Gameweek 36 represents the last double gameweek of the Fantasy Premier League season, with Manchester City and Crystal Palace each scheduled to play twice. According to BBC Sport's team of the week column, that fixture quirk makes heavy investment in City players close to essential for managers still chasing points in the run-in.
BBC Sport's selection highlights Rayan Cherki as the standout pick of the week, with the publication naming him the headline choice for those looking to capitalise on City's double. The column's advice points toward tripling up on City assets where squad budgets allow — a straightforward enough calculation when one club accounts for two of the remaining fixtures on the board.
Crystal Palace's double also offers options for managers who may have already exhausted their City allocation or used their chips in earlier gameweeks. Palace's two fixtures give their attacking players a genuine points ceiling that single-gameweek sides simply cannot match, and BBC Sport's coverage suggests their assets are worth considering alongside — rather than instead of — the City contingent.
For context, double gameweeks carry outsized importance in FPL's final stretch because they effectively compress two rounds of scoring into one. Managers holding a Free Hit chip, if unused, may find this the most logical moment to deploy it, freeing them to build a squad almost entirely around City and Palace without the long-term squad consequences that would ordinarily follow. The piece does not specify chip strategy in detail, but the underlying logic is well established across the FPL community.
With only a handful of gameweeks remaining after this one, the margin for error in selection decisions is narrowing. Managers trailing their mini-league rivals in particular will feel the pressure to chase the ceiling this week rather than protect their rank with a conservative bench. Gameweek 36 is, in that sense, one of the last moments in the season where a single bold call — or the failure to make one — can meaningfully shift a final standing.