Fantasy Premier League Gameweek 25: The Chelsea & Arsenal stars who could become the perfect differentials

The long, drawn out double gameweek is finally over and in the blink of an eye, it’s time to turn over yet another bunch of big decisions and make even more transfers – fortunately, our resident Fantasy Premier League expert, owner of a global Top 2,000 finish last season, is here to offer his advice for Gameweek 25.

It’s an early deadline this week, with a Friday evening fixture between Brighton & Hove Albion and Chelsea meaning that you’ll need to get all your moves made by 18:30 GMT on Friday 14 February. Don’t forget to pick your team before you sit down for a nice, romantic meal. Now, over to our expert...

Doubles difficulties for Liverpool & Aston Villa

No sooner do we have one double gameweek in the bag than another comes along – Liverpool play twice again over the course of the next seven days, with a home game against Wolves followed by a Wednesday night trip to Villa Park thanks to the club’s progress to the EFL Cup final.

That means that whatever plans you had in place for Liverpool players last week (or indeed for Arne Slot, who doesn’t get ‘suspended’ or lose points after being shown a red card by Michael Oliver at the end of the Merseyside Derby) should almost certainly stay in place, while the small percentage of players who have their triple captain handy and haven’t appointed an assistant manager should consider dropping the TC chip on Mohamed Salah – it's not the route I would have gone down but if you’ve wound up in that spot, it’s probably as good a use of those bonus points as you’ll get all season.

It also means that Aston Villa get a double, with a home game against Ipswich Town on the table too. Their assets are pretty appealing as a result, but I don’t necessarily advise moving heaven and earth to snap up Ollie Watkins or Morgan Rogers – for starters, Watkins is a doubt with a minor groin injury, and it’s worth remembering that with several new attacking signings, both Watkins and Rogers will likely be subbed on and off more often that they were to give Marcus Rashford and Marco Asensio some time to shake the rust off.

Villa also have a blank gameweek coming up in GW29, as do Liverpool, Crystal Palace and Newcastle, the consequence of the EFL Cup final. The other teams will get doubles later in the season, but it’s worth working out whether you want to use your wildcard or free hit around GW29 or not before going all in on a large number of players who won’t feature that week. If you’ve burned your second wildcard already, you probably can’t afford to go too hard at this week’s double. I like Watkins and Rogers if you have them already, but I’m not sure I’d spend transfers to buy them.

Chelsea & Arsenal stars offer differential options

Aside from thinking about your wildcard plans, a lot of players will also be reaching the stage of the season in which they need to start thinking about differentials – the low-ownership additions to the squad who might help players catch up on those above them.

For newer FPL players, the principle is this – if you need to make up ground in your mini-league, then having too many of the same players as those above you makes that much harder. The more unique players you have (the ‘differentials’ in question, to use the long-established lingo of the game), the better your odds of bridging the gap. Naturally, you don’t want to lose a Salah to get back up there, but if everyone in your league has, say, Chris Wood, then finding another striker might be a solid idea.

Of course, for the most part, there’s a reason that other teams don’t have certain players – so looking for players whose potential to score goes up due to injuries within their squads, for instance, is a great way to pick out those sudden starters who could score much more than they did before.

This week, bad news for Chelsea and Arsenal fans could be good news for the rest of us. For Chelsea, both Nicolas Jackson and Marc Guiu are out injured, meaning that they will need to find a new centre-forward – and that’s very likely to be Christopher Nkunku, who has largely been sidelined by Enzo Maresca but has impressed when given chances in the Europa Conference League and who has an excellent goalscoring record in Germany.

As a £5.7m midfielder, he’s an incredibly low-cost, high-ceiling option right now, and while I don’t necessarily think you desperately need him this week – a trip to the Amex Stadium isn’t the easiest and Brighton literally just beat the Blues in the FA Cup – he should be on everyone’s radar going forward.

The other big injury blows this week were at Arsenal. Gabriel Martinelli should be out for around four weeks, while Kai Havertz is now out for the season – leaving Mikel Arteta with just three fit senior forwards, in the form of Raheem Sterling, Ethan Nwaneri and Leandro Trossard.

Sterling has barely played so has the longest odds of being a hit right now, but Trossard (£6.8m midfielder) is now likely to be the primary focal point of Arsenal’s attack while Nwaneri (£4.5m midfielder) is a super-budget buy who probably has about a month of starting before Bukayo Saka comes back.

The Gunners have a mixed bag of fixtures over the coming weeks – Leicester, West Ham, Nottingham Forest, Manchester United and Chelsea are their next five opponents – but if you’re looking for a budget-friendly player who few of your opponents will have, both Trossard and Nwaneri are worth considering. If you do go down that route, I’d recommend getting them in now (ahead of their trip to the King Power Stadium) to maximise their returns.

It's normally at this point in the column that I’d debate which player is worth captaining, but let’s be honest – it’s Salah. Don’t overthink this one, and this isn’t the place to be looking for differentials unless you’re truly desperate. If you don’t have Salah… well, you have bigger problems than picking a captain. Watkins and even Erling Haaland are defensible picks on current form, but Salah is the clear first choice.

That’s all for this week – best of luck, and may all of your differentials work out for you whenever you sign them. Don’t forget to check 3 Added Minutes on Friday afternoon for our FPL injury news column, but apart from that, I’ll see you for Gameweek 26…