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Getting started in Fantasy Premier League, for the very first time. Sounds scary, doesn’t it? Well, I’m here to kick start this FPL Beginner’s Guide by telling you two things.
Firstly, don’t even worry about being ‘good’ in your first season.
I 100% guarantee you will make a ton of mistakes. Everybody does, when they’re starting out. These guys who finish in the top 10,000 worldwide, or dominate their private leagues each year – they’ve been playing for years and years. They were rubbish too, when they started (no offence).
Secondly, you will get better.
Practice makes perfect in Fantasy Premier League, as in all areas of life. You’ll learn when to make transfers, which experts to listen to for advice, when to use your wildcard and other chips, and plenty more.
This FPL Beginner’s Guide is designed to get you started, and see you through your first season.
Your priority, as you navigate that debut campaign, should simply be to have fun. There will be plenty of time to start getting overly-competitive, and eventually hating both yourself and Fantasy Premier League, in the future. For now, let’s just focus on how to start playing FPL.
Use the Table of Contents below to zip to a specific section, or just start reading!
Fantasy Premier League is an enormously popular game. According to the official website, over 11 million people now play FPL. It’s easily the most popular fantasy football game in the world, and almost certainly the biggest fantasy game outside of the USA.
If this is your first time playing Fantasy Premier League, here are the absolute basics.
In FPL, you create your very own squad. All of them are real-world players, who play for teams in the English Premier League.
Every game they play, the players you start in your fantasy team will score you points, based on their performance.
If Haaland scores a goal, and he’s in your FPL team, you get points. If you’ve got Alisson in goal, and he keeps a clean sheet for Liverpool, you get points.
Each week, the points which all your players scored will be calculated. That’s your ‘gameweek score’.
Then, these will be added to your total score. In turn, this will determine your Overall Ranking (OR), compared to every other FPL player in the entire world. Exciting!
Most players also like to compete in smaller leagues. These can be public, or private.
You’re welcome to join whatever public leagues you want. Private leagues are smaller and invite-only, and are the main way to battle with your friends (soon to be enemies), family, coworkers, and so on.
Okay, so we’ve got a very basic overview of Fantasy Premier League. Now though, it’s time to lay out the most important rules for the Fantasy Premier League first time player.
We’ve explained many of the more common FPL terminology here. For now, there are two main rules you need to know about. These relate to:
You must always have exactly 15 players in your FPL squad.
No more. No less.
You must also have a certain number of players in each position. Specifically, you need:
You don’t need to track this for yourself. FPL will sort your team by default into a ‘2-5-5-3’ formation, so you can see exactly what spots you need to fill:
Every single FPL player starts the season with a budget of 100.00.
How you allocate this is completely up to you.
You can try to spread your money evenly across your starting lineup. You can go with a ‘stars and scrubs’ approach, where you have a few big guns, balanced out by cheaper picks.
Balancing this budget is one of the biggest challenges you’ll face, as an FPL first time player. It’s actually a whole lot of fun, though, and is the main thing that distinguishes Fantasy Premier League from the likes of Fantasy NFL and NBA.
Unlike a Fantasy NFL auction, for example, this restriction does not only apply at the start of the season.
Rather, you must stay within your budget in Fantasy Premier League for the entire season.
Right! So we’ve had a general overview of FPL, and we know about the two most important rules.
Now… we should probably learn how to actually start playing the game. Yeah, that’s probably a good idea.
Here’s a quick and easy, step-by-step guide to getting started in Fantasy Premier League.
You have two main choices for how you start playing Fantasy Premier League. You can use the desktop website, or the mobile app.
For the purposes of this guide, I’ll assume you’re just using the former – fantasy.premierleague.com. If you want to use the app though, you can download it from the App Store or Google Play, and the registration process is basically identical.
On the home page, click the Sign Up Now button in the middle of your screen. This will load the three-step sign up process.
At the first stage, enter the necessary personal details, and set the password for your account, then click Next.
Now, you’ll need to pick your favourite Premier League club. If you don’t really have a favourite club, I recommend just choosing Arsenal.
Finally, you can choose your marketing preferences. Opt-in to the newsletters if you really want to, but I never have… and can’t say I’ve really missed out.
Once all that’s done, just agree to the general Terms and Conditions, then click Complete Registration.
Immediately after signing up, you’ll be sent a verification email. Click the link in that message to officially activate your account, then log in using your email address and password.
You’ll now be taken to the Your Account page, where you’ll find three main options. Click the Play Fantasy Premier League button to officially join the millions of other FPL players.
We’ll get onto the specifics of how to make your first FPL team in the next section. For now, let’s just make a placeholder to get you started.
Click the Squad Select button towards the top of your screen, then just hit Auto Pick. This will pick you 15 players, all within your budget.
Finally, click Enter Squad at the bottom, and put any old team name in there for now (both your squad and team name can be changed before the season). Agree to the T&Cs one more time, then click Enter Squad again.
Congratulations – you’re now ready to play FPL!
You’ve got your Fantasy Premier League account, and you’re ready to start playing FPL for the first time.
Now it’s time for the fun to begin. It’s time, that is, to create your very own fantasy team.
This will seem overwhelming to start with.
You’ve got 15 positions to fill. You’ve got no real idea who the good fantasy players are (even if you presumably know the top real-life players). You’re working within a budget.
Don’t panic! There’s plenty of help on hand here.
When you’re first starting out, I would not recommend doing everything yourself. Instead, #1 in my first time player FPL tips would be to use an expert’s team as a template.
There are loads of these guys out there, but Let’s Talk FPL (Twitter / YouTube) and FPL General (Twitter / YouTube) are my favourites. Of course, James and I will also be posting our Gameweek 1 teams on our own Twitter feed, and on the homepage of this website.
These experts (including us) will talk constantly about their Gameweek 1 teams as the season approaches. They’ll usually ‘reveal’ their final team a few days before the first match.
If you really want to, you could simply copy an expert’s team directly. It’s a bit boring, but at least it’ll give you a great starting point.
The more rewarding approach is to simply take inspiration from that team.
Use it as your own first draft, but swap in some players from your favourite team, or simply players that you like watching. Or, draw on research from other experts, see how they differ from your first expert’s team, then decide which players you want more.
Whichever route you take, you have lots of time to make your Gameweek 1 team. Your team won’t lock until approximately 90 minutes before the very first match of the season. So take your time, do your research, make lots of drafts, and see which one you like the most.
And, again, don’t put too much pressure on yourself here.
Firstly, you’re not going to win THE WHOLE OF FANTASY PREMIER LEAGUE in your very first season. Not even I managed that… All you should really be aiming for here is to pick a nice, fun team that you enjoy rooting for.
Secondly, the first team you make is not set in stone. In fact, as we’re just about to discover, you can change it every single week…
‘I can change my team every single week?’ you say. ‘But… this game must be easy, then!’
Ha! I laugh at your naive optimism, Mr or Mrs First Year Fantasy Premier League Player.
The ability to make transfers in FPL is both a gift and a curse.
The good thing, obviously, is that you don’t get stuck with a team that’s rubbish.
There are two downsides, though. Firstly, deciding what transfers to make is hard. Secondly, you only get a certain number of transfers for free, before you need to start coughing up points.
If you could just make unlimited transfers, then this really would be an easy game, even for first-time players. Unfortunately… you can’t.
Here are the most important transfer rules for getting started in Fantasy Premier League:
So, to recap.
You can make one free transfer every single week, if you like. If you don’t need to make a transfer, however, then don’t! It’s much better to save that week’s transfer, and have more free transfers the following week.
(Note that you can ‘bank’ four transfers. The most free transfers you’ll ever have is five).
If you want to make more transfers, you can, but additional moves will cost you 4pts. Don’t pay for transfers when you don’t have to!
It’s very tempting to take these ‘hits’ in your first season of Fantasy Premier League. But remember that these points are taken from your overall total, and this spending can really add up. You should only pay for transfers when you think the net gain will be at least +4pts.
Here’s an easy example of the above.
Let’s say one of your players is definitely injured, and missing the gameweek. Another player has a ‘double gameweek’ (more on that later), and is very likely to start both games. In this case, the second player is almost certainly getting you at least 4pts (2 x 2pts for playing 80+ mins). The -4pt hit is therefore immediately cancelled. Any more points that player scores will see you get a net gain.
That example is a (relatively) ‘sure thing’. There are other times, however, when you’ll need to make a judgement call as to whether the new player will score at least 4pts more than the old player, and therefore repay you for your hit.
They’re the transfer rules, but how do you actually make transfers in FPL? Well, friend, I’m here to tell you just that:
I’ve stressed several times already, in this little FPL Beginner’s Guide, that your main priority in your debut season should be to have fun.
Just relax, learn how the game works, and don’t worry about how many points you score.
With that said…
The ultimate point of the game here is to score points. Even going into your first season of Fantasy Premier League, you should still know what points are, and how you get them.
Scoring points is the aim of the game in FPL. The number of points you score across the entire season will determine your Overall Ranking (OR). It will also determine who wins any other public and private leagues you get.
You will see points presented in two main ways:
In the main version of Fantasy Premier League, your gameweek score isn’t actually that important. You’ll have good weeks, you’ll have bad weeks, but all that really matters is your total number of points.
Briefly, however, it is worth noting that you can also play in Cups. Like real-life knockout competitions, these are calculated based on your weekly scores. In this case, you’ll need to beat the score of just one of your opponents to progress to the next round.
The only way you get points in Fantasy Premier League is through your players scoring them.
There are no other bonuses, rewards, or anything like that.
There are lots and lots of ways players can score points. I’ve broken those down properly for you here.
For now, just know that the biggest points are scored for… the stuff you’d expect. Namely, scoring goals, getting assists, and keeping clean sheets.
Again, only the 11 players in your squad who actually play will score you those sweet, sweet points. If someone gets left on the bench, their points won’t count to your total, even if they score literally a gazillion goals in one game.
(Note that three players in each real-life match will also be awarded Bonus Points. Again, I’ve explained what that actually means elsewhere).
Finally, each week you can also pick a captain. This can be done by simply clicking on a player, then clicking Make Captain. Your captain will score you double points that gameweek.
Yup, that’s right – you can lose points too!
There are two ways for this to happen.
Firstly, players can lose you points for doing Bad Things. Yellow cards, red cards, own goals, missed penalties, and even conceding a few goals, will all cost you points.
Secondly, you can lose yourself points by ‘taking hits’. As noted earlier, you’ll be charged -4pts for every non-free transfer you make.
From your very first time playing Fantasy Premier League, you’ll automatically be entered into the overall competition. Since you’ll be competing with 11 million other players, your chances of winning this are quite low (but hey, you never know).
What you can also compete in, however, are leagues!
You can join public leagues (also called ‘General Leagues’) automatically. Here’s how you do just that:
To join a private league – run by your friends, family, workplace, or whomever – you’ll need the code.
The administrator can find this by going to Leagues & Cups, clicking Options next to the relevant league, then clicking Invite Friends. Once you’ve got the code from them, just follow the steps above, and enter that League Code.
Guess what? We actually run our own FPL league! Fantasy Premier League first time players are more than welcome, and – obviously – it’s completely free to enter.
For the entry details, just check our Twitter feed, or ask us directly!
Fantasy Premier League is hard. Did I mention that already?
To help us along though, FPL Towers (the collective name for the mysterious big bosses who run the game) have provided some special tools. These are known as ‘chips’, and there are four in total:
Click on the links above to get more detailed explanations of what each chip does. For now, here are some quick summaries.
(Note that some people wouldn’t call the wildcard a ‘chip’. I couldn’t care less – it is in my book!)
Normally, you only get up to two free transfers per time. When you activate your wildcard, however,you can make unlimited free transfers.
You get two wildcards. One must be used in the first half of the season; the other must be used in the second half.
Free hits are similar to wildcards, in that you can change your entire team for free. The difference is that the free hit only lasts for one week. You get two free hits for the whole season – one in the first half, and one in the second.
You can make as many changes as you want for that week. After that though, your team will go back to exactly how it was.
Normally, only your 11 starting players can score you points. But when you activate your bench boost, the four players on your bench also score you points.
Again, this lasts for one week only, and you only get two bench boosts to use.
You can pick a regular captain every single week, who will score you double points. With the triple captain chip though, your captain’s score will be trebled instead.
As with the free hit and bench boost, this only lasts for one week, and you only get two shots at it.
You’ll make a lot of mistakes while you’re getting started with FPL. A LOT.
And that’s fine!
Firstly, because this is basically just a trial run before you have a proper go at it in your second season.
Secondly, because… you’ll always make mistakes. James and I have been playing FPL for years and years. We’ve both finished 10-15k worldwide. And we still make a load of mistakes every year.
With that said, here are three big mistakes you should try to avoid your first time playing FPL.
Taking hits (again, paying -4pts for extra transfers) is always tempting. It’s only 4pts, after all, right?
Wrong!
For starters, those 4pts add up. Take 20 hits across the season, and you’ve cost yourself 80pts – the equivalent of a decent points haul for an entire extra gamweek.
I’m not advising you to never take hits.
I am advising you to only take hits when there’s a good chance they’ll pay for themselves.
Ideally, this will happen in the first week you take the hit.
A perfect example is when you can’t put out a full starting XI, but don’t have a free transfer. In this case, you’re immediately swapping 0pts for at least 2pts (you get 2pts just for someone playing a full game). If that player then achieves anything at all – goal, assist, clean sheet, etc. – the move will pay for itself.
Don’t be afraid, however, to look longer-term with your calculation.
Betting on one player to outscore another by 4pts in just one gameweek isn’t usually smart. Outscoring that first player over the course of three or four gameweeks, though? That’s much easier to bet on.
Do not bring someone in immediately after their game. I don’t care how ‘must-own’ they seem, or how well they played.
Injuries happen all the time in training. The player might even have picked up a knock in that previous game, without anyone knowing about it.
The two reasons FPL players make early transfers are:
Ignore the first one. Overreacting to one-off performances is the surest way to make stupid transfers.
The second one is fairer. Prices for popular players will go up, as I’ve explained here. It’s still not worth getting the player on a Monday or Tuesday though, just to save yourself 0.1, and risking injury.
Also never, ever transfer in a player before they play in Europe, or on international duty. They will 100% injured if you do this.
Over time, you’ll learn to better balance the advice you get from experts, what the FPL community is saying, and your own gut feelings.
Doing that is easier said than done, and it’s something I still struggle with.
In your first season though, don’t worry about that one bit. Just get all the information you can. Follow a load of proven FPL experts (and us – @Full90FPL) on Twitter. Check FPL Reddit every day. Build a list of websites you like, and check them every day or two as well.
Read as much as you can. You’ll not only get specific tips on transfers, captaincy, who to start/bench, and so on. You’ll also learn about longer-term FPL strategy, upcoming fixtures, Fantasy Premier League terminology, and so on.
In the previous section of my FPL Beginner’s Guide, I gave you three mistakes to avoid. To bring balance back to the force, here are three FPL first time player tips that you should do!
This is a classic problem that long-term, real-life football fans have when they start playing Fantasy Premier League.
The players who are good in real-life… are not necessarily good in FPL!
(And vice versa).
For starters, defensive midfielders are completely irrelevant in fantasy. You can go through all the best such players in recent years: Kante, Rodri, Fernandinho, etc. None of them are or were worth owning in FPL.
Likewise: solid full-backs who don’t get assists; very active forwards who don’t score goals; and tricky, exciting wingers who don’t get assists or goals.
All good in real life. All rubbish in FPL.
There are rumours every year that FPL Towers will change how points work, and start better rewarding the players who are actually really good in real-life.
In the meantime, all we care about is goals, assists, and clean sheets, in that order. If a player doesn’t get any of those, they’re not worth owning.
Having a stinker in FPL can really impact your weekend. If one player in particular lets you down, it can be tempting (and actually pretty cathartic) to bin them immediately in a ‘rage transfer’.
We must all try to ignore these urges. If there’s one thing we need as FPL players, it’s patience.
The FPL season goes on forever. 38 gameweeks is a very, very long time.
Your team might still be stinking after 10, 15, 20 gameweeks. It doesn’t matter. Don’t panic. Right up until the last 10 (or even fewer) gameweeks, you’ve still got plenty of time to make massive gains.
In 2022/23, for example, James and I were both well over 1 million in the Overall Ranking, at the halfway point of the season. We both ended up in the 100-150k range. And the vast majority of those gains happened in the last 10 weeks or so.
FPL is the absolute definition of a marathon, not a sprint.
Your chips (wildcard, free hit, bench boost, and triple captain) are basically the most valuable tools in your arsenal.
Do not waste these chips.
I don’t care how much you’re panicking. See my previous tip.
Be particularly protective of your second half chips, since almost all the best FPL gameweeks come in the second half of the season.
When the cup competitions really get going, in the new year (especially the FA Cup, European knockout rounds, and latter stages of the League Cup), that’s when teams get their fixtures delayed. In turn, that means delicious double gameweeks for FPL players.
A double gameweek literally just means that a team plays twice in the same FPL gameweek. Any players you have with a double gameweek therefore get two games to score points for you, instead of one. Scrumptious!
Double gameweeks have the most potential to score you points out of any fixtures in the season. They are 100% worth saving your chips for.
(If possible, you should also save your second wildcard until a run of double gameweeks starts, then pick players who have at least one double coming up).
In truth, this FPL Beginner’s Guide could have gone on twice as long. There are all sorts of nuances to this game, and plenty more tips and tricks that could be dealt out.
Ultimately though, you just need to give it a go.
I’ll repeat, for the very last time – don’t worry about your first time playing FPL. Treat your first season as a learning experience, and simply have fun, then aim to really crack on in your second year.
Finally, help is always on hand in Fantasy Premier League for those who need it.
We’ll be updating this site multiple times per week throughout the season, with all sorts of advice, and you can get that as soon as it lands on Reddit or Twitter.
Obviously, there are plenty of other resources out there too (none of them as good as Full90 FPL, of course…). If you need any assistance whatsoever, just ask.
In the meantime, enjoy your first steps into the world of Fantasy Premier League… the most endlessly challenging (and frustrating) game in the world.
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