The new Premier League is closing in and with it the new season of EPL Fantasy football 2019, which allows English football fans to get a bit more involved in the game and suffer the consequences of the results their favourite players/teams produce week after week. For some a hobby, for others simply an activity to do and brag in front of their friends, and then there are the third kind of people who have just heard about fantasy football and have no clue how it works. Luckily for those, we will cover all the basics you need to know to get started with the EPL Fantasy football, give some insight how it all works and even provide some basic strategies to get you started.
Image source: youtube.com screenshot
Table of Contents
What is Fantasy Football EPL?
To put it simply it’s a game where you get to live the life of a football manager for a fantasy football team. As a so-called Fantasy Manager, you get tasked with a job of picking a squad of players, who then bring you points depending on their real-life performances. The squad consists of 11 players + additional 4, which as a fantasy manager you get to switch every week, with some restrictions we will talk later on. As the weeks pass, all the points are added and compared to other fantasy managers from the league and global rankings. The best performing managers, of course, get not only bragging rights but a few awards from the EPL which are given weekly/monthly and at the end of the season.
How to build the squad and selecting the team in Fantasy EPL?
The first order of duty after creating an account on the official fantasy EPL website is to build your own squad and select the team which will represent you at the next game week. To do so each fantasy manager is given a set budget of 100 points (£) which he/she can spend on buying players. Each player in the EPL has his own value depending on his performances and overall quality.
Each squad consists of :
Two goalkeepers
Five defenders
Five midfielders and
Three forwards.
Additionally, we cannot pick more than 3 players from any one Premier League club. Better players cost more, while worse-performing players tend to cost less. The real struggle, yet the key difference that separates good and bad fantasy managers is to use the budget to its full potential and buy players who will net you the most points.
Image source: premierleague.com screenshot
Once the 15-man squad is selected, managers must pick the starting XI for the next week before the deadline hits. There are no limitations to which formation we pick, however, the team must consist 1 goalkeeper, at least 3 defenders, at least two midfielders and no less than one forward. Outside of those rules, the team can look however the managers seem fit for the next game week.
Transfer and deadlines in Fantasy EPL
Following the first transfer deadline, managers are given one free transfer each week. This means any manager can switch out one player out of his/her 15 man team for another player, as long as the transfer is within the budget. Should the manager decide to switch more than just one player, such move would cost him/her 4 points for each additional transfer. There is, however, an exception to this rule by using a Wildcard chip, which we will talk about below.
If the manager doesn’t use their free weekly transfer, the 1 free transfer gets carried over to the next game week. There is a limit of a maximum of 2 free transfers, meaning that not making a single transfer 2 weeks in a row would not give us 3 free transfers, but only 2.
Fantasy EPL Points
The whole point of the game is of course to score points, or in other words, score more points compared to other managers. We gain points via the performance of our selected team for the upcoming week, meaning points are awarded to players for goals, assists, saves and clean sheets.
Players can also gain bonus points if they are among the top performers in the match according to BPS (Bonus Points System). The rules state that the top three best performing players receive additional points. The highest-scoring player received 3 points, second best 2 points and third best 1 point. There are some additional rules to that, should the player find themselves in a tie:
If there is a tie at the top, both first and second players receive 3 points each.
If there is a tie for the 2nd place, the first player gets all 3 points, whereas second and third-placed get 2 points each.
A tie for the 3rd place gives the leader all 3 points, the second-placed player gets 2 points, whereas 1 point is awarded to both the third and fourth-placed player.
Once the gameweek ends, all the points gained from our starting XI are added up. If, however, one of our starting XI players does not play for his team that week, points from the first player on our bench get counted instead. If two players don’t feature for their team, the points from the first two benched players get counted and so on.
Fantasy manager must also choose a captain ad vice-captain for his team. The captain’s final score is doubled, whereas the role of vice-captain is the same as that of benched players if the captain does not get featured in his team that week.
Fantasy EPL Leagues
As we have established before, each manager does not only compete on the global ranking but in leagues as well. The EPL Fantasy football offers anyone an option to join and create leagues. In the “private” anyone can compete against whoever he/she invites, giving us an opportunity to play against our friends and family. In addition to private leagues, managers can also join up to 3 public leagues where he/she gets to play against 19 other randomly assigned teams.
Fantasy managers, however, do not need to play in any league. There is a possibility to play solo, meaning your score still gets compared to other fantasy managers on global rankings and while you do not lose out on anything in the wider picture, the thrill of competing against 19 other teams in the “mini league” in addition to competing in the global rankings is the preferred options among fantasy managers.
What is “Fantasy EPL Chips” and how to use them?
Lastly, the EPL fantasy league features chips as in added feature to make the game more fun and ultimately to add another layer of complexity to it. The chips system works as such:
Each manager gets 4 chips at his/her disposal which are used to boost a team’s points total in a gameweek. The 4 chips differentiate in their effect and are as follows:
Triple captain: your captain gets x3 the points (instead of x2)
Bench boost: the non-playing substitutes gain points which are added to our total tally of the week.
Free hit: resets our team for one week
Wildcard: a complete overhaul of our team without losing a single point.
Only one chip can be used in a gameweek, with the exception of Wildcard chip, which can be used only twice per season (1 each half of the season).
With that, we have covered all the basics you need to know about the EPL Fantasy league. While the basics are quite easy to get ahold of, the game has developed some intriguing and complex strategies used by fantasy managers all over the world. As a game that might seem simple at first, the EPL Fantasy is nowhere as easy and plain as it seems at first glance. And while there is a huge difference between people who play it for a hobby and serious players, it’s a game anyone can try, enjoy and maybe even get ahold of a goodie bag courtesy of the Premier League.
Our Fantasy EPL League Code
If you want to join FootballTalk.org fantasy EPL league, here is the league code: gps38g.
