Fantasy football tips: Nick Pope over David de Gea in goal?

First things first — don't forget it's a 18:30 GMT deadline on Friday to make your transfers and pick your team ahead of Southampton vs Norwich, which kicks off gameweek 27.

Secondly, and you'll probably have noticed this already, Liverpool, Chelsea and Arsenal don't have a fixture in gameweek 27 but Burnley have two, with their games at Crystal Palace and at home to Leicester.

Thirdly the way you approach gameweek 27 may well be based on whether or not you played your wildcard like I did in gameweek 26, or whether you very gratefully accepted 84 points from Mohamed Salah as your triple captain in an incredibly high-scoring week.

If you did then congratulations, but if you're a wildcarder all hope is not lost, although the next three gameweeks are likely to be pivotal for you.

The reason managers went for the wildcard last week was due to the announcement of double gameweeks 28 and 29 last Friday and the opportunity it presents to attack them by using our chips.

A popular strategy will now be:

In 29 Salah involved in away games against Brighton and Arsenal — not as fruitful seemingly as home games against Norwich and Leeds but with the Egyptian you just never know.

If you've set up your wildcard squad properly then you should also be covered for blank gameweek 30 when we currently only have three fixtures scheduled on FA Cup quarter-final weekend.

However, if you've not gone the wildcard route just yet then I think you might be best to hold onto it until after gameweek 30 with a view to using the bench boost chip in gameweek 36 which is expected to be a bumper double.

There might be a temptation to play the wildcard in gameweek 28, particularly if you know your rival managers are using their Bench Boost or a Free Hit, but I