Common Niche Questions about FPL (Fantasy Premier League)

FPL is largely a simple game, which is big a reason it’s so popular. However, like many games, it has certain niche qualities and situations that players may find themselves uncertain about when faced with them.

This is a list of questions that I see every season relating to these quirks, and which the FPL site’s own guidelines aren’t particularly clear or helpful about.

How do I leave an FPL Mini-League?

A surprisingly common request, and it’s equally surprising how unclear it is in the game’s UI.

Here’s the process:

  • Select ‘Leagues & Cups’ in the top menu
  • Click on the ‘Options’ icon for the League you want to leave
  • Select ‘Leave League’

How do I boot someone from an FPL Mini-League?

This is another tricky one, again no thanks to the game’s UI. Here’s the process:

  • Select ‘Leagues & Cups’ from the top menu
  • Click on the ‘Options’ icon for the League you want to boot someone from
  • Click the ‘Administer’ option
  • Scroll down, and enter the player’s name into the Search Bar under ‘Add League Suspensions’
  • When you type the manager’s name, you have to add a space after it for their name to appear in the selectable list
  • Select their name from the dropdown list, and click ‘Suspend Player’.

    NB: You have to be the Administrator of the league to boot people from it.

Where do I find my FPL Team ID?

Many online FPL tools and websites (like these brilliant examples…) require you to add your team’s ID into them to get data for your team.

But where do you find this ID? Simply click on the ‘Points’ tab in the top menu, and you’ll see your team’s ID in the URL in your browser:

https://fantasy.premierleague.com/entry/{YOUR-TEAM-ID}/event/2

How do I change my FPL team name?

This is a feature that didn’t used ot be possible in FPL, but since 20/21 season you can now change your team name.

Counter-intuitively, the functionality sits in the ‘Design your Kit’ option on the ‘My Team’ page on the right. Simply click that, and the option to change your team name will be the first thing you see.

One of my players didn’t play. Which one of my subs will come on?

This question crops up quite often, usually by managers who have someone second or third on their bench who have scored highly.

In short, if one of your players in your starting XI doesn’t feature, then your first sub will come on, providing:

  • They themselves featured in their game
  • By subbing into your team, your team still has a valid formation.

If one of the two conditions above aren’t met, then your second sub will come on. The second point above often catches people out. To illustrate, say you play a 3-4-3 and one of your defenders doesn’t feature. You had a midfielder first on your bench, but he can’t come on, because that would mean your team would be playing a 2-5-3 if he did, which isn’t valid in FPL. So the first defender on your bench would come in, in this instance.

My defender got a red card but hadn’t conceded when he went off. Why didn’t he keep the clean sheet when they conceded later, after he’d departed?

This is a really niche one, but does happen occasionally. It’s simply in the rules that if a defender or midfielder get sent off after 60 minutes having banked a clean sheet, if their team later concedes they will lose that clean sheet, by account of the fact they weakened their team by getting sent off.

A player transferred club in the real world, and I now have four players from the same team in my FPL team!

Happy days! You can continue to field the four players of that team, however you can’t make any transfers without rectifying that issue, so you probably will want to fix it at some stage.

Can I undo transfers in FPL?

So you’ve made an ungodly amount of transfers without realising they cost points. Or you got drunk after your captain blanked and rage-transferred him out, but he’s got Luton next week. Or, worst of all, your mate hacked your account. Can you undo these awful decisions?

The answer is yes and no. You can’t do it without playing a Wildcard of a Free Hit. In playing one of these chips, all point hits are negated, and your score is saved, but of course it’s come at the cost of a Chip.

My player has risen by 0.2m in price, but I can only sell him for 0.1 more, why?

Because this is how price changes work in FPL.

For every 0.2m a player rises in price, your own value of that player rises 0.1. This doesn’t work for price decreases either, so if you have a player at 5.0m and they fall to 4.9m, you will only be able to sell him for 4.9m.

The reasoning behind this is to stop teams trading players purely for profit, and giving an early advantage of team value to player traders. However, it’s been a debate amongst players since the game launched as to whether this is a fair system.

One final note is that if your 5.0m player rises by 0.2m but then decreases by 0.2m back to 5.0m, you can still sell him for 5.0m.

If I play my Free Hit or Wildcard, do I still get the two free transfers I’d rolled previously?

No. Regardless of how many transfers you have banked, if you play a Free Hit or Wildcard, the next Gameweek you will always have exactly 1 Free Transfer available.

The FPL App isn’t showing the right thing/is buggy/hasn’t updated my score or league table

That’s because the FPL app is notoriously awful. If you’re on mobile, use the in-browser website instead and delete the app immediately.

Are xG and xA actually useful for FPL?

Watch this and find out: