Bored of the international break? Gone into Premier League withdrawal? Me too. I have two free transfers, and at the start of the international break I knew exactly what I was going to do. Now I’ve had far too much time to ponder, and am even considering making no changes at all. Either way, I may still use my first chip in Gameweek 5 so I thought I’d take the opportunity to analyse the new chips in more detail.
Obviously with all the new chips, they’re all about when and how they’re used. James Page-Chatton likes to call the chips ‘power ups’ which I think is actually a pretty fair description…
Triple Captain (TC).
I’ve seen many uses of the Triple Captain already, none to particularly staggering effect. I guess the only time it would be staggering is if the triple captain was used on a hat-trick, so far that would mean only Wilson for Bournemouth in GW3. I have however seen many wasted TCs and a couple of ok uses. For example, I saw teams TC the likes of Cazorla and Benteke in GW1 and also Aguero in GW4. Both Cazorla and Benteke scored 2 points tripled to three, as did Aguero. Contrastingly I saw Costa captained in GW3 with 10 points tripled to 30. Fair enough.
So there’s two factors at play here, the first is the amount of gamble involved in picking a captain that returns a decent amount of points with a Triple, the second is the small return for doing so. Using Costa’s example, considering his points would be doubled for being captain anyway, the return is +10 points. That was for a goal, an assist and 1 point bonus. A scoring forward with no bonus earns 6 points, tripled to 18 with the chip in play. As we know, high-scoring captain returns are not easy, so unless you happen to pick a hat-trick scorer it is unlikely that the effect of the Triple Captain will be massive, returning anything between 2 and 17 points (Wilson’s hat-trick), further the difference between Captaining and Triple Captaining is marginal.
My view is that the Triple Captain Chip simply gives you a little bonus on what you would be getting anyway, and only if used at the right time. The exception will be on a double gameweek increasing both the odds of returns well as the margin.
Bench Boost (BB).
If you have a look at either the highest weekly score on any given week or if you look at the top of the overall game rankings you will find many teams that have used both Triple Captain and Bench Boost already. Bench Boost looks like the one as far as I’m concerned. Adding 4 playing players to your team can seriously up your points return, and is far less of a gamble than Triple Captain.
Put crudely, a 90 minute playing player (with no yellow card) earns 2 points. Triple Captain means +2 points whereas a bench of 4 playing players means +8 points straight away. Further, while it’s difficult to pick a single player that will earn good points in a week, Bench Boost effectively spreads that bet across 4 players, all with the potential to earn extra points. Now while of course the bench will hold a team’s weaker players, the element of chance, in a rounded squad will mean that that bench still has points potential, whether it be Palace’s Joel Ward (4.6m) who has already scored against both Arsenal and Chelsea or Scott Sinclair (4.9m) who scored two goals in GW4. In GW3 my bench was worth 18 points and in GW4 it was worth 21 points – as you can see the use of this chip on a ‘good’ week would exceed the value of Costa’s 10 point haul and even Wilson’s hat-trick.
There has been a lot of talk about saving the Bench Boost chip for a double gameweek, but also an argument that on a double gameweek this chip is irrelevant. Reason being that you are not going to load your team with 15 double gameweek players and even if you did, they would all be playing eachother and you’d have 15 players from 4 or 5 teams where the points would be spread between players. If Bench Boost is successful then it should be worth anything upwards from 8 points depending on the quality of your squad. With the unpredictability of football it’s a decent banker if you have either good form or good fixtures throughout your squad.
My view is that the thing about Bench Boost is that it utilises your whole squad, but while getting points off 11 players is hard, getting points off 15 players is near impossible. However, not having to pick the highest points scorers from your squad of 15 is a real helping hand and this is where the benefit of the chip lays.
All Out Attack (AOA).
All Out Attack seems like the weakest of the three chips. To really benefit from this chip you need to bank on your defenders not scoring points and all your attacking players scoring. To use this chip effectively you are relying on your defenders not getting clean sheets/assists/goals and your midfielders all scoring points. To find that a defender on the bench got a clean sheet while your attackers blanked would render it negative as opposed to wasteful.
Chris made a good point that the All Out Attack chip could be used really well if you get injuries / suspensions in defence. Here, instead of using the AOA chip to benefit from attacking points instead you are using it to cover for non-playing defenders.
I have a similar issue in the upcoming gameweek.
My defenders are:
Kompany (Palace away)
Targett (West Brom away)
Muniesa (Arsenal away)
Ward (City home)
Gomez (United away)
I don’t think any of them will get a clean sheet, possibly Targett, if he plays. And I currently have five strong, playing midfielders (in theory). Is it going to be all guns blazing after the international break or are teams going to be tired?
The other time when players won’t be playing is on cup weekends in the build up to double gameweeks. AOA could be very handy then for protecting your defence in preparation for bringing them back for a double game later. However, it is equally likely that you will have attackers playing cup games who you won’t want to transfer too so predicting the use of the AOA here is difficult.
On a different note I can’t be sure how the subs bench works on an AOA chip. If you use it and then an attacker doesn’t play does a defender come back on? I assume so. I’ll find out this weekend anyway, if I play it, which is pretty likely.
FFUK Prizes.
As far as our own league is concerned, Chris and I realised how these new chips could be key in relation to the prizes. Obviously getting any of them right is going to help you in the league and increase chances of winning the Best Weekly and Best Monthly Scores, that’s a given. The Cups however, could be more tactical. In the Cups you will be playing against one other team and using a chip for a boost could be crucial to getting to the next round, even if you aren’t trying to achieve anything more than achieving more points than one other player.
As the season pans out, I’m sure we’ll see some interesting chip wins and some catastrophic chip fails.
Looking forward to it. I’m off for some chips.
FFUK 
TLDR.
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