All in all, I think it’s safe to say most FPL managers enjoyed quite a successful Free Hit, predominantly thanks to Wolves and Newcastle assets, as well as a certain Ryan Sessegnon. In unprecedented fashion here at the Fortress, we have made the executive decision to cut the Dilemma Deliberations segment—quite frankly, there just isn’t that much to talk about, and the last thing we want is to offer a dull listening experience. To make up for this, we have an extra beefy Captaincy segment, as, going down the long line of six options, we realize that there doesn’t seem to be any single player who stands out. Spin the roulette wheel!

Excerpted from last gameweek’s episode description: “We certainly hope that Double Gameweek 33, possibly the largest double gameweek of the season, ushers in more shout-outs than whisper-ins next week.” Update: that did not happen. Double Gameweek 33 was underwhelming, to say the least: the only attacking return from my entire attacking 7 came in the 83rd minute of the last game of gameweek, and Jakub Kiwior singlehandedly outscored my entire Bench Boost. It seems like every episode, our mantra is to keep looking ahead, and look ahead we shall do! Most FPL managers will be activating their Free Hit, so we take the bulk of this episode to logically work through the ideal Free Hit draft. There does appear to be a strong template, but nonetheless, there certainly are opportunities for mavericks to think outside the box (anyone fancy a Sessegnon-Robinson double-up?). Finally, in the Captaincy segment, we put on our divination hats—a voice in Jacob’s head calls out to him, "16, 13, … 6?" What could it possibly mean?

KEVIN DE BRUYNE! marco asensio. ANTOINE SEMENYO! chelsea fc. What’s this, you ask? A textual demonstration of our latest innovation, of course: the shout-out and whisper-in mini-segment, which will now be embedded within the Gameweek Review. We certainly hope that Double Gameweek 33, possibly the largest double gameweek of the season, ushers in more shout-outs than whisper-ins next week. For the bulk of this episode, we try to parse through the best assets from Arsenal, Aston Villa, Crystal Palace, and Manchester City. Though it seems like the obvious goal would be to triple up on both Arsenal and Man City, the more we talk about their players, the more uncertain we feel about them; we share a similar lack of enthusiasm when looking at Villa and Palace. Captaincy isn’t clear-cut either, with all of the options giving us reason to question their candidacy. Is it time to captain a defender again? Or David Raya, anyone? How about a cheeky little Jakub Kiwior?

Last gameweek’s average score, a measly 34 points, was the lowest one we’ve seen all season. Indeed, every single player more expensive than Jean-Philippe Mateta (£7.7m) blanked, and the savior of the gameweek was Jacob Murphy (£5.1m). Thankfully, there are exciting times ahead: Newcastle and Crystal Palace have upcoming double gameweeks, which means we’ll be taking a deep dive into the best assets from those two teams (we also keep an eye out for the even bigger Double Gameweek 33 that’s just around the corner). Given that Salah has one fixture while Isak has two, it seems like the armband might finally swing away from Salah, who yet again seems to be going through a slump in performance in the spring. Perhaps he should try his hand (or rather, try his leg) at a weak-leg Nordic hamstring curl? Mo—if you’re listening, we here at the Fortress challenge you. Do you accept?

In the midst of what has undoubtedly been a prolonged lull in the game, Jacob and Jiayang look ahead to the final stretch of the season. Jacob wildcarded last gameweek, unfortunately to little success. How can FPL managers who still have their second Wildcard (like Jiayang!) take full advantage of it? Is this gameweek the best time to press the button? After this weekend’s FA Cup quarter-finals, the teams that double and blank in GW 33 and GW 34 will be finalized. A shockingly high number of teams with relevant FPL assets have favorable fixtures ahead, such as Arsenal, Bournemouth, Chelsea, Liverpool, Man City, Newcastle, and Nottingham Forest. Which players from these teams should we be targeting? Despite Arsenal’s, Liverpool’s, and Newcastle’s good fixtures, does an optimal triple-up even exist?

This may not be the first time you heard this, and it probably won’t be the last: the Assistant Manager chip has to go. Adding a manager adds another dimension to the game, overcomplicating it and distancing it from the beautifully simple yet also endlessly stimulating concept of picking the PLAYERS you think will get the most points. What do you mean, DAVID MOYES has scored the same amount of points as MO SALAH in their last four games? But alas, we are stuck with the chip this season at least, and therefore we must try to optimize our strategy given the conditions under which we’ve been placed. So, for those with Slot and Emery—stick or twist? If twisting, play it safe with Arteta or chase the table bonus with Glasner or McKenna? Perhaps I must begrudgingly admit that certain elements of the chip are rather well designed. But before we get to that, in our Gameweek 25 review, we laugh at Spurs and Man United and admire the new Egyptian Prince in town, though the reigning Egyptian King won’t be superseded anytime soon. As for captaincy—does Salah’s difficult fixture against City (though maybe we really need to stop thinking of City as all that difficult) open the door for another option? Dare I say, one that costs £4.6 million?

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Bournemouth have become somewhat of a juggernaut of late, and FPL managers have the tricky task of weighing three fantastic budget midfielders in Semenyo, Kluivert, and Ouattara. Each of them have their own pros and cons, but which one tickles your fancy? After discussing whether transferring Mbeumo in for Gordon is a good idea, we also devise a brand new, state-of-the-art metric (read: questionable numerical manipulation) to decide whether to play Gabriel against Man City or Ben Johnson against Southampton. But the question at the forefront of most managers’ minds is whether or not to triple captain Salah ahead of away trips to a high-flying Bournemouth and a resolute Everton. On top of the tricky fixtures on paper, it seems like Salah has, in classic Salah fashion, begun to tail off in the second half of the season. But given the new Assistant Manager chip—which will prevent managers from using any other chips while it’s in effect—is now simply the best time to get the Triple Captain “out of the way,” all things considered? The more we talk, the more we realize that it might not be possible to reach a satisfying conclusion…

As Liverpool and Everton’s double gameweek gets ever closer, we really drill into the question of who our third Liverpool asset should be—and note the use of the word “asset” instead of “player,” because that asset, other than Díaz, Gakpo, or Konaté, could very well be Arne Slot! As for Everton? Jacob brings up the point that if the “extra” Liverpool game didn’t exist, we wouldn’t be talking about Everton assets at all—and “extra” is in quotes because, well, is there really that much value added when the game is against Liverpool? This leads us to consider the more macro question: What is a game in hand, anyway? How would our perception change if Everton’s “original” fixture were against Liverpool and their “extra” fixture were against Leicester?

Welcome to the 100th episode of the FPL Fortress! Our first episode was released all the way back in March of 2021, back when we were sophomores in high school. Now, we’re sophomores in college, and we thought we’d take this moment to reflect on the past four years of FPL by creating a list of the 100 most memorable players that we’ve had the pleasure (or displeasure) of encountering. The list is split into four categories: all-timers, honest workers, trolls, value picks, and those who can only be described as “vibes.”

As we go through these players, we relive some of the memories from this most recent era of FPL history that have imprinted themselves irrevocably in our minds. Highlights include the legendary Wolves double over Manchester City in the 2019/2020 season, in which Adama Traoré humiliated the City defense; West Ham’s tactical shift to 3-4-3 in the 2020/2021 season to accommodate both Arthur Masuaku and Aaron Cresswell (who is actually featured heavily in our very first episode!); and the Mateta-Eze-Olise trio that burst into life at the end of the 2023/2024 season, creating perhaps the most unadulterated embodiment of pure vibes this sport has ever seen. Throughout the episode, Jacob recalls specific moments from specific games with shocking clarity—a performance that may even outclass Lord Lundstram’s 21-pointer in terms of sheer impressiveness.

Finally, we contemplate the continuity that FPL has provided us over the past four years, as well as the numerous ways in which it has enriched our lives. It’s been a real treat to produce the FPL Fortress for 100 episodes, and here’s to the next 100!

In this first episode of 2025, we go back in time ten years—Mikel Arteta is back on the menu! With the brand new Assistant Manager chip, FPL managers can earn points from having Mikel Arteta in their team again—though this time, it’s in a managerial capacity. (Speaking of Premier League managers who used to be players themselves, did you know that Andoni Iraola once played in a midfield trio with Andrea Pirlo and Frank Lampard at NYCFC, feeding balls through to Jack Harrison?) We take our first careful look at the chip, breaking down the two preeminent strategies: pick a manager from a top team and rely on victories by large margins, or pick a manager from a lower-ranked team and bet on upsets. The former is the safer option, while the latter is high risk, high reward. What whets your appetite? The answer may be more complicated than you think. And then there’s the question of when to play the chip—though playing it in a double gameweek gives you an extra fixture, it also precludes you from playing another chip. Much to consider…

In FPL, much like with the study of history, we must analyze the past to better inform our actions in the future. We must never repeat the same mistakes—such as buying Diogo Jota. He was part of a combined Liverpool and Arsenal sextuple-up that netted me a grand total of two returns. How glorious. In response, we conduct a thorough dissection of the best players to invest in for FPL managers who still have their first Wildcard. Who can replace our underwhelming Liverpool and Arsenal assets (read: liabilities)? We explore the potential of Crystal Palace players with an excellent upcoming fixture run, the possibility of an Ollie Watkins resurgence sans Jhon Durán, and the fearsomeness of an in-form Newcastle attack powered by Joelinton. The indefatigable Brazilian also prompts us to look into the prevalence of true ambipedality in the Premier League. Who knew Aaron Hickey and Santi Cazorla had so much in common?

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As the midway point of the season approaches, both Jacob and Jiayang find themselves in the rather strange position of still having their first Wildcard and yet lacking any desire to use it. We try to discuss the best options position-by-position, but are quickly faced with the slightly depressing truth that there simply aren’t that many truly desirable players in the game right now. The situation is especially dire among the midfielders and forwards—so dire, in fact, that we even toy with the idea of playing four defenders plus six attackers (instead of the typical seven). The dryness of the current state of the game dovetails nicely with a brief discussion about Jacob’s generally conservative style of playing FPL—is such a philosophy overly lenient towards middling performers, letting them linger in one’s team far beyond their welcome?

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Title says it all, really. Five losses and a draw after being up 3-0 … there has surely never been a bleaker moment in a Pep team. Maybe Rodri really is just that important, as Jacob explains through an insightful “field tilt” visualization. Our first Dilemma Deliberation is more theoretical (though very applicable): Is it better to start a goalkeeper from a worse defense against a worse attack, or a goalkeeper from a better defense against a better attack? We posit that it’s quite helpful to imagine yourself owning an attacker from each of the opposing teams and comparing how confident you feel in each attacker. On a very practical note, we then consider a few teams whose fixtures are about to plummet and look at potential replacements for popular assets from these teams. Along the way, Darwin Núñez, Alejandro Garnacho, Timo Werner, and Adama Traoré get mentioned in the same group; brownie points if you can figure out what it is! Finally, we round the episode off with captaincy—would it be madness to captain any player against City? In their current pep-less (intentionally lowercase, mind you) state, perhaps not …

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The Premier League may have taken last weekend off, but here at the Fortress, dilemmas have been brewing—and this is the episode where we bring them to the fore. To start, we revisit the idea of selling Haaland by exploring other permutations that the extra cash can fund. Regular listeners will know that we’re a very interdisciplinary podcast; accordingly, Jiayang references Hegel’s assertion that changes in quantity may eventually result in changes in quality as a metaphor to question how close managers are to actually committing to the act. Soon afterwards, we arrive at our first unanswerable question: How much weight should we be putting on small nuggets of information—like the fact that Haaland will likely be facing Dragusin instead of Van de Ven? Our second Dilemma Deliberation centers around a case study of Jiayang’s team: is it worth it to bring in Palmer for a -8 hit? To answer this question, we spontaneously decide to do something unprecedented: we transplant our captaincy segment right into the heart of our Dilemma Deliberations. In the process, we stumble across our second unanswerable question: What’s the tradeoff between sample accuracy and sample size, particularly at this point in the season when only 11 games have been played? After much grappling, we finally land on our third unanswerable question: Is intentionally creating sunk costs a winning strategy? Though definitive conclusions remain elusive, we hope the act of posing and confronting such questions are continually advancing the game forward. There is beauty in trying.

Today’s episode centers around a single Tweet from FPL 420 (@420fpl) at 5:45 PM on October 27, 2024: “😂Your GW10 points were mostly decided weeks ago mate.” Despite the seemingly light-hearted, jovial tone evoked by the laughing emoji, the statement struck us as being quite profound. There is genuine evidence corroborating this claim—just take the all-too-painful example of Jiayang buying Colwill instead of Aina to replace Hall in GW 6, resulting in a remarkable 20-point swing (an excellent demonstration of the macroeconomic phenomenon of the “multiplier effect”). If our past determines our present and our present determines our future, then which temporal state should we live in? We then pivot to the question of how viable it is to have three premium midfielders at the expense of Haaland—and in the process of conducting a cost-benefit analysis using the likelihood of owning the best captaincy option each gameweek, Jacob strays dangerously close to revisionism before Jiayang reels him in.

For the most part, I try to employ a well-balanced mixture of professionalism and wittiness when writing these episode blurbs. But from the bottom of my heart, that was one of the most enjoyable episodes I’ve ever had the pleasure of recording. Regular listeners will know that the Fortress enters flow state whenever we sink our teeth into a particularly juicy thought experiment—and the one explored in this episode might just be our crown jewel. It all started when Jiayang asked Jacob if he would be happy owning a player whose points were guaranteed to follow the pattern of a sinusoidal function; the odyssey that ensued (or rather, in keeping with the general principle of opting for active over passive voice, “the ensuing odyssey”) takes us on a whirlwind from the nostalgia of James Ward-Prowse’s classic 150-point seasons to the contemporary pertinence of the Palmer-Son-Saka hokey-cokey. Sit back, relax, and enjoy this timeless classic (if you know, you know)...

This week, Jiayang had to get a lot off his chest. His transfer in Solanke accumulated a grand total of 0.11 xGI in a four-goal demolition of West Ham, Calvert-Lewin and Eze continued to contend for the coveted title of Biggest Twat in his team, and his captain Haaland decided to do his best Colorado River impression by extending his dry run for yet another gameweek. Dilemma Deliberations-wise, we begin by focusing on Arsenal’s and Aston Villa’s poor upcoming fixtures (“well-endowed on the y-axis and challenged on the x-axis,” as one might say). Then, we turn our attention towards the bigger-picture question of whether or not we ought to listen to our guts—though perhaps the answer depends on whether or not our gut microbiomes are healthy and well-balanced. And finally, despite Haaland’s three successive blanks, it seems like he simply MUST be our captain for GW 9—but what if our guts are leading us towards Mbeumo against Ipswich at home? These are the questions…

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Today, Donald Trump mentioned UTDTrey in a Tweet—which can only spell disaster for Trump’s campaign, since nobody can escape the Trey jinx. It’s no surprise, then, that the team he reps has steadily been on the decline since he joined Twitter. As Jacob says, United are towing the line between being hated and being forgotten—and for a franchise like Manchester United, the latter might be worse. Gameweek 6 also saw City draw to Newcastle, Arsenal avoid dropping points at the death against Leicester, and a certain Cole Palmer become the first and only player in Premier League history to score four goals in one half of football. We start our Dilemma Deliberations with this starboy—is now the time? Should he have been included in our discussions about the trifecta of Haaland, Salah, and Saka last week? What even is the word for trifecta, but … four? Quadfecta? Superfecta? We then conjecture about whether or not the Philip Walter Foden train is fast approaching the station, and round off the segment with a theoretical lament on our abysmal team values (but seriously, it’s an important issue!). Finally, captaincy indeed seems to be a decision between our newly minted Fantastic Four—which fixture looks like the friendliest of the bunch?

Mikel Arteta almost pulled off the low block of the century against Man City, condemning City to feed their onslaught through Rúben Dias—hardly the most creative player in their team. Due to the nature of this low block (and perhaps due in part to his ghosting tendencies), Kai Havertz completed a grand total of 0 out of 5 attempted passes over the course of the 90 minutes. Nonetheless, he is a contender for the third best Arsenal asset to own, behind Saka and Gabriel, and this assessment forms the meat and potatoes of this episode of the FPL Fortress. Elsewhere, we also discuss whether the nearly 800,000 managers who have bought Luis Díaz made a good choice, as well as a grave mistake that Wildcarders and non-Wildcarders alike seem to be making. Finally, captaincy this week seems to be a relatively close call between the Trifecta—Saka at home to Leicester, Salah away to a Wolves that conceded 6 to Chelsea, or Haaland against a thoroughly unremarkable Newcastle?

The talk of the town is the Gameweek 6 Wildcard. Are Arsenal’s and City’s good fixtures enough to warrant pressing the button? Just how in the mud does your team need to be in order for the Wildcard to be worth it? In this episode, we try to work through these questions and analyze the cheap Isak replacements—though there are many options, few are all that exciting. And for once, the obvious captaincy choice doesn’t seem to be Haaland—but what do you do if you don’t have Mo?