FPL Injuries: What a 75% Flag Actually Costs You

Five of the most-owned players in the game go into Gameweek 6 carrying a 75% flag. Every one of them sets off the same scramble: sell, bench, or hold.

I think the scramble is aimed at the wrong players.

A flag describes one weekend. What quietly drains a season is a chance of not playing that never goes away, and the game puts no flag on that at all.

What does a 75% chance of playing mean in FPL?

It means the game has told you a doubt exists and given it a rough size. It does not tell you what the doubt is worth in points, which is the only part you can act on.

So I priced it. For each player below I have taken the points that his chance of absence removes from his eight-gameweek projection. Call it the absence tax.

A nailed starter still pays one. Gibbs-White (£8.0m), Nott'm Forest, has played 450 of a possible 450 minutes and his tax is 1.3 across the eight. Haaland (£15.6m), Man City, is 1.8. That is the floor, and the floor is not zero.

The absence tax, flagged and unflagged

Flags as of 2 October. Projections are The Algorithm's, as of 1 October, covering Gameweeks 6 to 13.

The five flags are a knee for João Pedro, a muscular problem for Palmer, a thigh for Isak, an ankle for Semenyo and an unspecified one for Rice. Our own read agrees with the game on all five: it puts their chance of recording no minutes in Gameweek 6 between 24% and 30%.

So the flags are not wrong. They are just not the ranking.

The biggest absence tax here carries no flag

Raya (£6.1m), Arsenal, has played every minute of the season, 450 of 450. Nobody has flagged him. His tax is 4.4 over the eight, the largest in this group and bigger than any of the five flagged names.

The fixture sharpens it rather than softening it. Arsenal host Leeds in Gameweek 6 and our model gives them a 50.3% clean sheet, the best in the round. The best clean-sheet fixture on the board belongs to the player whose availability our model is least confident about.

I am not telling you to sell him. His 29.9 is still the top of the goalkeeper board, tax included. I am telling you that if you are agonising over a 75% flag while holding Raya without a second thought, you have the two risks the wrong way round.

Cherki (£7.8m), Man City, is the one I would actually act on. He has 302 of a possible 450 minutes and 34 points, so the ceiling is genuine. His tax is 3.6, identical to Palmer's, and nothing in the game marks him. At 28.4% owned, a lot of managers are carrying a Palmer-sized risk they have never priced.

Ødegaard (£6.8m), Arsenal, is the same shape one notch down: 377 minutes, 19.8% owned, a tax of 3.0.

So should you sell a flagged player?

Mostly no, and the table says why. Across the five, the flag costs between 2.6 and 3.9 points spread over eight gameweeks. A hit costs 4 immediately.

Selling Isak to dodge a 3.9-point tax, and paying 4 for the privilege, is a losing trade before anyone has kicked a ball. His 35.9 and Palmer's 36.7 are both top-ten totals with the tax already deducted. Those are not damaged assets.

Act when the flag lands on a player you were lukewarm about anyway. Rice reads 31.1 on 20 points and 0.81 xGI in 411 minutes. The flag is not the problem there, the output is, and the flag is just the excuse to do what you should have done already.

The real instruction is the other one. Price the players nobody has flagged. Cherki at 302 minutes and Raya at a rising absence tax cost more over the eight than most of the names currently causing panic, and neither will ever show up on an injury table.

You can check every projection here against our free predicted points table, which covers all eight gameweeks and updates daily.

FAQ

Does a 75% flag mean he will definitely play?

No. It is the game's own stated chance, not a guarantee, and it can move in either direction up to the deadline. Our read sits close to it, putting the chance of no minutes for these five between 24% and 30%.

Do I still get points if a flagged player does not play?

Only if your bench covers him. An outfield substitute comes on only if he played himself and the formation stays legal, and autosubs are applied at the end of the gameweek, so an early blank is never rescued mid-round. How the bench and autosubs actually work has the full order of operations.

Should I take a hit to replace an injured player?

Rarely for a 75% flag, on the arithmetic above. A hit is worth it when you are replacing a player whose underlying output has gone, or when the fixtures swing hard, which you can read off clean sheet chances across the next eight.

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