Fantasy Premier League: Unlocking The Secrets To A Top 1% Finish

by Toby Margetts, Gianni Butticè

Fantasy Premier League has become more than a game. It’s a phenomenon. With well over 6,000,000 players signing up for the 2019/20 season and around 24 septillion possible lineups, there are untold subtleties that separate 99% of players from the elite 1% who consistently occupy the top of the overall rankings, not to mention taking home the prize pots and bragging rights at the end of each season.

This book will show you how to join that 1%. FPL veterans and perennial top 1% finishers Toby and Gianni share everything they’ve learned from over 10 years of FPL graft – from pre-season scouting to the final sprint, unveiling the patterns and habits that only the best exhibit. It’s an invaluable manual of data, managerial nous and the all-too-familiar learnings of despair and heartbreak, neatly packaged up to power your team to the top.

Armed with this unprecedented knowledge and know-how, you’ll have an enormous edge over anyone you come up against. This book is not a guide to how to play Fantasy Premier League – it’s how to win.

186 pages, Kindle Edition

First published August 2, 2019

Reviews

[Abeselom Habtemariam · Rating 3 out of 5]

So, I’ve been an avid Fantasy Premier League (FPL) player for the past four years. At first, I was the Ted Lasso of FPL players. I cared, but I was so out of my depth. Slowly through experience, I’ve managed to achieve a top 2% overall rank in the world for the past two years. The game has come a long way from the days of telephoning in teams to The Daily Telegraph newspaper in the early 2000s. FPL as we know it now has grown from 75,000 players in 2003, to having 12 million players last season. In the top 10K FPL managers of all-time list curated by premierfantacytools.com, you can see that 59 countries are represented, revealing the truely global popularity of the FPL phenomenon.

At its core, FPL is a simple game. Every manager starts the season with a £100 million budget to build a virtual team of 15 players, comprised of 2 goalkeepers, 5 defenders, 5 midfielders and 3 forwards. You can only select a maximum of 3 players from a single English Premier League side. Points are awarded to each player based on the real life performance of the player in the English Premier League. The points are earned for things like goals, assists and clean sheets. You are allowed one free transfer a week. If you want to transfer more players, you have to take a 4 point hit per transfer. The more collective points your on-field team earns, the higher your rank will be. Simple enough right? So, what’s all the fuss about FPL if it’s that simple? Well, a closer examination will reveal the case to be more intricate.

Having a limited budget means you can’t have all the best players you want. So you allocate your funds to get a couple of expensive premier players, a few good players, some average players and some bench fodders. Every week, you choose a captain who will earn double the points he gets if you hadn’t captained him. This makes your captain selection a very important decision. Player’s price is not fixed and fluctuates after the first game week. If a player is sold by a significant number of FPL managers, his price drops. If a player is instead bought by many FPL managers, his price goes up. Player price changes are handled by an elaborate algorithm run by the official FPL site. So you need to closely monitor the FPL transfer market not to lose team value. Then there are four ‘’chips’’, namely Wildcard, Bench Boost, Triple Captain and Free Hit. Your timing in using these chips has a serious repercussion on your rank. Double Game weeks, blank game weeks, The Bonus Point System (BPS), planning a few fixtures ahead, rolling transfers and choosing formations create further complications. It’s a game that needs skill, luck and patience. If there's anybody out there who wants to understand the basics of the game more, this video will be helpful.

As FPL has grown in popularity, it has spawned many podcasts, apps, websites, large discord chat groups, optimizing tools for analysing your team and numerous YouTube and twitter content creators. Many people take part in mini-leagues where they compete for bragging rights over their office colleagues, family members or friends. FPL is an immersive and addictive game. FPL managers have been known to watch a dull match between Southampton and Bournemouth on a Monday night not because they are fans of either team, but because they own a player in the match, and they want to see how he’s getting on.

This is a valuable book for any FPL player who wants to improve their ranks or top their mini-leagues for the coming season. It discusses in-depth the value of xG and xA, pre-season scouting, offensive and defensive fixture analysis, checking the bookies odds, predicting hauls, Chip strategies, FPL psychology and more. As both authors of this book clearly state in the introduction, this is a book for the 1% of FPL players who consistently finish with high ranks each season, but want to elevate their game to elite levels. This is not a beginners guide on how the game is played. Although I got some good pointers out of this, I wouldn’t say they were groundbreaking. Your response to this book will vary depending up on what level in your FPL journey you currently are in.

[Michael Schmid · Rating 4 out of 5]

Have you ever wanted to pick the brains of the guy who keeps winning your mini league every season - or perhaps even the overall FPL champion? Well, this book might be as close as you can get into some really good insights of those who keep winning at FPL... The cover of the book shows the profile of a man with his brains very visible, but he holds his finger to his mouth, wanting to keep his thinking and strategies secret. But he cannot keep his brains a secret as they are so visible to everyone... This book could perhaps be seen as an extended rulebook of FPL, explaining not only the rules, but also ramifications of the rules in different scenarios, as well as tips and tricks to getting the most points out of each gameweek. The contents of the book are structured very well and the writing style is very readable and interesting, although you do need to be at least a certain level of an FPL geek to fully appreciate such a book. :-) Much of what I read confirmed my own thinking and my own conclusions that have helped me to win my mini leagues in recent seasons, but also provided additional insights that I hope will help me climb up the overall rankings again. Bring on the next gameweek!

[George · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a very useful book for Fantasy Premier League (FPL) players who are looking to get the upper hand over their rivals in mini-leagues and finish among the elite 1% of players worldwide.

Containing useful tips and a full guide of how to play the game, as well as recommendations as to tools you can use online to organise your team better, this is a must-read for both new players and existing players looking to improve their overall ranking.

FPL is, after all, a very competitive game of around 6 million “managers”, and there are lots of ways to approach it. Who should you choose for your team in pre-season? What formation should you play? How can you plan around injuries, suspensions, double gameweeks, and value fluctuations? This book has answers to all these questions and more.

I just hope that my rivals don’t read it too!

[Roshan Rai · Rating 4 out of 5]

worth the price

The book is fairly recommendable. Provides good amount of strategies, knowledge and insights. Some of the concepts might be redundant given the evolving nature of FPL.
It’s not an elixir but worth the price all in all.

[Louis Jones · Rating 2 out of 5]

Nothing groundbreaking here; no "secrets" that are far beyond common sense and a bit of experience

[Hugh Williams · Rating 5 out of 5]

Great insight and good fun!

Considering that FPL is something that many people play casually between mates. It is really interesting to see the method of some people's approaches as opposed to the madness! It's a fun read and worth it for the explanations and list of useful resources alone! Would definitely recommend to anyone looking to understand FPL better and hopefully win their mini leagues (and the obligatory cash or beer)