Fantasy Football's Coming Home!

Declan has been playing Fantasy Premier League far too seriously for far too long, and failing to live up to the promise of an impressive first season. Anyone saying “story of his life!” will be slapped around the head with a wet 2x4!

He also has no involvement with the Premier League in either real or fantasy form, and is not being paid or recompensed to write this. He also has no moral qualms if the Premier League or that nice Mr Hogan would like to change that fact!

So What’s The Deal?

Fantasy.premierleague.com is the Premier League’s official free fantasy football competition. I say free, but they appear to have ditched their experiment with a cash competition over the last couple of years.

You have a £100M budget* to pick 15 players; 2 keepers, 5 defenders, 5 midfielders, 3 forwards. Put out a team of 11 players each week, buy and sell the dross and hope to have the highest score at the end.

There are weekly and monthly goodie-bags for the best managers, and the overall winner gets VIP trips (including travel!) to 2 games of his choice, a 7 day holiday in Britain, a games console and loads of EA/Premier League branded crap!

Tactics

We’ll start here, since this determines how and where to target your spending. There’s a range of possible formations to play; defensive (5-3-2, 5-2-3, 5-4-1), balanced (4-4-2, 4-5-1) and attacking (3-4-3, 3-5-2). Basically, it’s a keeper, a forward and three defenders at all times, and fill the rest from your squad of 15.

I did not run an experiment last season with three separate teams, since that would be a violation of the rules! If I had, one would have featured the top-scoring keeper and defenders in a 5-3-2 formation. Another would have had the top five midfielders in a 3-5-2 system, and the final team would have been 3-4-3, stuffed with the three top strikers. Each of the teams would have been filled out using the best players available for the remaining cash. By Christmas, it would have been obvious that the midfield approach was best, out-performing the strikers by around 15% and the defensive approach by nearly 40%. If I had done that! But I would never dream of violating the Terms & Conditions…

The key point is defenders are heavily penalised for losing, and forwards only score a decent amount when they score! So you maximise your return by concentrating on the midfielders.

Picking Your Squad

Ok, some(?) basic guidelines first. If you’re already an FPL player, try not to laugh…

You can have up to three players from any one club. If you do this, make sure they are all in different positions; a goalkeeper and two defenders from the same team means a single slip-up can cost you 12 points!
Speaking of players from the same club, think about how they play together. Harry Kane and Christian Eriksen (Spurs) were a great double act last season, because they kept providing chances to each other; if one scored, the other probably got the assist.
If you’re picking someone who’s moved club or just arrived in England, be certain they’re going to play regularly, not just providing cover and warming the bench. Zlatan and Pogba are probably safe from this!
Have a definite starting XI, spend around £80M on them and use cheaper players to pad out the squad.
Part of the reason Leicester players scored highly in last season’s game was that Ranieri played the same XI whenever he could. If a club has multiple options for the same position (think Arsenal and their 300 attacking midfielders!), none of them are going to score highly because they’ll keep being rotated.
If a club has appointed a new manager, try and stick to the new signings! You won’t know who in the squad is viewed as surplus to requirements for a month or two.
And make sure your cheaper players are still getting games, because you never know when you might have to rely on a sub!
Keep an eye on what position the game lists a player. Anthony Martial, Depay and Jesse Lingard (Man Utd) are all listed as midfielders, but were usually playing as outright strikers. Counted as midfielders, they’d earn the bonus point for clean sheets, and an extra point for each goal.
When you’re looking at a player’s total for last season, remember “past results do not guarantee future performance” - looking at you, Vardy and Mahrez! If you click on a player’s info, you can see their scores for all previous seasons, and get a fuller idea of their potential.
And while we’re thinking of Mahrez - there’s always someone who appears from nowhere, racks up 200+ points and is the key to a successful competition. The year before, it was Eden Hazard. Anyone who tells you they picked this unknown genius in week 1 because they knew what he would do is (almost certainly) full of shit! But you need to spot that guy and sign him as soon as he reveals himself.

Keepers

Simple - you want someone from a top team, who keeps clean sheets? Not quite! Two years ago, the top keepers in the game were Brad Guzan (Villa) and Kasper Schmeichel (Leicester), both of whom were fighting against relegation all year. Because there’s points awarded for successful saves, it means a keeper who has to work hard can be more useful than one who does nothing for 90 minutes!

Last year, Peter Cech (Arsenal) and Heurelho Gomez (Watford) were the high scorers, due to the crappy defences they were covering. You also need someone who’s good under pressure for penalties; a save will earn 5 points.

Tips: Jack Butland (Stoke) and Fraser Forster (Southampton) were both scoring very highly last year, until injuries ended their seasons.

Defenders

Real defenders come in two types. Centre backs are expected to go forward for corners and free kicks, and will get some goals over a season. Attacking full backs have almost completely supplanted wingers, and are expected to get forward and whip crosses in for the forwards, earning assists. But the penalties are severe for conceding even one goal, so you really do need these guys to earn their keep.

Centre backs Toby Alderweireld (Spurs) and Laurent Koscielny (Arsenal) were third- and second-highest scorers last season bagging 4 goals apiece, while full back Hector Bellerin (Arsenal) was the best defender to have, getting 6 assists.

Tips: His overall score wasn’t great last season - since he was concentrating on having Jose sacked! - but Branislav Ivanovic (Chelsea) was the highest scoring defender for the preceding two years, thanks to goals and assists from set pieces. John Stones (Man City) isn’t highly priced at the moment, but City didn’t pay nearly £50M for fun; mind you, they also paid £50M for the failure that is Raheem Sterling! And all Southampton’s defenders have scored well for the last two seasons, but there is a new manager.

Midfielders

This is the simple choice; there’s more points in goals and assists than clean sheets, so you need midfielders who will attack and score. Defensive midfielders are a waste of time! And remember; a midfielder who takes free kicks is going to rack up extra goals and assists. Demitri Payet (West Ham) was “this guy” last year.

Tips: Again, look at Chelsea’s squad - Pedro and Fabregas had strong finishes to the season, and are reasonably priced at £7.5M. Georginio Wijnaldum (Liverpool) was another high scorer - despite being the only guy at Newcastle who seemed to give a toss about playing - and should do better at Anfield. Ozil and Sanchez (Arsenal) are consistently high (over 150) scorers, and the United trio I mentioned above are worth having, once Jose’s decided who is worthy of partnering the Zlatan.

Forwards

Goals, goals, goals! With no points for a clean sheet, nothing else matters. But a proven 20 goal-a-season striker - Kane/Vardy/Aguero - is going to cost you, just like real life. You could get all three above, but you’ll only have £5.5M to spend on each of your other twelve players. That’s “bargain basement” territory!

Fitness and temperament are also important; you only earn points if the guy actually plays. The likes of Aguero and Sturridge get too many injuries for their cost, while Diego Costa is always one remark/head-butt/dive away from a three-match ban!

Tips: With Pelle having been lured away by a veritable fucktonne of yuan, Shane Long is now the main man for Southampton, and should better his 10 goals and 4 assists; at least he’ll be picked every match. The Watford pair of Ighalo and Deeney were also good buys last season, and not penalised by their team’s somewhat leaky defence. And Romelu Lukaku (Everton) was in the top three for much of last season, and the season before that.

How To Splash That Cash

I’m assuming you trust me and are going to play 3-5-2 - why else would you have read this far! Allow £50M for your midfield. At the moment, the top 5 from last year only costs £44.5M, but it’s handy to keep some spare cash. £4.5M each for your 4 substitutes (keeper, forward, 2 defenders) should be enough, leaving you £32M for the remaining 6 players in your starting line-up. So that’s £6-6.5M each. Decent keepers and defenders will be less than this - remember, John Stones is only £5M - so you can budget around £8m for each of your starting forwards. You can always dip into the spare cash from your midfield if you have to, but try and keep a couple of million in reserve.

If you want to indulge in expensive strikers instead, Zlatan, Harry Kane, Sergio Aguero and your subs will leave you with £47M; £5M for a keeper, £6M each for the rest. And if you want to start from defence, why are you still here????

Week-in, Week-out

So what do you do each week? When you login, go to the “My Team” tab and you’ll see your starting XI players set out on the pitch with your substitutes below, and your league placings on the right.

Besides the overall competition, you are automatically added to leagues based on where you are and who you support. You can also create/join private leagues with your friends, if you still have any after being stuck to the sofa tweaking your squad…

Picking The Team

First thing to remember; the deadline each week is 60 minutes before the first kick-off. After that, everything’s locked. So do a check with 90 minutes to go, in case of sudden injuries/spats with managers.

Always check your captain and vice-captain; indicated by a black circle with “C” or “V” to the right of their shirt. Your captain scores double points, so you should pick the player you think will get the highest score each week. The vice-captain earns the double points if your captain doesn’t play. To make a change, click on the player you want to appoint and select “Make Captain” or “Make Vice-captain” from the pop-up.

Next thing to check is the substitutes. If a player in the starting XI is doubtful, injured or suspended, you’ll see a warning triangle next to their shirt. The game will automatically replace them with a substitute if necessary, so you don’t have to worry swapping them. What you should check is the order of the subs.

You’ll see the three spare outfield players are numbered 1, 2, 3. This is the order they will be used in. So you should always arrange them “best to worst”; I usually put the spare forward first, then the defenders in order of their points. If a sub is needed and the first sub doesn’t play that week, the system will move on to the next and so on. The only exception is - if you’re playing 3-5-2 like I told you! - you must have at least three defenders on the pitch, so a defender will always be replaced by the highest numbered defender. And obviously, your sub keeper can only replace your starting keeper.

If you want to swap the players yourself, just drag the sub onto the pitch and drop him over the player to be replaced.

Don’t worry about those three buttons at the bottom just yet; we’ll come to them in a few minutes…

Transfers

So, you bought your squad and find you chose poorly? Every week, you get a free transfer swap. If you don’t use it, it carries on to the next week giving you two - but never more than two. Once you’ve used your free swaps, it will cost you 4 points for each additional transfer. In addition, you get two “wildcards” - one valid from now until January, and one when the January transfer window arrives. Use the wildcard and you can swap as many players as you want free-of-charge.

To make a change, go to the “Transfer” tab, click on the player to go and then use the search tools on the right to find and click on a replacement. The game will warn you of errors - like not enough cash, or too many player from one teams - and you will be warned if you’re going to be charged points for too many transfers in a week. Again, you have to do this before the 60 minute deadline on match-day.

If you’re confident in your initial selection, ignore transfers until after the real transfer window closes on 1st September. By then, you’ll have had three weeks to see how players are doing, and some new superstar may have arrived at a bargain price. And if it’s all gone pear-shaped, there’s always the wildcard! BTW, if a player you’ve selected is transferred out of the Premier League, I can’t find it in the rules but I seem to remember you can pick a replacement without it counting as a transfer.

Be careful when planning your swaps - the price listed for your departing player is not necessarily the price you’ll get. If he has risen in value, you’ll get the price you initially paid and half the profit made. And the prices will vary, based not only on how well the player is doing, but also on how many people buy/sell him each week.

The only time that the number of transfers matters is in deciding tie-breaks, in which case the player with the least transfers wins. So when you look at the league tables - come on, you know you’re checking the standings to see where you are! - players will be ranked by points and then by transfers made.

Personally, I try to always have two free transfers available, since you may not be able to get a better player for the cash available by selling just the one you want to replace. I also check my lowest scoring player each week, and see if there’s a better option available.

Injuries And Suspensions

If you see that warning triangle next to a player, click on the shirt and hit “View Information” in the pop-up, You’ll see the reason why they’re sidelined, a percentage chance of them playing that week and when they’re likely to be available again.

If a player’s only doubtful, ignore it. If he does play, he plays. If he doesn’t, the game will automatically use a substitute. If a player’s out injured for a week or serving a one match ban, it’s not worth worrying about it; just rely on having chosen decent substitutes! If he’s out for a couple of months - or worse still, a season long injury - go straight to the “Transfer” tab; when he’s fit again, you can always buy him back.

The worst case scenario is the dreaded three-match ban for a sending off, or a similar length injury. If a player has risen substantially in value and is earning lots of points, you might not have the money to buy him back after the ban/injury if you sell him on, so you have to judge if your substitute is sufficiently good to cover for him.

Scoring

Here’s a quick summary of the general rules, and for each position.

Play over 60 minutes: 2 points
Play under 60 minutes: 1 point
Assist: 3 points
Own goal: -2 points
Miss penalty: -2 points

Discipline

Yellow card: -1 point
Red card: -3 points

Keeper

Score goal: 6 points
Clean sheet: 4 points
Concede goals: -1 point for every 2 goals
Saves made: 1 point for every 3 saves
Save penalty: 5 points

Defender

Score goal: 6 points
Clean sheet: 4 points
Concede goals: -1 point for every 2 goals

Midfielder

Score goal: 5 points
Clean sheet: 1 points

Forward

Score goals: 4 points

So, you can see why I said defenders get penalised for losing!

There are also bonus points awarded to the best 3 players in each match. These are calculated from the official OPTA stats, there’s a breakdown on the game’s help page, and you’d die of boredom is I retyped it! It usually takes the site around 6 hours to add these in, and any substitutions won’t be reflected until the last match has ended.

A League Of Your Own

It’s more fun to rub your friends’ noses in your success, so you can set up your own private leagues to do just that! Go to the “Leagues” tab and click “Create or join new league”. If you’re setting one up, click “Create a league”, pick “Classic League” (head to head is shite and confusing!), enter your details and send out the 13 digit code. If you get an invite to join one, click “Join a league” and enter the code you received.

The Cup!

From game week 18 - Christmas! - there’s also a knockout competition for the top two million players. You get a random opponent, and the one who scores the highest after transfer penalties proceeds to the next week. Takes no additional effort, and is worth about as much attention! But it does give you one more chance to gloat over your friends.

The Run In

This will really mess with American minds! The real teams actually play three overlapping competitions; the Premier League, the League Cup (from October - March) and the FA Cup (Premier League teams start in January, but the amateur Sunday sides have already started!). Although they try to keep the dates separate, replays and finals mean that some league matches do get postponed until the final weeks of the season. So from around February, you’ll see some weeks with less than 10 matches, and from April, weeks with more than 10. It’s the latter ones that matter most…

When you’re selecting a captain, a guy who’s playing 2 matches in a week is obviously going to have two points totals to double up! The highest I’ve had is a captain scoring 52 points in one week, more than an entire team on a bad week. So when you’re picking your team late in the season, always check.Even with the 4 point penalty for a transfer, it can be worth bringing in a player specifically because he’s got two matches.

And for weeks with less than 10 matches, just make sure you have enough subs to cover; if you’ve multiple teams with two or three players in your squad, you can easily find yourself left with only 6 players scoring points.

Now, remember those buttons at the bottom of the “My Team” tab? The game introduced these power-ups last year. You can use each one once in a season, and the really successful players all saved them to use when teams had two games in a week. The three of them are;

All Out Attack: Remember I said you had to have at least three defenders? This is the one exception! Click on this and you automatically play a 2-5-3 formation. More goalscorers, more goals, more points. Pair this with forwards playing two games that week, and there are massive points to be had.
Bench Boost: For one week, your substitutes contribute to your score too! So make sure no-one is unavailable due to injury or suspension before you use this one.
Triple Captain: Obviously enough, this gives your captain triple points instead of the usual double. Again, play this on a guy playing two matches in a week and rake in the points!

If you use these right, the rewards will easily cover the cost of transfers to stuff your team.

Remember, It’s Just A Game

I have one Gooner friend - I actually have a lot of Gooner family, but that’s separate problem! And don’t even get me started on the Plastic Scousers - who refuses to play any of the fantasy leagues, because of this story…

He was in the pub trying to drown his sorrows couple of years ago, after watching a particularly humiliating ass-whipping by Chelsea. Anyway, after a couple of pints did what a couple of pints do, he retired to the Gents. While he was in there, another bloke in a Gooner top arrived at the next urinal and they started commiserating over the awful spectacle. As the other bloke was leaving, he suddenly said “Mind you, I’ve got Lampard in my fantasy team, so it wasn’t a complete disaster”.

My friend decided that any game that can make you find a good side in Frank Lampard was not a game worth playing!

If you haven’t been bored to tears by all this - or just want to show me how much better your way is! - join me in the Hulk Hogan Cup, in honour of Gawker’s favourite son… The league code is 1619272-505183