The Optimal FPL Wildcard Guide for 2024/25

What is the Wildcard in FPL?

The Wildcard is one of the four Chips you can play in FPL.

It enables you to do unlimited transfers for one gameweek , and it removes any points deduction from confirmed transfers, so it’s very powerful! Make sure that you think carefully about when to play your Wildcard, it could define the rest of your season.

If you’re considering Wildcarding, check out our FREE Planning Tool to help you make the best decisions possible!

How many Wildcards do you get?

Overall, you get two Wildcards – one in the first half of the season and one in the second half of the season. Make sure that you use yours before the second Wildcard becomes available- it’s not possible to save them up!

When do I get my second Wildcard in 2024/25?

You get your second Wildcard on the 29th of December, after the deadline for Gameweek 19 has passed!

How do I use the Wildcard Chip?

You’ll find the Wildcard chip in your team selection screen or when making a transfer! Confirm that you want to play it and you’re good to go. But be careful about activating it by accident, your Wildcard cannot be cancelled!

When should I use the Wildcard in 24/25?

The truth is that when you should use your Wildcard very much depends on your team. A good rule of thumb is that if you have 5 or more players that you really do not want in your team anymore, and are out of free transfers, it might be time to play your Wildcard!

Whichever tactic you’re considering, check out our FREE Transfer Planner to see which will be best for your team! Here are some more tactics you can consider when Wildcarding:

Target Fixture Swings

It can be a good idea to Wildcard when there is a swing in fixtures for good teams. You can keep an eye on these using a fixture ticker such as ours . Whether you choose our ticker or not – make sure that whichever you do use allows you to differentiate between attacking and defending difficulty of fixtures! Some teams are strong in attack and weak in defence, so just giving them one rating is not sufficient.

A swing in fixtures means that a team that had bad fixtures for a certain amount of time has good fixtures going forward.

This is an opportunity for you as an engaged FPL manager: a lot of people will not yet have the players of the teams that just had a run of bad fixtures, so if you can get a lot of them in before the non-wildcard playing crowd catches up, you can make massive gains in rank!

Target Double / Blank Gameweeks

Another classic Wildcard Strategy is to plan around Double and Blank Gamweeks, often in combination with the Bench Boost Chip.

This season there are three Gameweeks left which will likely contain doubles: 32, 33, and 36.

Blanks (gameweeks where some teams do not have a fixture) will likely be Gameweeks 29 and 34.

We will not know for sure which teams will double until closer to the day, but especially 33 and 36 will be prime targets for your Wildcard strategy.

One way to approach this is to Wildcard in 33 and set up your team in such a way that in Gameweek 36 your team is well set up for a Bench Boost. Well set up meaning that you have 15 players in your team which will double.

Wildcard vs Free Hit – which one should I play?

Whether you should play the Wildcard or Free Hit Chip depends mainly on what you are trying to achieve with your chip.

If your team is in desperate need for a rework, for example due to injuries or just players being out of form, then the Wildcard would be the best choice.

If however you are generally happy with your team, but there is one particular Gameweek where you either want to take advantage of good fixtures of players not in your team, or some players in your team are blanking (maybe due to a blank Gameweek) then the Free Hit would be the best choice!