How to Approach Every Gameweek in Last Man Standing

Step 1: Open the Full Fixture List — Not Just Your Options

The first thing to do when a new gameweek opens is not look at your available teams and find a pick. It's to look at the complete fixture list for the next four to five rounds and understand the landscape.

Which rounds look difficult — lots of tight fixtures, cup weeks, international breaks? Which rounds look easy — a run of home games for strong sides, a relegated team doing the rounds? Where are the "must survive" rounds, and which rounds can you afford to take a small risk to preserve something bigger for later?

This big-picture view shapes everything that follows. Without it, you're just reacting week to week. With it, you're making decisions with context.

Step 2: Audit Your Remaining Team Pool

Before evaluating this week's options, take stock of what teams you have left. Divide them roughly into tiers:

• Tier 1Elite teams you're saving for hard rounds — City, Liverpool, Arsenal. High win rate, reliable even away from home. Use only when you genuinely need them.
• Tier 2Solid sides with good home records — Chelsea, Spurs, Newcastle, Villa. Comfortable home picks but riskier away. The bulk of your mid-season picks.
• Tier 3Teams that win fairly often if the fixture suits them — Brighton, Brentford, Wolves. Fine in good home fixtures, unreliable away.
• Tier 4Bottom-half and relegation-threatened sides. Only viable in very specific circumstances — a winnable home fixture, strong form, weak opponents.

Knowing your inventory tells you how careful to be this week. If you still have six Tier 1 and 2 teams available and it's round eight, you can afford to use a weaker option and preserve the good ones. If you're down to two Tier 2 teams in round 15, you need to be strategic about when you deploy them.

Step 3: Filter This Week's Fixtures by Tier

Now cross-reference your available teams against this week's fixtures. Pull out any team in Tier 1 or 2 who has a home fixture against a bottom-half opponent. These are your "safe" picks. Note them, but don't automatically use them yet.

Then check: do any Tier 3 teams have an unusually good fixture this week — a weak away side at home, a bottom-three team playing at their ground? If yes, that's potentially a smart use of a lower-tier team, preserving your Tier 1s and 2s for when you really need them.

Step 4: Check the Draw Rule for Your Competition

This is a quick sanity check, but one that changes your short-list significantly. If draws eliminate in your competition, remove any team from your candidates whose recent form includes a lot of draws, or who are facing an opponent likely to sit deep and grind for a point.

Premier League bottom-half home sides facing top-six away opponents are the classic draw scenario. The home side is motivated to avoid a heavy defeat, the away side is happy to take a point. These fixtures produce draws at a disproportionate rate. In draw-eliminates competitions, they are picks to avoid regardless of how comfortable the home side looks on paper.

Step 5: Check Form and Team News

You've narrowed your options to three or four candidates. Now do a quick form check on each. Specifically, you're looking for two things:

Recent results: A team on a five-game winning run, even a mid-table one, is more dangerous than their position suggests. Conversely, a top-six side who have drawn three in a row might be going through a rough patch — worth noting, if not necessarily a reason to avoid them.

Team news: Check for injuries to key players. A striker who scores 60% of a team's goals being absent fundamentally changes the expected outcome. A defensive injury matters less, but can make a game tighter than expected. Premier League manager press conferences on Thursday and Friday are your best source.

Step 6: Look at the Pick Distribution

If your competition shows how many players have backed each team (Kwick Picks shows this on the Scores tab), review it before committing to your pick. This adds one more layer to your decision.

If 80% of the field backs the same team and they win, nothing changes. If you back the same team as 80% of the field and they draw or lose, everyone loses together — possibly triggering a rollover if it's late in the season. A rollover resets the game, but it means you've wasted a pick.

Genuine contrarian value comes when you can identify a credible pick that the field is underrating. This isn't about being different for its own sake — it's about asking whether the field's consensus pick is actually as reliable as everyone assumes.

Step 7: Make the Pick and Submit Early

Once you've worked through the above, pick the team that best balances this week's reliability against the long-term cost of using them. Submit immediately. Don't leave it until the last minute — fixture changes, manager sackings, and simple forgetfulness have eliminated more players than bad picks have.

You can change your pick any time before the deadline if new information emerges — a major injury confirmed on Friday, a team selection that changes the complexion of the game. But the default should be to submit early and only change if something significant happens.

Special Case: The Hard Round

Every season has them — the rounds where there are no obvious picks and every option looks risky. Maybe it's a cup week with heavily rotated squads. Maybe it's the round after you've burned all your reliable sides. Maybe the fixtures just haven't fallen kindly.

For hard rounds, the approach changes slightly:

• →If you have a Tier 1 team in reserve, this might be the round to use them. A hard round is exactly what you saved them for.
• →Check if multiple weaker options are available with reasonable-looking home fixtures. Sometimes a cluster of Tier 3 teams all have decent games in the same week.
• →Accept that the field is struggling too. If everyone finds it hard, the expected elimination rate is high — meaning a rollover is possible regardless of what you pick. Sometimes the right play is to take your least-bad option and accept the variance.

Special Case: The Easy Round

Some rounds have three or four genuinely comfortable-looking options. These are the rounds to be most strategic — because it's tempting to grab the obvious pick when actually you should be using something you can afford to lose.

In an easy round, almost everyone survives regardless of which safe option they pick. The competitive advantage doesn't come from surviving this round — it comes from what you've preserved for the hard round six weeks later. Easy rounds are the rounds to use Tier 3 and 4 picks, and hold Tier 1 and 2 in reserve.

The Framework in Summary