What’s New in FPL and First Impressions

Fantasy Premier League (FPL) has returned for 2026/27 and I (James) am already excited.

FPL Towers have rolled out a few updates for the new season – most of them user experience tweaks, but a couple could actually affect how we play the game. And, we have some position changes plus a whole new bunch of prices.

So, in this piece, I am going to look at all of that and give my first impressions. If you’re looking for a quick reminder about last season then check out this piece I wrote at the end of the season.

User Experience Changes

Initial Squad Building Tool

So first up, AI-assisted squad building. If you’re new, you can answer a few questions and they’ll suggest a team. Veterans will probably skip it like me, but it’s a friendly on-ramp for beginners. 

Live Mini-League Updates

Then there are live mini-league updates, so you can watch your rank shift as matches play out. It’s not brand new outside of official tools, but it’s nice to have it built in.

Price Change Predictor

FPL is adding its own predictor based on official transfer data. That’s convenient, though, third-party sites have offered it for years. FPL Towers aren’t even offering an improved service versus those tools because it won’t tell you when someone is guaranteed to improve in price for some reason but whatever, its another thing that’s nice to have built in.

More interesting I think is that the deadline has moved to midnight. Perhaps its a bit selfish as someone based in the UK but on the rare occasions where I am paying attention, this means I dont have to stay up late.

It’s worth saying, getting too fixated on daily price movements can lead to bad decisions. Picking players who score FPL points is better than picking the guy most likely to rise. So, don’t get too obsessed and just add it to the factors you consider when making transfers.

New Squad View

You’ll also get some new squad views when the season starts. You’ll be able to see the percentage of teams that own your players; FPL’s Fixture Difficulty Rating for your team and “form.” 

Ownership is probably the most useful here because you should be able to see who your differentials are a little easier. But their fixture difficulty ratings are still a bit rubbish – why rank something out of 5 but not give anyone a 1? You may as well just rank out of 4… So, you may wanna use our fixture ticker instead. And, form is a pretty bad indicator of future performance – fixtures are way better.

Career Rank Percentages

One quality-of-life upgrade I do like, career rank percentage. Given how tough top 10k is these days, percentile gives some much better context for performance. But I would say that because I have finished in the top 1% for 5 years now…

Gameplay Changes

Later Lockdown

Game weeks won’t be finalised right after the last whistle anymore, which should prevent those annoying moments where bonus points and defcon points were allocated before all the data was updated. 

Bonus Points System

The bonus point system has been adjusted. At its basic level, centre-backs are a little less favoured, wingers and dribblers get a small lift, and keepers see a minor beneficial tweak.

This has been done by amending the underlying BPS calculations in three ways:

1. Removing the punishment for being tackled so flair players (usually wingers and full-backs) that dribble are no longer punished for taking opponents on.
2. Reducing underlying BPS for clearances blocks and interceptions. So, a player will now earn 1 BPS for every THREE CBI, instead of getting 1 BPS for every TWO CBI last season.
3. Giving goalies 2 BPS for saves that don’t come from shots (like deflections or crosses) and giving goalies an extra 1 BPS for saving “big chances.”

FPL handily gave us some tables to show which players would have benefited the most from the first change:

All in all, these changes are supposed to go some way to addressing the imbalance we all saw last year where centre-backs were much better assets than full-backs, wingers and goalkeepers. I’m supportive of these changes but not sure it will make much of a difference, particularly to goalies.

Chips, Five Frees and Defensive Contributions Remain the Same

Three things stayed the same this season. Chips, rollovers, and DefCons. And honestly, that’s fine by me. 

Twice per season chips still opens up more varied strategies instead of everyone dumping chips in the final weeks. The five-transfer rollover also stays, and that’s proved useful. Even if you don’t use it often, it gives you the option to do a mini-wildcard when you need it. 

And defensive contributions thresholds haven’t moved, but they’ve hit the big scorers with price hikes instead. We know they back-tested def cons and it wasn’t expected to be as big of a game changer as it proved last season. I think it’s probable that we find that to be the case and last season will be viewed as an outlier.

11 Player Position Changes

11 Players have changed position:

Most of these make sense and, frankly, most of these guys aren’t FPL relevant.

The most interesting change here is Kroupi who could play out-of-position forward for Bournemouth. In the past, these out of position players have been fantastic value and he is already generating a lot of interest despite Bournemouth’s tougher opening fixtures.

I’m sad to see Lewis-Potter go into midfield because he only played on the wing a couple of times for Brentford. But, his defcons per90 now goes up to 11.5 (if you look at last seasons data) because he gains 96 recoveries. Midfielders do need 12 Defcons to get the two points but he is worth thinking about if we find out he is nailed.

Dorgu is also a weird one as I don’t think he actually played that much as a midfielder last season.

The Elite FPL Assets – Haaland, Bruno and Gabriel

There were a few questions when Haaland, Bruno and Gabriel’s prices were revealed but, my first impression is that I generally think it makes sense when you see the prices of everyone else. In case you missed it, Haaland costs 15.5, Bruno 12.5 and Gabriel 8.0.

Haaland is probably your permanent captain (unless Bruno has a much better fixture) so I think his price has to reflect that to some extent.

Without Salah in the league and with his incredible season and his extra route to points, Bruno Fernandes HAD to get a substantial price rise. But, I do think its possible to go without him – he broke the Premier League assist record last year and he probably won’t do the same this year.  You also have Cunha and Mbeumo at very competitive prices which could make you question it.

All of these are designed to stretch your cash which is PART OF THE FUN!!! Haaland is probably just straight in my team. But. I’m genuinely questioning whether I need Gabriel or Bruno or whether I can cover them with other picks. I like that. 

Gabriel Scepticism

And speaking of questioning, Gabriel is the one I am most sceptical about. I don’t think he will be as good this year as last. I already said defcons were unexpectedly overpowered last season but let’s look at Gab as a test case:

Gab got 30 bonus points and 22 defcon points. The changes to bonus and the longer-term trends on DefCons suggest these numbers will likely decrease. And, without Saliba for a long-period of time, will Arsenal keep another 19 clean sheets this year?

He scored 3 goals last year, which he has done every year since 22/23 so that number probably stays the same. But he also got 5 assists last year which is more than he has amassed in the rest of his Premier League career (which is about 4 and a half seasons).

Mosquera or Timber offer cheaper ways into the Arsenal backline and the latter also has attacking threat. Virgil offers very similar attacking threat to Gab and O’Reilly blows him out of the water. Tarko has almost no attacking threat but is AMAZING for Defcons. Maybe I just wanna save a bunch of cash and get one of these instead? Or even two of them? And then there is…

Raya Breaks 6.0 Goalie Ceiling

For the first time in five years we have a 6.0 Goalkeeper and his name is David Raya. It makes sense to me as he just put in one of the best ever performances, is nailed and seems great. 

However, it won’t make a difference to me because I think spending 6.0 at goalie is boring. So, I won’t do it to start the season but I don’t think it’s a terrible move.

4.5 Goalkeeper Choices

And this is the key reason I won’t want Raya. Unlike last year, we have a bunch of good options to pick for cheap goalies:

James Trafford is 5.0 and has been linked with Leeds so that could be one less but Carl Rushworth (4.5) is expected to make a move to Coventry after playing on loan there last year.

Verbruggen feels underpriced to me based on how good he and Brighton were at the end of last season. Petrovic and Leno are also both just fine so why bother spending big?

Promoted Defenders ALL 4.0

Continuing the cheap defensive theme then… All promoted teams defenders cost 4.0.

I love this change. I’ll need to look at this in more detail later but they possibly could be a source of bargains or bench players or both. The one that jumps out to me is van Ewijk because he is nailed and got 8 assists for the second best defence in the Championship last season.

Coventry play Hull in Gameweek 2 which also means we could potentially target a gameweek 2 bench boost with two 4.0 defenders and a 5.5 striker and then wildcard out of it afterwards without it costing too much that it affects our first 11.

Def Con Beasts Rise in Price

As I said above, the centre-back Def Con beasts have all risen in price. In fact, every defender who got more than 20 DefCons last year is at least 5.0. I will be tempted with a lot of these guys. 

However, I am also tempted to make a bet that Def Cons won’t be as high as they were last season and bet against this meta trend in a bid to get a good rank early on. 

The exception is Tarkowski – who finished second for Def Cons last year and would have been the No 1 defender for this metric in each of the previous FOUR seasons. He’s in my draft right now…

The real benefit of these guys was that they were simply set-and-forget. That meant you didn’t need to use as many transfers at the back to chase better fixtures. With the change in price, maybe we need to reconsider that a little bit and have a couple of these guys as set-and-forget and then get some more fixture based picks too.

Mid-Price Midfield & Forward Options A Plenty

There are a tonne of options in between 6.0 and 8.0 in midfield and forward positions. 

Some of the early thoughts from the community I have seen are pretty high on the likes of Szoboszlai who may be on pens without Salah and Gibbs-White who may benefit from a lack of European football and a top class coach.

There are a lot of guys in this bracket that are really appealing but carry a large amount of minutes risk. Gyokeres, Havertz, Foden, Cherki and Doku could all make an absolute mockery of their price tags IF the get the minutes.

Palmer, Saka, Isak and Semenyo

And then there are these four. Saka and Palmer are 9.5, Isak is 9.0 and Semenyo is 8.5.

All of them carry some appeal for next season, though I am slightly fearful of Saka’s fitness at the time of writing. Still, I think there are some interesting decisions we have to make about whether we can squeeze one of these guys in alongside the likes of Haaland and Bruno or if we should have more of the guys in the bracket below.

New managers

We have eight new managers (and two newly promoted managers) this year in the Premier League:

With so many new managers to start the season there are a lot of unknowns. We might presume that Xabi Alonso will play five at the back or that Enzo Maresca will focus on controlling possession but we don’t know for certain what any of them will do. People we think are nailed might not be and so pre-season might be especially important to pay attention to.

Post-World Cup Fatigue

On the other hand, pre-season might not be able to give us all the information we crave. Technically, players are entitled to three weeks off after the world cup. So, Spanish, Argentinian, English and French players in the Premier League may not join up with their clubs until 10th August – 3 weeks after the final world cup games and only 11 days until the start of the PL season.

And, looking at the likes of Declan Rice – who looked exhausted if not completely fucked at the world cup – we might not see them play in gameweek 1 even.

European Football 

On the other hand again, we don’t have European football for the first few weeks. The Champions League starts in between GW 3 and 4; the Europa League starts in between GW 4 and 5; and, the Conference League starts after the first international break (after GW 5) in between GW 6 and GW7. As a quick reminder, here are you European teams for the year:

Frankly, I’m still trying to wrap my head around all this but in more normal times we had some interesting picks that were only picks for this short window. So, in theory, before European football kicks off, the likes of Cherki or Odegaard may be more nailed.

And, of course, Chelsea, Spurs and Newcastle don’t have European football this year. That may make someone like Maddison, who has fitness issues but incredible underlyings from 2 seasons ago, a real option. Or, Cole Palmer, who also never seemed to be fit last year, could smash it again like a couple of years ago.

Good picks v.s good fixtures 

Finally, one of the key lessons from last year seemed to be that fixtures mattered less than player quality. That was mainly because the quality of the league was insanely high and there weren’t really many easy fixtures.

My first impression from looking at our ticker is the same. I don’t see any killer fixture runs to start the season. I can definitely see myself targeting the newly promoted teams, Hull in particular – they didn’t even have a great defence in the championship. However, I still think we need to be cognisant of the risks of being overly reliant on the fixtures.

1st, 5th, 12th draft

This is basically pointless right now but here is my draft. As you can see, I have quite a few fixture-based picks (like the United lot) and the two-mium of Bruno and Haaland. I’m also on a GW2 bench boost with triple Coventry on the bench. As the title says, I have tinkered with this a lot already so expect plenty more tinkers.

That’s It.

That’s our first piece on 25/26 FPL Pre-season tips done and dusted.

We are going to be writing content up to the deadline and will be looking at the best picks in each position, best early fixture runs, how to structure your squad, chip strategy for the first half of the season and, of course, be ranking the top 150 picks in FPL draft.

Keep coming back, sign up to the emails and don’t hesitate to get in touch with any questions or thoughts about topics we should cover.

James