teams like Newcastle tend to do better against sides who offer space in transition. 

…AND CRYSTAL PALACE

One of my biggest early-season disappointments has been the defensive double-up from Crystal Palace. I own Dean Henderson (£4.5m) and Daniel Munoz (£5.0m) and both of them haven’t shown much in the first couple of Gameweeks. Munoz especially hasn’t been as attacking as he was last season and you realise that there is obviously a big difference between playing with Michael Olise, who tends to occupy a defender or three and leave space for Munoz, and playing with Odsonne Edouard (£5.4m), who was average at best.

That said, I saw the Crystal Palace game and they were pretty stable and good until a bewildering substitution that Oliver Glasner made, in which Daichi Kamada (£5.4m) replaced Jefferson Lerma (£5.0m). That led to chaos defensively and Palace conceded two goals after that substitution. Kamada was used in the front three in midweek and he was much better there (and Munoz looked better alongside Kamada, too) compared to being played in the pivot with Adam Wharton (£5.0m), where honestly Glasner has some good options in Cheick Doucoure (£4.9m), Will Hughes (£4.9m) and Lerma. I feel like I want to give these players the home game against Leicester City in Gameweek 4 before binning them.

FINAL THOUGHTS

This, combined with a fairly strong swing of fixtures for the likes of Arsenal in Gameweek 6, has me targeting late September as my Wildcard window. Obviously, this is a moving needle, but having two Liverpool players in place already and £3.0m in the bank to do Bukayo Saka (£10.0m) to Mohamed Salah (£12.6m) next week aids my cause to not pull the trigger on the Wildcard just yet.

That is all from me this week. If you want more content, I did a pod with my fellow Pro Pundits Pras and Zophar on Tuesday which you can view below:

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