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Fantasy football. It’s something I’ve been trying to play for over 25 years. We’re talking pre-mobile phone days, when you had to beg your mum to use the landline to enter a team (at £1.50 per minute).
The love/hate affair started back in the nineties. Think Umbro, Sharp, Holsten, JVC, Carlsberg! Footy shirts were as fitted as duvets, Puma Kings had them flappy tongues and monsieur Eric was Kung Fu fighting!
The Premier League was still shiny and new. Fantasy footy had grabbed me by the throat and pulled me into the newspaper, making me scroll through them never-ending lists of players sorted by position then clubs, selecting a squad of 11 ready to go into battle.
Registering your team was a painful process though, reliant on your handset’s temperamental touch tones to type in the three digit codes for each of your players. BEEP… BEEP… BEEP…
“You have selected player < One-Eight-One >… < Jason Dozzell > of
< Tottenham Hotspur >. Press One if this is correct, or Three if this is incorrect.”
“Nooo, I wanted Matt Le Tissier, stupid phone!”
Thank god, technology has come a long way since. Inaccurate rubber keypads replaced with the precision of high-tech smartphones, and the game evolving into the worldwide phenomena it is today: Fantasy Premier League (FPL).
Earning my stripes
I’ve been playing FPL as we know it today, since the 2008/09 season; back when Man United were good! Sir Alex was at the helm, with a certain Cristiano Ronaldo in blistering form, new teeth and all!
12 years of service later, I’m bamboozled to learn even I’m a late comer to the game, as FPL officially started some years before in 2002 - around the time Daniel Bedingfield was telling us he’s gotta get thru this. So I doff my hat to anyone of the original 76k players that registered a team for her maiden voyage.
The games since got a little more popular… like 7.5 million players more popular!
A dummies guide
The game seems to tweak itself every now and again, but now looks like it’s starting to settle. Key things to remember are it’s free to play, requiring you to select a squad of 15 players from the Premier League. You’ve got a budget of 100 million to spend, but can’t have more than three players from the same club, and your squad is made up of:
2 x Goalkeepers
5 x Defenders
5 x Midfielders
3 x Forwards
The season is made up of 38 rounds of fixtures, aka ‘game weeks’ (GWs), where you pick your starting 11 each week, based on who you think will score the most points. Points are awarded for many things like scoring goals or keeping clean sheets, but also taken away for things like getting sent off or missing a penalty. You also get a range of bonus chips to use throughout the season, including wildcards that allow you make unlimited transfers for free and Triple Captain (triples your captain points).
You get one free transfer a week, where you can swap a player out for a new one to come in - which means their prices can go up and down dependent on how many other managers transfer them in or out. Oh and you need to pick your captain each week, whose points are automatically doubled. So picking a good one can do wonders for your overall rank. Capeesh?!
FPL sounds easy
Don’t be fooled. As Bill Shankly once said “Football is a simple game made complicated by people who should know better,” and the same can probably be said for FPL. Here’s the bit where things usually turn nasty: mini leagues.
A mini league can be a public league (where anyone can join), or
A private league, where only those invited can join.
The latter is perfect for those wanting to challenge friends, workmates, families to a season of success or suffering! It’s also where serious bragging rights come into the equation too: if you’re top at the end of the GW, you’ve earned yourself a good week’s worth of boasting; if you’re top come the end of the season… then I feel for anyone that finished below you #neverhearthelastofit
At the end of the season, you’ll get your overall rank. This shows where you placed against all the other managers, worldwide! To date my highest finish has been 127k, it’s not great tbh - most good managers will be aiming for top 100k minimum. Top 10k is amazing, and top 1k seems to be as good as winning it in many eyes! But as long as you had fun… it’s the taking part that counts right!?
It’s a game of love and hate
From the moment you create your team, your relationship status with FPL becomes complicated. When things are going your way, you’ll be deeply in love with it (your captains got a double digit haul, all your forwards have scored, and your keeper has saved a penalty), then one bad move (like transferring in a player who then gets injured) and you’ll just wonder what’s the point!
Stick with it player, too many times I’ve seen people quit after a few bad GWs. Rehab is for quitters, not FPL. There’s always a new GW next week!
Spare some thoughts for fellow managers who’ve endured some right ‘mares’ over the years. Like that time one thought they’d hit the wildcard button when confirming their transfers, then noticing they’d lost -60 points (they even emailed the Premier League begging for their points back). Or that manager that scored just one single point in a GW (yuck). Or that other manager that racked up a £100 phone bill on holiday, as he checked his team relentlessly (thinking he was on the WiFi)… O2 never did refund me!
Final fails
If you’ve made it this far, chances are you’re either already a fellow FPL manager, or someone very close to becoming one! Whatever your level, avoid any of the below and probably be on you’re on your way to a half decent season… god speed!
The dreaded ‘-0.1’ - Lining up your perfect transfer, you’ve got the exact money to make it happen. The next day to go to make the transfer, only to realise you’re .1 short. Damn you price changes!
For flags sake - Those damn red and yellow warning signs, indicating a player is injured or dead. So you bench / get rid, then they make a miraculous recovery and score big. Why god why!
International breaks - Gambling on a player you like the look of, before they go on an international duty, only for them to return injured. Grrr!
Chip fails - When you put all your faith in a player by sticking your ‘Trip Chip’ on him, ready to suck up all them triple captain points (then they don’t start, come on, miss a penalty, leaving you with a -3. Cheers Kun*)
*I still have nightmares about this one :(
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