The Elite XI: Team Reveal feature allows Fix Premium Plus members exclusive access to the greatest Fantasy Premier League (FPL) managers. The combined Elite XI boasts an extraordinary 80 top 5k finishes and 60 top 10k finishes. Offering real-time tracking data, push notifications and detailed insight into manager’s strategies, the Elite XI is unlike any other team reveal.

This weekly article will take you deep into the mindset of the world’s best FPL managers, allowing you to match your playing style to individual members of the Elite XI and use their incredible insight to help inform your own FPL decisions.

If you have a strange feeling of déjà vu, fear not; we have recently interviewed both of these managers – James Cooper in GW5 and Corey Baker in GW6. While our preference is to give our Elite XI managers a fair representation, we couldn’t resist finding out why these two managers have played their first chips of the season.

James Cooper

• GW7 Points: 0
• Overall Points: 397
• Overall Rank: 265k
• Team Value: £96.2m
• In The Bank: £5.4m
• Chips Available: WC1, WC2, BB, TC, FH

Following the sad news of the passing of Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II, and the subsequent postponement of Gameweek 7’s Premier League fixtures, James (as with most FPL managers) scored zero points in Gameweek 7.

What ensued was endless speculation about the knock-on effect of these events and potential disruption to Gameweek 8. Fantasy Premier League responded to this by making the following announcement.

With this in mind, we asked James about his thinking behind becoming the first of our Elite XI managers to play their Wildcard.

James has exploited the Wildcard rollover – confirmed in FPL’s announcement – to capture team value in Gameweek 7. In this sense, there was no disadvantage to Wildcarding early, when his original plan was to play the chip in Gameweek 8 anyway.

As regards his Wildcard draft, James had this to say: