My views on the Free Hit Chip in Fantasy Premier League are quite simple. I believe the best time to play it is in a blank gameweek (a week where there are only a handful of fixtures).
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Let’s get back to FPL. I read somewhere last week that 115,000 managers used their fantasy football free hit chip for GW10 and I’ve seen so many cases where a manager’s original team would have matched/outscored his/her free hit team. By playing it in a regular gameweek, you are competing with your own team. Unless you have a large number of injuries/suspensions I don’t think this is a good strategy.
In previous seasons, when we didn’t have the free hit chip, we had to plan meticulously in the weeks running up to a blank gameweek in order to field as close to 11 players as possible. The free hit takes away the stress of all that. We now don’t need to worry about the blank GW until it arrives and we then simply play it and load up on players from the teams who are actually playing.
In previous seasons, in the run up to a blank gameweek, my transfers were often determined by the upcoming blank. For example, if Watford were due to play in the blank but Stoke were not, in a transfer decision between Kiko Femenia & Kevin Wimmer, I would most likely go with Kiko because he would be another player with a fixture for the blank GW.
This season, by utilising the free hit chip for the blank GW, my transfer decisions in the weeks leading up to the blank will not be determined by it. Instead, I can bring in the players who I want long term rather than having to bring in blank GW players.
Like I mentioned above, I don’t like the idea of competing against my original team with a free hit team in a regular GW. You can easily end up worse off this way, as we have seen after GW10. The chip has then been wasted.
Why playing the Free Hit Chip in a blank GW
In a blank GW, you could end up with just 3 or 4 players who have a fixture. If you play free hit in this instance, your free hit team (11 players) is competing against only 3 or 4 from your original team. The gains here are much greater than when you play it in a regular GW, most likely 11 players (free hit team) vs 11 players (original team).
I would like to hear the strategies of other FPL managers. Do you plan to use the free hit chip differently? Have you already used it successfully? Do you have a free hit horror story? Tweet me @FPLGeneral and let me know.
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