Fantasy Premier League Gameweek 33: Hints, transfer tips and captain picks ahead of Arsenal v Villa

There are just six gameweeks left in the Fantasy Premier League season – and to guide you down the home straight, we’re once again going to hand over to our high-flying FPL coach to offer some hints and transfer tips ahead of Gameweek 33.

Before we pass you across to Top 2,000-ranked Matthew Gregory for his advice, a reminder that there is no Friday game this week so your transfer deadline is 11:00 BST on Saturday 13 April, just ahead of Newcastle United’s game against Tottenham Hotspur. With that out of the way, it’s time to find out who to buy, sell and captain in GW32…

Foden out and Díaz in?

Before I get going in earnest, I want to direct people who aren’t regular readers of this column towards two recent instalments – one which discusses chip strategy for the closing weeks of the season, which you can find by clicking here, and another which talks about picking out differentials for your mini-leagues, which you can read right here. Basically, I don’t want to go over old ground and bore those of you who have been keeping up to date to tears, but those articles offer up my advice for some of the key decisions you’ll be making i these last few weeks of the season.

But sufficed to say that by now, you should know how you’re handling the various doubles in Gameweek 34, which is just one week away, and that’s going to inform how you handle your transfer this week too. If you’re free hitting in GW34, then you need to continue to focus on players who are going to offer big returns after it and if you aren’t, then you need to focus on players who can rack up the points next weekend.

Let’s start with players who are taking the latter path and need to get as many juicy GW34 assets in as possible. We’ll look at what a perfect team for the doubles will look like next time around, but for now we’ll comment that if nothing else, we will definitely want triple Arsenal, triple Liverpool, and probably a couple of Wolverhampton Wanderers players too.

That, to me, means going for Liverpool players right now. They have a tasty home game against a Crystal Palace side who are struggling for form, and that should push you towards hitting triple Liverpool right now if you can. Mohamed Salah, Darwin Núñez and Luis Díaz are all fantastic assets to get hold of, and we’d want as many as possible. I’m less keen on Caoimhín Kelleher or Conor Bradley, because there’s too high of a chance that Alisson and Trent Alexander-Arnold are back to take their minutes by the time the doubles roll around.

Arsenal players can, in my opinion, wait a week – all things being even, I back them to beat Aston Villa but not necessarily to hammer them and pick up a really big haul. Bukayo Saka, Kai Havertz and a pick-and-mix of their best defenders are all very appealing to me.

This is also a decent time to buy into Wolves players given that they have Nottingham Forest this weekend, but the picture is a little more complicated than I’d like – the assets I’m most interested in are Rayan Aït-Nouri, Hwang Hee-Chan, Matheus Cunha, all of whom have been injured recently and aren’t guaranteed minutes. José Sá and Pablo Sarabia are safer bets if you want to roll the dice more gently.

Of course, as well as signing players, you need to decide who to get rid of – and right now, I’d say that Manchester City midfielders or defenders are more tempting cuts than you might realise, partly because it’s very likely that the usual picks like Phil Foden and Kevin de Bruyne will be rotated or rested for the game against Luton Town. Foden picking up a knock against Real Madrid means he’s just very unlikely to play a full 90 minutes this weekend, and if that’s the sacrifice I need to make for Díaz or Havertz, I’m happy to make it.

Naturally, much depends on whether you have your wildcard left to reset your team after the doubles. If you don’t – which is a tough situation to be in – then you’ll need to avoid selling players with good fixtures out the other side, like Chelsea and Spurs assets. They’re now confirmed to be doubling in GW35 as well as GW37.

If you’re able to free hit your way through GW34 then the plan is different, of course. Chelsea and Spurs become the teams you want to triple up on where possible, as they have two doubles including one that comes up in just a fortnight’s time. Given that Everton at home is a much easier fixture than Newcastle away, you’d think that Chelsea assets were the priority, but based on form I’m actually leaning towards Spurs assets as being more important to buy now.

Partly, that’s because Chelsea tend to make heavy weather of what should be easier games, and Cole Palmer is their only consistently strong asset. I like Malo Gusto well enough if he’s fit, and I have a sneaky suspicion that Nicolas Jackson could rack up some points between here and the end of the campaign, but otherwise they don’t have many players who will hoover up the points in a big way.

Spurs, meanwhile, smashed Newcastle 4-1 back in December and often play up in big matches. So I’d rather have Son Heung-Min over any Chelsea player other than Cole Palmer, and I also like James Maddison right now. Pedro Porro, Richarlison (fitness permitting), Brennan Johnson and maybe even Timo Werner are all reasonable pick-ups too based on form.

With so many injuries complicating matters, this is definitely a week to keep up with the press conferences before making your decisions, and if you come back to 3 Added Minutes on Friday afternoon we’ll have a fresh article up with all the latest injury news around the various FPL assets who are liable to miss out.

Lastly, we will of course need to choose a captain for the week. Personally, I don’t think there’s much to choose from between Haaland and Salah – either could easily rack up a big haul. Palmer is a perfectly reasonable choice too, but Everton don’t tend to concede too many. This is a classic toss-up between the big two.

3 Added Minutes FC

Before I wrap up this week, it’s time for our regular updates on my example team, which has enjoyed another rock solid week, racking up 72 points and moving back up inside the global top 2,000.

I’ve got two transfer this week and want to use at least one as I’m on the plan of transferring into GW34 naturally and then dropping my wildcard right after. That probably means switching Foden out for Díaz and hopefully either Pervis Estupiñán or Harry Maguire, both of whom are on the bench, for Aït-Nouri. Failing that, I’ll probably fix my goalkeeper situation (the injured Alphonse Areola is my back-up) by moving onto Sá.

That’s all for this week – best of luck, and may all of the players you transfer out immediately blank. I’ll be back next Thursday.