Best FPL Wildcard Team for Gameweek 9

While Gameweek 9 is the next deadline, the squad above is the model's best legal fifteen for it: two goalkeepers, five defenders, five midfielders and three forwards, no more than three from any club, inside £100m. The starting eleven, the bench order and the captain are marked on it. It is built from live prices and the projections for the next six gameweeks, the horizon a wildcard squad actually lives in, and it is the same build as the best FPL team page, so the two always agree.

Below it, the wildcard board ranks the top four at every position over the same six gameweeks, with the fixture run behind each. If you would rather build your own squad than copy the model's, that board is the shortlist to build it from.

Play it when three or more of your starters need replacing, or when a run of fixtures is about to turn for several teams at once — fixing either with free transfers would take weeks, or hits you cannot afford. Do not play it to chase last weekend's points: a wildcard buys a squad for the next six gameweeks, so judge every name on that horizon.

If only one or two players are the problem, keep it. Banked free transfers do the same job for nothing, and you do not lose them when you eventually play the chip — saved free transfers carry through a wildcard to the following gameweek.

Before you confirm a wildcard, check every name against this table: players whose FPL flag was added after the last kick-off of the previous gameweek, most-owned first. A 75% flag is a doubt rather than an injury, but a wildcard is the one transfer you cannot undo for weeks, and flags are usually clarified at the press conferences in the two days before the deadline.

A wildcard squad is bought for a run of fixtures, not for one game. Every club below is ordered by the difficulty of its next five fixtures by FPL's own ratings, easiest first, with its league position alongside. Load up where a good team meets a kind run; go light where the colours turn red.

Copying the model's fifteen exactly is rarely the best answer for your team. Keep the players you already own who would make the squad anyway: selling and rebuying costs you the price rises you have already banked, because you keep only half of any rise. Then fill the gaps from the board, position by position.

The bench is the cheapest four who can still play, because every pound spent there is a pound not spent on the eleven that score. If the wildcard frees money, spend it on the starting eleven.

A wildcard played in Gameweek 9 is your first of the season. The first wildcard can be played from Gameweek 2 until the Gameweek 19 deadline and does not carry over: if it has not been used by then, it is gone. The second becomes available after the Gameweek 19 deadline and lasts to the end of the season.

Only one chip can be played in a gameweek, and on a wildcard every transfer that gameweek is free — including any you had already made before activating it. It cannot be cancelled once confirmed.