What the Changes to FPL Draft Mean For Your League
FPL Draft is finally here! Alongside the changes to generally made to FPL, there have been a number of changes that have been made specifically to the draft format.We have already done our first iteration of our draft rankings and we expect to update that next week with more. But, for the time being, let’s take a look at the changes and see how it affects how you play the game.
FPL Draft Specific Changes
There have been three changes made to FPL draft:
Renewing Leagues
Last Year’s Losers Get First Pick at the Draft
In Season Re-Drafts
FPL Draft Change 1: Renewing Leagues
League administrators can now renew their leagues from the previous season, including all the managers who took part in 2024/25, rather than having to set up a new league and add everyone again.It’s a system that has existed in Classic FPL for years. It is a small improvement in the user experience but not exactly groundbreaking.
FPL Draft Change 2: Last Year’s Losers Get First Pick at the Draft
Closely linked to the above, if you renew your league then you can make the draft order the reverse of last year’s standings i.e. the bottom-placed team gets first pick and the first-placed team gets last pick.Personally I am not a huge fan of this change. Just because I am not sure that having first pick is a huge advantage. I don’t know why they don’t just let league admins decide the order and then you could have more fun with it. Like an in-person raffle or something.
FPL Draft Change 3: In Season Re-Drafts
League admins can now schedule three additional drafts during the season. So you could draft once at the start of the season and up to three more times.As above, you can set the re-redraft order to be random or reversed league positions.Personally, I am a big fan of this. We were already talking about doing this in my league anyway. Draft day is the funnest day and I want more of it. Whilst I understand the criticism that re-drafts cheapen the draft and that these changes are just designed to give worse managers more chances to catch up – I want my friends engaged so I am happy with that. There is nothing worse than playing draft by yourself.
What Are the Best Times To Schedule In-Season FPL Redrafts
The first and simplest way to split the season is to simply redraft in between gameweek 19 and 20. That means that each real life team plays each other once and there is no fixture advantage to having a particular player or team in your FPL draft squad.There are three downsides to this. Firstly, assuming TV schedules don’t change anything, gameweek 19 starts and finishes on Tues 30th December and gameweek 20 starts and finishes on Sat 3rd Jan. That is not a big window of opportunity.Secondly, the transfer window is just opening on 1st Jan. It is open until 31st Jan. So, new players could join the league and you could miss out on them.Thirdly, AFCON starts prior to Gameweek 16 (13 Dec) and finishes Gameweek 22 (17 Jan). Obviously, not all African players will make it to the final so will be back sooner than that but there is naturally a risk to all African players.
Alternative FPL Redraft Schedules
That means there are a couple of alternatives:
Redraft after the transfer window closes between gameweek 24 (31 Jan) and gameweek 25 (7 Feb).
Redraft before AFCON between gameweek 15 (6 Dec) and gameweek 16 (13 Dec).
Redraft after AFCON between gameweek 22 (17 Jan) and gameweek 23 (24 Jan)
I think my personal favourite right now is a combination:
Redraft before AFCON between gameweek 15 (6 Dec) and gameweek 16 (13 Dec).
Redraft after the transfer window closes between gameweek 24 (31 Jan) and gameweek 25 (7 Feb).
This way you can adjust to AFCON and any new signings with the downside that there will be fixture advantages to be had.
