Finding the Double Gameweek Slots: My Process
Listen up, folks. Everyone sees the headline when the official dates drop, but the real work—the practice—happens months before. If you wait for the news, you’re too late. Prices jump, and you lose the edge. I didn’t wait for some broadcaster to hand me the dates; I pulled them out of the schedule myself.
I started the whole process the moment the Premier League fixture list was released back in June. That’s step one. I grabbed that calendar, printed it out, and then I spent an entire Sunday dragging and dropping every single European fixture and domestic cup tie onto the same sheet. People think Double Gameweeks (DGWs) are announced. They aren’t. They are created by the inevitable Blanks (BGWs) that happen when teams reach the semi-finals or finals of the FA Cup and EFL Cup.
My entire focus wasn’t on Week 1. Who cares about Week 1? I was laser-focused on the periods between late February and early May. I started by identifying the critical dates for the FA Cup Quarterfinals and Semifinals. I calculated the specific Gameweeks where fixtures for four to six teams would absolutely need to be moved. By cross-referencing potential success in Europe—always betting on Man City and Liverpool to get deep—I could zero in on the exact mid-week slots available later in the season.
I flagged two specific Gameweeks right away: GW34 and GW37. These are the traditional chaos zones. When the final domestic broadcast schedule changes were finally announced last week, confirming the rescheduling, it wasn’t a surprise to me or my private league buddies. It was simply the verification of projections I’d been running since the summer. It wasn’t guesswork; I used the elimination method to expose the available slots. We locked in those windows weeks ago.
Player Targets Locked In and Ready
Now that the timing is concrete—and we’re looking at some enormous potential DGWs for certain teams (teams still fighting in the FA Cup and Europe)—the next phase of my practice kicked in: pre-planning my chip strategy and identifying cheap entry points now.
You need players who are guaranteed two fixtures in one week, and importantly, players who won’t get rotated. That means focusing on high-minute players in teams that still have a high fixture backlog risk. I have already begun shedding my dead wood and preparing my squad for a shift that will start around February.
Here are my top practice results—the guys I am either buying now or definitely planning the transfer route for:
- The Premium Lock (Haaland, MCI): This is obvious, but if City progresses deep in both cups, his fixture list becomes terrifyingly good late on. You save your Triple Captain chip for one of his confirmed DGWs. I am budgeting for him religiously right now, even if it means shorting my midfield for a few weeks.
- The Midfield Engine (Saka, ARS or Salah, LIV): I prefer Salah for DGW chaos, but if Liverpool has a guaranteed massive DGW (which they usually do), I will be double-up on their attack. Arsenal tends to get fewer huge DGWs, but Saka is still an essential foundation piece.
- The Budget Defender (A Defender from a newly promoted team likely to miss cup runs): I look for one strong defensive asset from a mid-table team who usually gets knocked out early but who has good home fixtures in their DGW. This is crucial for the Bench Boost chip. You need 15 starters, not 11. I’ve earmarked one specific defender who is $4.5m and is absolutely fixture-proof in terms of minutes.
Why I Even Bothered Tracking This Crap So Early
You might be asking why I, a guy who usually keeps his head down, spent dozens of hours cross-referencing fifth-round FA Cup replays with PL broadcast slots in the dead of summer. It’s simple: FPL became my sanctuary when my real life imploded, giving me the time and the necessity to structure my time around something predictable.
I was working at a major firm, running their implementation team. It was a 24/7 gig. Toxic barely covers it. I was getting constant calls at 11 PM for things that could wait, and after six years of that grind, I just snapped. One morning, I woke up, looked at my phone which had 47 unread messages, and realized I was going to have a heart attack before 40. I walked into the office, submitted my resignation, and walked out without another job lined up.
For weeks, I sat there, totally burned out, trying to figure out what the hell I was going to do with my life and how I was going to pay the mortgage. I needed a project, something complex but harmless, and FPL, something I used to only half-follow, became the focus of my strategic energy. It was structure in the middle of chaos.
The whole situation was so messy. The old company, realizing they couldn’t handle the workload I was managing, started posting my old job online almost immediately. They first listed it at $110K, the same low salary I quit over. They couldn’t fill it. They bumped it to $130K. Still empty.
Last week, I saw the listing again. It’s now sitting at $175K, and they are still scrambling to find someone. They are begging people to come back and fix the mess they created. Meanwhile, I’m sitting here, completely relaxed, using the same analytical skill set that used to make them rich, to perfectly time my chip usage for a fantasy football league. They thought they could run me into the ground, but now they are paying a massive premium for the privilege of failure, and I’m just here winning my mini-leagues. Finding these DGW dates was just proof that I could analyze data better when I wasn’t constantly on the brink.