With the 2010/11 English Premier League Football season due to start in August, now is the perfect time to set up your fantasy team.
My favourite fantasy site by a country mile is http://fantasy.premierleague.com/. It is the official fantasy game for the League, and it’s free to join. The aim of the game is to accrue as many points as possible based on individual player performance each week.
The game allows you to select two goal keepers, five defenders, five midfielders, and three strikers. Each week you select a starting eleven, along with your substitute priority for the bench players. The starting eleven can take the formation of your choosing, within reasonable limits. Should any of your starting eleven not make their team sheet that week, the game will automatically make an appropriate substitution for you. I recommend you don’t fill your bench with cheap players, because you will frequently encounter weeks where certain teams aren’t participating due to UEFA fixtures, etc. You will also have weeks where some teams play twice to make up games for weather postponements.
You select your players with a budget cap of 100.0 units, so your average player will cost 6.67 units. At the time of writing, the most expensive player is Frank Lampard, with a price tag of 13.0, while the cheapest players cost 4.0. As an additional restriction, you can select no more than three players from any Premier League team. Each week you choose one of your players to be the team captain. For that chosen player you receive double their number of points for that round.
Based on demand and performance, player prices rise and fall during the season. Typically, my team will end the season with a combined value of 110.0. You can make changes to your squad each round. Participants are given one free transfer each week, and two wildcards that enable you to make unlimited changes without incurring any points penalties. One wildcard can be used whenever you want, and the other can only be used during a certain window mid-season. If you transfer more than one player, and don’t use a wildcard, you are charged 4 points per additional transfer.
The scoring system is one of the reasons I like this fantasy game. It is based on numerous statistics, which vary depending on the player’s position. Below is an outline of the point scoring.
Action |
Points |
| For playing in a game |
1 |
| For playing at least 60 minutes in a game (includes playing points mentioned above) |
2 |
| For each goal scored by your goalkeeper or defenders |
6 |
| For each goal scored by your midfielders |
5 |
| For each goal scored by your forwards |
4 |
| For each goal assist |
3 |
| For your goalkeeper / defender conceding 0 goals (must play at least 60 mins) |
4 |
| For your midfielder conceding 0 goals (must play at least 60 mins) |
1 |
| For every 3 shot saves made by your goalkeeper |
1 |
| For every penalty save |
5 |
| For every penalty miss |
-2 |
| Bonus points for the best players in a match |
1-3 |
| For every 2 goals conceded by your goalkeeper or defenders |
-1 |
| For every yellow card |
-1 |
| For every red card (includes any yellow card points) |
-3 |
| For every own goal |
-2 |
Halfway during the season all participants above a certain rank are placed into an FA Cup style tournament, where you are given a random opponent each week. The member with the highest score that weekend advances to the next round, and the loser is eliminated. I always seem to get a heavyweight first round in this tournament, but hopefully I can improve on that this season.
You can create and join leagues with your friends, and you can monitor your global rank against all players. The global rank can be broken down by the team you support and the country you live in. In my best year, I made the top 50 for Australian members, although I haven’t achieved anything close to that in a while.
So have a go, and best of luck! You can find some good squad selection tips with their resident pundit.