To begin playing FPL, register a new account at fantasy.premierleague.com. The summer period between seasons is called pre-season. There are several essential actions you must take before each gameweek.
Between gameweeks, you should follow teams, player performances, news, and the actions of other FPL managers. You should be aware of some special events during each FPL season.
How to begin playing FPL (Fantasy Premier League)?
To begin playing FPL, register a new account at fantasy.premierleague.com. The registration process is simple and fast. You don’t need to input any personal or sensitive information. Since FPL is 100 % free to play, no payments are required.
You can change your FPL team name later, so don’t worry too much. All FPL teams have a unique ID. You need your FPL ID to use third-party tools and apps. To find your FPL ID, see this beginner’s guide: How to find your FPL ID?
You can play the game via the web browser at fantasy.premierleague.com or the mobile app. Although there isn’t an official FPL app, the Premier League’s official app features the game and is available on Google Play and Apple Store.
If you want to play FPL properly, register your team before the first Gameweek. A new English Premier League season typically starts in early August. New teams can be registered usually about a month before the first Gameweek.
Once you finish the registration, we can move to team creation!
The pre-season
The summer period between seasons is called pre-season. Nothing usually happens in June, while players return to training in early July. This is also when the pre-season friendly matches begin. If a World Cup or European Championship is played in the summer, many players will participate in this tournament. These players are usually given rest from almost all pre-season friendlies.
FPL usually goes live four weeks before the season begins. The new season typically kicks off on the second weekend of August. There is no rush to register and create your team. Player prices don’t change during the pre-season, and you don’t win anything by making your team early on.
Pre-season is a critical period because it creates the foundation of your FPL team. You have to make your gameweek one squad based on information you have from pre-season. You have only one wildcard chip between GW 1 and GW 19. If you make massive mistakes in the pre-season and pick the wrong players, you have to spend your wildcard early, and it might give you a big handicap for the whole season.
What should you focus on in the preseason? My tip is to find good YouTube sources! Many people follow line-ups and teams in the preseason for a living and do the “dirty work” for you. Take advantage of this information.
You should also focus on new signings, promoted teams, and teams with new managers. Put the most weight on the last two friendlies. Typically, the final friendly match is played one week before the season starts, and teams will use the best possible starting XI.
Actions before the gameweek
There are several essential actions you must take before each gameweek. The deadline is 1.5 hrs before the first match of each gameweek. I recommend making these changes earlier in the week so you don’t forget them if something comes up. Sometimes, FPL managers get surprised by Friday evening fixtures and forget to update their teams.
Here is a checklist you should go through.
- Pick your team: Select the best possible starting XI, and don’t forget to sort the bench! Ensure the player with the best scoring potential comes in first. If one of your starting XI players misses the game entirely, substitutions are made automatically.
- Select the captain and vice-captain: This decision is critical because the captain gets double the points. Our FPL Fixture Planner helps you to make the decision. Pick a premium player with the highest expected goals as captain.
- Decide chips: You can use one of the chips before any gameweek. Read more about the chips in the following paragraphs.
- Join leagues: You can join leagues and compete against other FPL managers.
If you don’t pick a team, FPL uses the same starting XI and captain selections you made the previous week. You will still get points even if you miss the deadline, but your squad won’t be optimally set.
These are the chips available for you before each gameweek.
- Wildcard: This chip allows you to make unlimited transfers. Read more: What is FPL Wildcard?
- Free Hit: This chip allows you to make unlimited transfers, but your team reverts after one gameweek. Read more: Free Hit vs. Wildcard.
- Triple Captain: Your captain will get triple points instead of the usual double.
- Bench boost: Every player on your bench will also score points
- Assistant Manager: Your team will get a manager for four gameweeks, who will also score points. Read more: What is FPL Assistant Manager chip?
We’ll cover the chip strategies in more detail in our FPL strategy tips article. Remember that you can only activate one chip at a time. A wildcard can be used between gameweeks 1 and 19, and there is another wildcard for gameweeks 20 and 38. Other chips can be only activated once during the season.
Weekly tasks
Between gameweeks, you should follow teams, player performances, news, and the actions of other FPL managers. Let’s go through each task in detail.
Teams
No one can watch all the matches of all Premier League teams. My tip is to watch short (~2-minute) highlights of every game, which takes you less than 30 minutes each week. If you have time, you can also watch more extended highlights. These are available on YouTube for free. This is the minimum you should do after each gameweek to know what teams looked like.
You should also look at the team stats, not just the results. You should, at minimum, register xG scores from each match. You can see xGs from live scores like Fotmob.com. xG scores will tell you what happened in the game.
Players
Check the fixtures page on the official FPL site and go through each match. I recommend checking the bonus points section, which tells which players performed well. You should also follow other stats, depending on the position. For example, to find the best FPL midfielders, you should look for stats such as key passes.
This is where YouTube channels became very useful. Many smart people create FPL content for a living, study each match, and follow players carefully. You shouldn’t follow every move they make, but take in all the helpful information you hear. No one can follow all players all the time.
I’d focus extra on new teams and signings early in the season. You might find some gems, but avoid mistakes many FPL managers will make.
News
You should follow team news and other news related to the Premier League. It’s easy to find social media accounts and news websites for this. Each Premier League team will also have a press conference before each match, but often, managers won’t give you accurate information about injuries.
This becomes very valuable when FPL marks players as doubts (50 % or 75 % chance to start). If you know a player is out or he will start, it will give you an edge.
Rotation is a critical part of FPL. Most top teams play European matches and go far in domestic cups. This creates a problem for FPL managers because teams like Liverpool are known for rotating their players. Even if you don’t know who is rotated, you have to be at least aware of players who have the rotation risk. Because some players never get rotated, while others are at constant rotation risk.
For example, everyone loved Nkunku at the beginning of the 2024/2025 season because he had a great pre-season and was expected to start. It took only two matches until all FPL managers realized Nkunku would not start any Premier League matches. He was a risk because Nkunku came to the team after a long injury, but many FPL managers didn’t realize the risk they were taking.
Other FPL Managers
FPL is a strategy game. You must know what your competitors are doing to create a winning strategy. We’ll talk more about strategy in our FPL strategy tips article. The short version requires you to know what the template team is. This means players that are very popular among YouTubers and have a high TSB percentage.
In a strategy game, you must sometimes take calculated risks but can’t take too many of them. If you try to be too clever and pick players nobody else has, you will fail with 100 % certainty. The main reason is that there is a good reason why some players are exceptionally highly owned; that is because they are outstanding. Other FPL managers are not idiots.
My recommendation is that the core of your team should be a template, meaning start with the same premium players most of your rivals have and then pick 1-2 ideas for each position as differentials.
One note, though. Transfer-in and transfer-out stats each week are usually not worth following. They are populated by players who scored high in the previous gameweek. Most FPL managers overreact, especially to defenders who score many points. You pick up valuable trends when following a couple of YouTube channels. When those pro players start to bring in some players, you know it’s time to consider them.
Other useful tips
You should be aware of some special events during each FPL season. Let’s go through these tips one by one.
International breaks
There is typically one international break in September, October, and November, followed by a couple of breaks in spring. International breaks can be problematic because your players could get injured.
One thing many new FPL managers don’t take into account is the South American matches. Players from South American countries often return on Thursday or Friday before the following gameweek. This is combined with a long flight. It’s pretty standard that such players will be rested in the match following an international break.
European players are typically not impacted by international breaks unless they get injured.
Christmas period
Premier League has a very special fixture period around Christmas and New Year. Usually, four fixtures are played in a short period, which means rotation for some players. This depends entirely on the team and the player. You should be aware of the players with rotation risks and consider selecting those guaranteed to start no matter what.
January transfer window
In January, a transfer window allows teams to buy and sell players. You should be aware of the transfer rumors surrounding players so you don’t immediately pick someone on your team who is sold.
It’s beneficial to have extra transfers available in the January transfer window. This might open up excellent FPL opportunities. For example, a midtable team might sell a 4.5M defender to a top club, where he becomes a starting XI pick instantly. Since FPL doesn’t change player prices in the middle of the season, you might suddenly have a cheap player in a top team that everyone wants in their FPL squads. If you have extra transfers available, you can benefit from these situations.
Sometimes, new signings outside the Premier League might also be significant FPL assets.
Blanks and double gameweeks
Cups and postponed matches cause double gameweeks almost certainly in every Premier League season. Double gameweeks typically take place between February and May. This means there are sometimes gameweeks where specific teams don’t have a match, but these teams have two games in some future gameweek.
If there is a gameweek where you have a lot of blanks (players without a match), you can use the free hit chip. Most FPL managers save their triple captain chip for a double gameweek late in the season.
Following FPL content creators and news will make you aware of blanks and double gameweeks. These are great opportunities for significant gains.
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