FPL Fortress

Everyone stop what you’re doing—yes, yes, the rumors are true, the Fortress has released our 2025/26 Season Review! We might be a little embarrassed that it’s been nearly two months since our last episode, but we’re far more excited to finally bring to you our reflections on this past year of Fantasy Premier League. Overall, although it’s been an underwhelming campaign for both Jacob and I, we sti...

This past gameweek, big things happened at both the top and bottom of the Premier League table, with Arsenal taking a massive step toward that elusive title and Tottenham pulling themselves out of the relegation zone. Is it time to similarly shake things up in our FPL teams? Ahead of the final double gameweek of the season, we revisit the question of how many Crystal Palace players to invest in, a...

If you’re like us, you’ve just used your Wildcard, Bench Boost, and then Free Hit, back-to-back-to-back, thereby exhausting all of your chips for the season (and hopefully having moved significantly closer to your rank target!). Now that the dust has settled, it’s back to good ol’ standard chipless FPL for the final four gameweeks of the season. With Crystal Palace set to double in Gameweek 36, we...

Double Gameweek 33 was truly one for the ages, with both Jacob and Jiayang finishing on a whopping 124 points. The very teams that served us so well last week, however, have no fixtures this upcoming week, meaning most active managers will need to activate their Free Hit. Accordingly, we spend the bulk of this episode evaluating the best teams and players to target, in the hopes of building the be...

It’s a bit of a quiet week in FPL, but here at the Fortress, we’re committed to producing insightful content—week in, week out, no matter the circumstance. To that end, after reviewing Gameweek 32 and then briefly discussing single-gameweek players to consider for the upcoming double, we meditate on the general rigidity of the current template. We think that this phenomenon is largely due to the “...

After the longest mid-season break the Premier League has ever experienced (a statement that has not been fact-checked but feels undeniably true), we are finally back to discuss best strategies for the run-in to Gameweek 38. Arsenal crashed out of the FA Cup, which means Wildcarding in preparation for what was supposed to be a juicy Bench Boost in Double Gameweek 33 is suddenly far less attractive...

With both Arsenal and Man City blanking next gameweek, Jiayang’s and Jacob’s teams—both of which are tripled up on each of the two clubs—look a little worse for wear. The good news? We’re both stockpiled on free transfers. The question: how many of those free transfers should we use for the upcoming blank, if the plan is to Wildcard the following gameweek? The answer (we think): all of them. Tune...

One of the good things about the FPL Fortress is that even if Jacob and Jiayang both have rotten gameweeks individually, the rottenness does not necessarily seep into the quality of our episode—in fact, one might even argue that the worse our teams are doing at any given point, the more compelling and useful our discussion. To that end, Jiayang has realized that he currently only has a dismally lo...

The second half of the Wolves vs. Arsenal game was being played during the recording of this episode. When Gabriel provided an assist for Hincapié, Jacob and Jiayang—who had both triple-captained him—exclaimed with joy. Jiayang, in particular, manifested that Gabriel would finish the gameweek with at least 12 points. Five minutes later, Hugo Bueno wiped out Arsenal’s clean sheet, bringing Gabriel...

Following a gameweek where the average points was finally over 50, we now turn our attention to Double Gameweek 26, which has just been confirmed with Arsenal’s victory over Chelsea in the EFL Cup semi-final. What, then, is the best Arsenal triple-up—and is there an “objective” answer, or is it more so team dependent? To what extent should managers modify their teams if they already have a trio of...

After the sixth successive gameweek with an average score of fewer than 50 points, it’s hard not to feel a little discouraged; but still, we must trudge on with the hope that someday in the near future, we’ll hop back over the fence to the good side of variance. Michael Carrick’s spirited Manchester United narrowly beat Arsenal, who, it must be said, have failed to take full advantage of their tra...

In an otherwise not-so-exciting gameweek, Manchester United defeated their Mancunian rivals 2-0, marking a fourth blank in five matches for Haaland, a fifth blank in as many matches for O’Reilly, and a sixth successive blank for Foden. Liverpool are experiencing a slump, drawing their fourth match in a row—with Ekitiké bagging only a solitary assist after playing a total of 265 minutes at Anfield...

On this fine New Year’s Day, Jacob and Jiayang gather with their friend Nicolas to watch some fine Premier League fixtures—but unfortunately, although the company was very fine indeed, the fixtures were not so. Despite watching a combined 270 minutes of soccer, we witnessed not a single goal that was not ruled out for offside. The drab results reflect a recent slump in FPL points across the board,...

Jacob has concluded his adventures in Oceania and Asia, and both of us are back in New York to hunker down for the Festive Fixtures. (And to closely follow AFCON with a keen eye toward any innovations in neck tension relief. Looking at you, Patson!) Hugo Ekitiké is on the forefront of most FPL managers’ minds, and for good reason—fixtures don’t get any juicier than Wolves at home. The perfect way...

It’s perhaps fitting that the international break would fill our teams with flags. But even though I would consider myself an amateur vexillologist—at one point, I was able to identify nearly all the national flags in the world—I’m not loving the yellow flags that have appeared next to many of my players. The injury of most consequence seems to be Gabriel’s—with him set to be out for 1–2 months, w...

Thanks to Ndiaye and Xhaka respectively, Jacob and Jiayang both enjoyed successful Bench Boosts. Our overall solid gameweeks, however, owed little thanks to our starting midfielders, none of whom got a single return. Which leads to the question: are we in the midst of a midfielder drought? Five out of the top ten highest-scoring midfielders are either box-to-box or defensive midfielders, with Rice...

I can’t remember the last time a Manchester United player other than Bruno Fernandes was a viable FPL asset, but Cunha and especially Mbeumo finally appear to be hitting their stride. Could it be time to invest? In the striker department, Haaland is of course unnegotiable currently; Mateta isn’t too far off, having racked up a whopping 7.99 xG in just nine games—only marginally less than Haaland h...

We have been building up to this moment for a few weeks now: Jacob has decided to activate his Wildcard! We work our way through the options from the bottom up, going through the locks and then discussing the shortlisted players for each position. Given the healthy selection of attractive defenders available at the moment, the question is instead how many defenders at each price point Jacob wants....

Gameweek 6 brought with it many juicy fixtures, whether that be Man City’s 5-1 demolition of Burnley (Haaland Triple Captainers rejoice), Crystal Palace’s dismantling of Liverpool, or Arsenal’s dogged comeback against Newcastle. But none of these events can rival the miracle that was Aston Villa’s victory against Fulham and Watkins getting on the scoresheet (Jiayang rejoices). Looking ahead to Gam...

Amidst all the recent talk surrounding the impact of DEFCON on the game, the other rule changes this season have taken a backseat. As a reminder, managers will be given five free transfers in Gameweek 16 in light of players departing for the Africa Cup of Nations. This means that managers will have plenty of transfers to use during this period, seemingly rendering moot the previously popular strat...

Aston Villa are the only team in England's top seven divisions to still be without a goal at this stage in the season. And Jiayang, along with nearly two million FPL managers, has owned Ollie Watkins since Gameweek 1. Villa have given us no signs of hope—so should we keep the faith ahead of three juicy fixtures? Or rather, is Villa now the juicy fixture for the three other teams? On the flip s...

Wake up, wake up, the first international break of the season is over! First, we refresh our memories of what happened in Gameweek 3, including Liverpool’s tight victory over Arsenal, West Ham’s upset over Nottingham Forest, and Manchester United’s last-gasp win against Burnley (which contributed to Jiayang’s somewhat successful spontaneous Free Hit that featured all three of Bruno, Mbeumo, and Cu...

Let’s face it: it’s not been a particularly bountiful start to the season, and Gameweek 2 was especially unforgiving to Jacob and Jiayang. How can managers in similar positions turn things around? Could it be time to activate an early Wildcard, or do we not have enough information yet to be confident in our selections? Or should we just all play our Free Hits and triple up on Burnley attackers ahe...

In the blink of an eye, summer is practically over and we’re less than two weeks away from the start of Gameweek 1! In this first episode of our sixth season, Jacob and Jiayang finally get the gears turning again in order to assemble a first draft together. In the process, we talk through key considerations such as ideal premium structure, mid-priced and budget enablers, and the potential impact o...

Dear listeners, it’s that time of year again—welcome to the final episode of our 2024/25 season, our illustrious Season Review! We recognize that Gameweek 38 in fact happened over three weeks ago and apologize for keeping you waiting until now—but this also means that we’ve had more time to mull over what’s happened this season, allowing us to refine our reflections to deeper profundities. We star...