FPL Chips: When To Play Your Wildcard, Bench Boost And Triple Captain — 23 Sep
Triple Captain: The Route Runs Through Gameweek 7
Haaland at home to Ipswich in Gameweek 7. Our model puts the expected Triple Captain return at just under 30 points — the biggest single-week haul on the map between now and the first-half chip deadline at Gameweek 19. That is not a marginal edge over the alternatives. It is a different altitude entirely.
Survey the terrain. Saka hosts Leeds this week, Gameweek 6, and it is a perfectly pleasant fixture — but our projections make it worth around 14 points with the armband tripled. That is a decent captain week, not a chip week. Burning Triple Captain there is spending your best pass through the mountains on a gentle hill.
The genuine rival is Palmer at Stamford Bridge against Manchester United in Gameweek 9, projected at roughly 22 points with the chip. It is a strong window — Palmer at home is exactly the profile this chip wants, a premium with the keys to everything Chelsea create. But it sits a clear seven or eight points below the Haaland route, and a home fixture against United carries more weather than City hosting Ipswich at the Etihad. When the summit is visible, you do not detour to a lower peak.
The honest caveat: any single gameweek can blank. Haaland could hit the bar three times and walk off with two points tripled; that is the nature of a one-week chip, and no projection removes it. There is also the small matter of minutes — the chip demands near-certain 80-plus, so if City's team news ahead of Gameweek 7 suggests rotation, the plan adjusts to Palmer in Gameweek 9 as the designated fallback. That is why you map two routes, not one.
But planning beats hoarding. Every first-half chip expires at Gameweek 19, and managers who sit on Triple Captain "waiting for the perfect week" routinely end up playing it in a panic against mid-table opposition in Gameweek 18. The perfect week is already on the map. It has a name and a date.
The call: hold the chip through Gameweek 6 — Saka captains normally against Leeds — and play Triple Captain on Haaland at home to Ipswich in Gameweek 7. If City's team news turns the weather, the fallback route is Palmer against United in Gameweek 9. Nothing beyond that window justifies waiting.