FPL – When Was The Bench Boost Chip Used By The Top 1000 Players Last Season?
Here at The Stats Zone, we are producing a series of articles looking at the chip strategies used by the top 1000 players from the 2018-19 FPL season.
This article focuses on the BENCH BOOST chip.
A huge 86.7% of players from the top 1000 chose to use their bench boost chip in Double Gameweek 35. With most FPL players saving their chips throughout the season in order to prepare for the blank and double gameweeks, the fact this chip was predominantly used in DGW35 indicates that, in the 2018-19 season at least, that the bench boost chip was the most popular chip of choice for a double gameweek.
Those players who favoured this strategy had the likes of Arsenal, Brighton, Man City, Man Utd, Southampton, Tottenham, Watford and Wolves play twice. Big points were scored from both Man City and Wolves assets. Two clean sheets for City saw their defensive players once again reach double digits. Ederson (15), Aymeric Laporte (15) and Kyle Walker (13) all scored heavily. For Wolves it was their full-backs Matt Doherty (13) and Jonny Castro (17) doing the damage as both kept a clean sheet and either scored (Doherty) or registered two assists (Jonny).
The high points scored by defensive players in DGW35 really illustrate the value of having defenders likely to keep clean sheets in the double gameweeks. With two opportunities to record a shutout, only one is required to give their FPL manager a good points return. Defenders that also consistently record attacking returns are therefore at a premium for these gameweeks.
Following DGW35, around 20 players choose to use their bench boost either DGW32, or one of the last three gameweeks of the season – GW36, GW37, GW38.
For more of our 2018-19 chip strategy analysis of the top 1000 players, see below:
