Welcome back to this week's off the bench podcast from the Premier League.

I'm Lee from FPL family.

And I'm Sam, the other half of FPL family. Well, what a nice surprise. The FPL family together on an off-the-bench podcast for the very first time. And we have to say, before we get started, get well soon to my usual partner in crime, as Phillips, yellow flagged. Right now, Sam, yellow flagged, might be orange. I'm sure he's going to be fit to play sooner rather than later. But it is an appropriate week for us to appear on off the bench together for the first time, Sam, because our sides, Liverpool and Spurs, met each other on Sunday afternoon, which we'll get to later on. How did Game Week 30 go for you though? It was a really good week actually

for the first time in a little while, 73. Everything that could kind of go right went right. Debravka

had to come off the bench because Roos is injured. Well, that was nice for a six-pointer. Obviously,

like most of the game had Gabrielle Sennesse and with a 10-pointer was really lovely, having benched

him the previous week and felt quite annoyed at myself for that. Had Bruno as captain, Sir Bosley with his 11-point or I didn't even mind that goal against Spurs when it brought me and a nice 11-point return in FPL. You didn't celebrate it, did you? But you were kind of like in your head, you were like, oh, good for FPL. I was thinking there's worse things that could have happened here, at least the bottom FPL points out of it. And then Tiago with a goal in the Monday night of football. So, yeah, up nearly 600K in rank, a really, really nice big green error. I think it was like 26% change on my rank overall. So very, very happy with that. How about you? How did they go?

Good. Yeah. Not as good as you, but still pretty good. 62. I was pretty happy with

Gabriel with, you know, what seems to be the kind of standard nine-pointer now. Like, what a good

asset he's been for us this season. And despite the fact that they blanking game week 31, I don't

see me selling Gabriel. I think I'm going to hold him through, probably just bench him next week. Hilling with the eight points of a Bruggan seven, Tiago six, and then Bruno Fernandez as captain with the 20. So, yeah, I feel like I got the captaincy right and then had, you know, a little bit of unexpected. I wouldn't say luck, but I wasn't expecting for Bruggan to keep a clean sheet there. But a seven points was very welcome.

So 62, that puts me up to about 120 odd K, 125 odd K, something like that. So I think that's my seventh green arrow in a row. So I'm just waiting for the, I'm waiting for the luck to run out. Do you what I mean? But it seemed to be on a bit of a run here. But of course, as we both know, we're about to come into a pretty, well, let's just call it a fun time in FPL. The next few weeks are going to sort the engaged FPL managers from those that kind of casually play the game, aren't they? I mean, we've got blank game week 31 coming up. we're going to have, we're going to have doubles, we're going to have all sorts going on chip season as well.

I'm ready to... aren't they? I mean, we've got blank game week 31 coming up. We're going to have doubles.

We're going to have all sorts going on chip season as well. I'm ready to attack it. I don't know about you. I feel ready for it. Yeah. I think it's interesting, isn't it? Because we're on very different strategies. Obviously, I've already played my wild cards. So I'm kind of managing around with free transfers, making sure that I've got enough players for this week.

You haven't played your wild card so you can be maybe a little bit more...

Roaner. around with free transfers, making sure that I've got enough players for this week. You haven't played your wild card so you can be maybe a little bit more rogue this week going into, I

suppose, because you can always bring players back in on wildcard, whereas I'll have to plan for

that. So yeah, it's definitely going to be the part of the season where all the fun begins, I think,

and you can really have big game weeks that go well for you and ones that don't, if you don't have your strategy right, particularly in terms of the chips that you're going to use over the coming weeks. Yeah, totally true. Totally true. Well, speaking of the fun beginning, and I use fun loosely with this game, Liverpool 1, Spurs 1. I think we need to get this one out the way, don't we? We start with the FPL family derby. Liverpool 1.67 XG created, so, you know, not bad,

but zero big chances. Like, I don't remember Vicaria really making a very good save. In actual

fact, probably should have saved, should have done better with the Sibosly free kick, in my

opinion. However, Spurs, two big chances. And actually, a stat I saw on X actually over the weekend was that Spurs covered nine kilometres more than Liverpool here. You outrun us by 15%. Now, that's just, I don't have to be careful. I've got to keep my call here when we have this conversation Liverpool, because I was so frustrated with the game, as you know, because we were watching it together. Just, I don't know, the lethargy, the kind of lack of effort, the lack of intensity from Liverpool was kind of stark, really. But let's talk about, obviously, an FPL perspective. The big news, I suppose, coming into this game was Liverpool

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