What is FPL and what has changed ahead of the new season?
To start with, it's worth introducing new users, so if you've played FPL before, feel free to skip this part of the article. I'm assuming that a lot of people with an interest in sport know what a Fantasy game is, but nevertheless, it's inappropriate not to remind you of the basics.
Fantasy Premier League is a free-to-play online game in which you have £100 million at your disposal, which you must use to buy 15 Premier League players for your team, appropriately priced by the game's creators. You acquire them in order to earn points for your team, which you will get for goals, assists, clean sheets and other achievements of your players in real Premier League matches. The game therefore allows you to get more excited about the whole competition.
You have to create a squad that consists of two goalkeepers, five defenders, five midfielders and three strikers. Each round, you will choose a starting eleven, and if one of its members does not play in his match, he will be replaced by the first of the substitutes.
Of course, the trick is to pick the most balanced lineup possible, as the most expensive player in the game, Erling Haaland, costs as much as £15m and the cheapest defenders from the weakest teams in the league can be bought for £4m. So you have to show off your managerial sense and bring in the biggest stars to your team, backed up by lesser-known players who you think will shine.
You will only be able to make one free transfer each week, so you need to look at the long-term when buying and selling players. You will have to pay four points for each additional transfer, which is quite a lot as that is what you get for each striker's goal.
What are we playing for? Well, you can, of course, fight for victory around the world, where there will probably be more than 10 million squads competing, while the biggest attraction of the game is the opportunity to compete with your friends in mini-leagues and experience the excitement together.
What has changed ahead of the 2024/25 season?
Here we come to the part for players who already have experience playing FPL. So it's time to use a slightly more specialised vocabulary and focus on the changes that the game's developers have introduced ahead of the new season.
The most important of these is the ability to keep more transfers when not making any moves in the market for several weeks.
Until now, the game allowed one free transfer every round, and if a player did not make a transfer for two rounds, he could make two transfers for free. However, this was the maximum and even if someone did not make any transfers for ten rounds, they still only had two free moves available.
Now transfers can be retained for as many as five, so if someone doesn't change their squad for as many as five queues, but returns to the game after a month, they will be able to make as many as five free transfers. This completely changes the options for planning one's moves and gives new opportunities to players.
The other big change is an extra chip, which we won't find out about until January. This will be a surprise addition to the standard two Wildcards, one Free Hit, one Bench Boost and one Triple Captain.
It is also worth mentioning that when playing the former two, free transfers will not be deleted from this year. So if someone keeps two transfers and uses a Wildcard, they will still have free moves in their pocket afterwards.
The last change is a slight adjustment to the bonus points. For each match, the game awards the three best players according to an algorithm of three, two and one point each. This algorithm is based on a number of statistics and has been slightly changed. One can conclude from these that it will have a better impact on bonus points for offensive players than defensive players.
Of course, this year on Flashscore you will again be able to read about FPL before each round and see which players we suggest you buy for your squads. We invite you to take a look at our site and wish you plenty of points in the coming season!
