You are a die-hard football fan but have never been able to join the widely acclaimed Fantasy Premier League community. Well, don’t worry since you aren’t the first. I didn’t know either.

Fantasy Premier League is a platform that lets football fans and supporters become managers of their own teams in the game. Unlike the real world, this is a virtual squad that you get to organise with players from any club in the English Premier League.

You also do get to change your squad every game week and your players’ real-time performances during that week get to earn you points. So, here’s everything you need to know about becoming an FPL manager.

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Building Your Team

Every first-time user has to sign up into the app and set up an account. After all the formalities are done, you officially become a Fantasy manager and are now able to set up a squad. Similar to the real world, you require money to get players and each manager gets to have £100.0 million virtually to spend on an initial squad of 15 players.

Your squad will consist of two goalkeepers, five defenders, five midfielders and three forwards. The catch in all this, however, is that you are only limited to three players from the same football club. Any attempt to get more than that will get you stuck on the transfer list and no one wants that.

With only £100.0m at your disposal, you will also have to be very wise with the kind of players you pick as you cannot spend any more than that.

Player Values

The prices of each player change frequently depending on their popularity among all the managers in the game. For instance, if Manchester City’s Sergio Aguero who is valued at £9.0m scores three goals in a real match, he will obviously be sought after by many Fantasy managers the following week. This could get his price to spike all the way to £10.5m the following week or even more.

In fact, the most valuable players in a certain week are usually highlighted with a purple star beside their names and jerseys.

Managers who own the player in a particular week will then have the opportunity to get profit if they choose to sell him the following week.

However, they must pay a sell-on fee of 50%, rounded down to the nearest £0.1m. So, in Aguero’s example, managers would receive about £10.2m when transferring him out.

Garnering Points

Every player no matter their position has the chance of scoring points depending on their game week performances in the league. So, if a player gets to defend well, save goals, assist or score goals, they get to earn points for you. There are also additional points for every top performer thanks to the Bonus Points System (BPS) in a match. Awards like King of the Match or Man of the Match will also be quite good for your weekly points.

Goalkeepers and defenders will get high points if they get to prevent any goal from being scored by the opposing team (clean sheets) in a whole game. Strikers will get points if they get to score. The points could even be higher if the team gets to win thanks to the goals they have scored. The same also goes for midfielders who assist or even score goals themselves. So, you might want to choose players from teams that are highly likely to win matches and keep clean sheets.

However, yellow cards and red cards can be an absolute bummer for you. A red card, especially could get you all the way to negative points which will definitely be taken away from your total score for the week.

You will get no points at all if a player in your squad doesn’t get to show up for the match as well. Luckily, the app does help managers by warning them of players who will potentially not be included in a real-world match line-up. You will see an exclamation sign beside their names suggesting that you should perhaps not buy them for that week.

Perks/Chips

There are five perks/ chips you will get at the beginning of every season that you can use at any time in the course of the season.

Wildcard – Completely overhaul your team without forfeiting points (twice a season)
Triple captain – Get three times your points total for your captain
Bench boost – Earn points from your non-playing substitutes
Free Hit – Reset your team for one week only before it reverts

The most powerful chip is the Wildcard as it allows managers to make whatever number of transfers in a Gameweek free of charge. Every manager gets two Wildcards in every season; each for every half. You should, however, note that you can only play one chip on a single Gameweek.

Choosing them will also require a lot of critical thinking. Most of these chips tend to benefit managers in Gameweeks that have major clubs playing against smaller teams. This is mostly because they are assured of high points being scored then. But that does not mean that Watford will always beat Liverpool.

The whole Fantasy Premier League really requires good knowledge in the game. Sometimes choosing a whole squad with players from big clubs benefits you. Other times, it really doesn’t when you ignore players from smaller teams as they can be the ones that perform better in certain matches. Generally, it can also be a way to get some more knowledge in the game if you desire to do so.

It’s not just about choosing players, it’s about really being a manager and basically risking it all every single weekend.