Did you captain Saka in blank gameweek 28? Then you probably saw a big fat green FPL arrow last week. Did you not captain Saka for his 18-point haul? Then chances are you are looking to the upcoming gameweek 29 to recuperate some of your rank, and what better week to do so? With gameweek 29, after all, we have come to the biggest double gameweek of the 2022/23 Premier League season. No less than twelve sides will have two fixtures this round and while very few doubles actually stand out in terms of fixture ease, the doubling teams do include the likes of Brighton, Chelsea and Liverpool.
| DOUBLING TEAM | FIXTURE 1 | FIXTURE 2 |
| Aston Villa | Chelsea (away) | Leicester (away) |
| Bournemouth | Fulham (home) | Brighton (home) |
| Brentford | Brighton (away) | Man United (away) |
| Brighton | Brentford (home) | Bournemouth (away) |
| Chelsea | Aston Villa (home) | Liverpool (home) |
| Leeds | Arsenal (away) | Nott. Forest (home) |
| Leicester | Crystal Palace (away) | Aston Villa (home) |
| Liverpool | Manchester City (away) | Chelsea (away) |
| Manchester United | Newcastle (away) | Brentford (home) |
| Newcastle | Man United (home) | West Ham (away) |
| Nottingham Forest | Wolves (home) | Leeds (away) |
| West Ham | Southampton (home) | Newcastle (home) |
Don’t forget, the deadline for gameweek 29 is set at 11h00 (UK time) on Saturday, April 1st, 2023.
Most transferred in/transferred out players (as per March 30th, 2023)
| TRANSFERS OUT | TRANSFERS IN | POSSIBLE REASONS | |
| GK | Pope (NEW), Ward (LEI), Sanchez (BRI) | De Gea (MUN), Raya (BRE), Steele (BRI) | DGW29, Ward and Sanchez losing spot |
| DEF | Saliba (ARS), Zinchenko (ARS), Tarkowski (EVE) | Shaw (MUN), Estupiñan (BRI), Chilwell (CHE) | DGW29, Saliba injury doubt |
| MID | Almiron (NEW), Odegaard (ARS), Rashford (MUN) | Mitoma (BRI), Fernandes (MUN), March (BRI) | DGW29, Rashford injury doubt |
| FOR | Kane (TOT), Haaland (MCI), Mitrovic (FUL) | Isak (NEW), Haaland (MCI), Watkins (AST) | DGW29, Haaland injury doubt, Mitro suspension |
Premium pick
Not many of the more popular premium fantasy assets (i.e. those priced at £10.0m or higher) are doubling this week. As a matter of fact, Mo Salah is the only one with a double and that’s a pair of away games at the Etihad and Stamford Bridge. We are therefore slightly deviating our approach for this week’s stand-out premium fantasy asset, as we’ve gone with Bruno Fernandes (£9.6m). Besides having one of the more favourable double-ups this week with Newcastle away followed by Brentford at home, the Man United midfielder also has Everton at home in gameweek 30 and Nottingham Forest away in gameweek 31 (before blanking in GW32). A lot has been said about the impact of Casemiro’s suspension on Bruno’s positioning and FPL output, but that mostly goes for the defensive stats. Attack-wise, there is really very little between a United side with or without Casemiro, which in turn is good news for those managers considering Bruno. What you get with the Portuguese playmaker is a nailed-on attacking United asset who also has penalties in his locker, with a good to very good run of fixtures in the short and medium term. Goals might not come in extreme abundance for the Red Devils this double, but if you’re looking for a Man United attack-looking midfielder (and even potential captaincy option) besides Rashford, Bruno could very well be your man.
Non-premium pick
We’re sticking with the doubling midfielders for our non-premium fantasy pick for gameweek 29. To say Leicester City’s season so far has been unstable and quite frankly disappointing, would be a bit of an understatement. At the moment of writing, after 27 league games, the Foxes find themselves in a worrying 17th place, a mere 1 point above the relegation zone. On top of that, current 18th placed West Ham have a game in hand. In other words, Leicester very badly need points and for that, most of the eyes are on James Maddison (£8.2m). It’s true that the Leicester talisman has failed to deliver of late, recording just a single assist since his 11-point haul against Spurs back in gameweek 23, but his underlying stats definitely put him on the watchlist for the upcoming double. Amongst the Foxes, no player has created more chances or big chances, and no player gave more key passes, than the England international, but that’s not all. In the entire league, Maddison ranks fifth for chances created, second for big chances created and fourth for key passes. To further his appeal for the GW29 double, he is also as nailed-on as they come, performs a central role in more or less all of his side’s attacking moves and he is on penalties. He’s been underwhelming recently, but it feels like he’s due a decent haul soon, perhaps in this season’s biggest double gameweek.
The budget enabler
We can’t remember the last time a single Premier League side provided as many outstanding budget options for such an extended stretch of a season as Brighton do at the moment. The abundance of value, in their midfield especially, has fantasy managers scrambling to determine which options will deliver the most points every week. In reality, there is very little between Kaoru Mitoma, Alexis Mac Allister and Solly March (£5.1m), but seeing as we had to pick one, the latter is our stand-out budget enabler for double gameweek 29. Contrary to Mitoma (vs Uruguay and Colombia in Japan) and Mac Allister (vs Panama and Curaçao in Argentina), March did not have national team duties during the international break, which has us thinking that he’ll be turning up top fit and ready to go when Brighton kick off against Brentford on Saturday. While we can see some minute management for his Japanese and Argentinian teammates over the double and beyond, we don’t really see a reason for manager Roberto de Zerbi to do the same with Solly. He’s rested and perhaps more importantly, he’s in the form of his life, having scored 6 goals and given 6 assists already this season. On top of that, March partakes in many of Brighton’s set-pieces as well. With a double against Brentford (home) and Bournemouth (away) coming up, the attacking midfielder/winger could be up for this fourth double-digit haul of the season in gameweek 29.
The differential
Generally, we don’t really like to include flagged fantasy assets in our gameweek previews, but we’ve made an exception for Kai Havertz (£7.6m) this time. The German international left his national team’s training camp during the international break due to alleged illness, reported by German media to be a flu. In any case, the Chelsea forward returned to London immediately and has been recovering there since then. We expect him to be fully fit for Chelsea’s first game of the double versus Aston Villa at Stamford Bridge and we’ve therefore included him in our gameweek preview as our differential recommendation. Havertz, while rarely explosive in terms of FPL points, has been ticking along quite nicely of late with a goal in each of his last two league games (9 FPL points vs Leicester in GW27, 8 points vs Everton in GW28) and he now has a double of home games coming up against Villa and Liverpool. It’s not the easiest double by any account, but we definitely see points potential for the German striker. The spot up front for Chelsea looks his to lose at the moment and due to his composure he is also on penalties, which only increases his appeal. As a result, his current ownership of just 5.9% makes him a very interesting differential fantasy pick for double gameweek 29.
The fiso forum topic has more FPL GW29 transfer and tactics discussions.
The (vice-)captaincy
One of the many very interesting aspects of big double gameweeks is that they usually offer a much wider range of captaincy candidates than a regular gameweek. We expect the captaincy to be relatively spread out for double gameweek 29, though at the same time, we can see Marcus Rashford dominating the picks as well. He stands out for us anyway, which is why we are putting the armband on him this weekend, barring any negative news regarding his international break injury coming out before the GW29 deadline, of course.
If for whatever reason you’re not going with Rashford, there are fortunately plenty of other candidates that can handsomely reward your trust in them this week. There is Rashford’s teammate Bruno Fernandes, Leicester’s main man James Maddison, or Chelsea’s Kai Havertz, for example. The Brighton midfielders Mitoma, Mac Allister and March are also regularly mentioned in the captaincy debated leading up to the DGW29 deadline. More outfield captaincy picks include Mo Salah, due to his extremely unfavourable double versus Man City and Chelsea (both away), Danny Ings for West Ham’s very favourable double on paper (home games vs Southampton and Newcastle) and single gameweek player Bukayo Saka (home against Leeds) after his career-high 18-point haul in gameweek 28.