Getting started

Initial Budget

Goalkeepers: 8.5 – 10.0
Defenders: 23.5-28.0
Midfielders: 36.0 – 39.5
Forwards: 26.0 – 31.0

By sticking to the above budgets per position, you ensure both strength and balance in your squad. How much you spend in each position depends on what lineup you will use. Normally it is better to have a weak bench and thereby using most of your budget on the starting 11. But during the festive period you will need a stronger bench because of the rotation going on with 3 matches a week for some teams.

You also need to make a decision on how best to break down each position:
Goalkeepers: 2 x cheaper  (4.5/5.0) goalkeepers that you rotate based on fixture difficulty or 1 x 4.5-6.0 permanent goalkeeper, combined with a 4.0 goalkeeper that will remain on the bench the majority of the time. If going for a 4.5 keeper the 4.0 keeper have to be the backup to be sure that at least one of your keepers are actually playing. Remember, cheaper goalkeepers are likely to pick up more saves points, whereas more expensive goalkeepers may be more likely to keep clean sheets.
Defenders: 2-3 x premium defenders (5.5–6.5) combined with 2-3 x 4.5 defenders, or even 4.0 players if you can find players that are guaranteed to play at this price.
Midfielders: 2-3 premium midfielders (8.5–13.0), 1-2 good midfielders (6.5-8.0) and 0-1 backup (4.5-5.5).
Forwards: 1-2 x premium forwards (9.0–13.0) and 1-2 x cheaper (6.0–8.5) forward. 1 benchplayer (4.5) if you go for a lineup with 2 striker.
Remember to keep at least one midfielder or striker as a clear back-up option (4.5). Having 8 incredibly strong front players (midfield and forwards) is a mistake because you will have to bench one of them – and therefore lose out on these points – every single week.

If you’re opting for an 11.0+ striker, you need to be captaining him almost every week for it to be considered good value in your squad.

The Players You Need

Goalkeepers: Positives: Goalkeepers from smaller teams (mid table) that may face a lot of shots from a distance which may get them bonus points when they keep a clean sheet, goalkeepers from a top 6-team with an extremely solid defence, meaning they’re likely to keep clean sheets more often. Negatives: Goalkeepers facing a lot of shots from inside the penalty area.
Defenders: Positives: Clean sheets, attacking full backs, centre backs that get forward for set pieces or any defender that actually takes set pieces. Negatives: Weaker teams not able to hold clean sheets and players not contributing in any kind of threat.
Midfielders: Positives: Players that creates a lot of chances, take a lot of shots (preferable on target), take set pieces, focal points in the teams attack and play out of position (i.e. listed as a midfielder, but actually play in attack). Negatives: Defensive midfielders and players assisting the assister.
Forwards: Positives: Goalscorers, penalty takers, teams that create a lot of chances and undroppable. Negatives: Competition for the place in the team and weak teams not attacking as much
You also need to consider one other hugely important factor for every position on the pitch: is this player nailed on to play 60+ minutes every game? If they aren’t, don’t pick them.

Differentials: The Myth

Differential players:
Are owned by less than 5-10% of players on the game.
The myth:
Owning differentials is the key to rising rapidly up the leaderboard.
The truth:
Differentials are a lot more ‘risk’ than they are ‘reward’. Success at FPL involves covering the highly-owned, highly-performing players. Although it is of course good to get early on the bandwagon if a less owned player is starting to perform. This might for instance be if a highly skilled player is coming back from injury and thereby isn’t owned by a lot. Those players will rapidly rise in price and will grant you lots of points!

They should be saved for your end of season charge for victory – this is a marathon, not a sprint.

Transfers & Wildcarding

In FPL, you get one free transfer every week. If you don’t use it, it rolls over to the next week – but two is the maximum you can have at any one time. There are three important rules to try and follow with transfers:

1. Using 2 free transfers in one go is significantly better than using one free transfer two weeks running. It also gives you a safety net if something goes wrong (such as injury or suspension).
2. Avoid point hits! Any additional transfer you want to make will cost you 4 points. Do not get tempted to take a significant amount of points hits across a season. Usually, the overall winner of FPL will take less than 20 points in the entire year in hits. Points hits can be profitable, but conservative play is rewarded more than aggressive play over a large sample of players and time. This rule should mainly only be broken to take out injured/suspended players without having a benchplayer able to cut the losses.
3. Be aware of what is happening between this GW and next, and where in the season it is. Try to make transfers the day before, or on the day of, the transfer deadline. Early in the season it might be smart to catch pricerises and avoid pricedrops to increase your squadvalue, but this is with a risk of injuries coming up. If there is CL, EL, international matches, FA-cup or similar it is better to wait as the risk of injuries coming up is quite big. It is also normally good to wait til the press conference from the managers to get the latest news on injuries and players in risk of rests.

Price rises: these occur when a set amount of people transfer a player into their team in a gameweek (amount depends on how many are already owning them and how many are selling them). Remember that you need 2 price rises to actually get an increase in how much you can sell a player for.
Price falls:  The opposite happens when too many transfers out a player.
Both things happens at the same time every day and they happen in 0.1 increments, and can change by as much as 0.3 in one week. There are many sites out there that help you to monitor predicted price rises and falls.

Wildcards: You get two wildcards to play a season. The first wildcard will be available from the start of the season until 29 Dec 14:00. The second wildcard will be available after this date in readiness for the January transfer window opening and remain available until the end of the season. The Wildcard chip is played when confirming transfers that cost points and can’t be cancelled once played. Note that when playing either a Wildcard or your Free Hit chip, any saved free transfers will be lost. You will be back to the usual 1 free transfer the following Gameweek.

The wildcard will allow you to make unlimited free transfers in a single gameweek. Use the first one wisely, there is no ‘best’ time to use it – it all depends on your team.

Your second wildcard should be used in regard of a double gameweek. These tend to occur very late in the season, whereby a team will play twice in the same gameweek. This allows them to accumulate more points than they normally would in two single gameweeks – especially if they’re your captain.

Chips

Chips are something you also want to save until just before double gameweeks, particularly your ‘triple captain’ and ‘bench boost’ chips. Be patient and save bench boost until you have as many players as possible with a double gameweek, the trick is to use the second wildcard a round or two before a big double gameweek to get in the players having two games or really good games. The triple captain should be used when you have a normal captain with two great fixtures, this you don’t need to plan as well as the bench boost as it is only one player needed. Free Hit is used to good effect in blank gameweeks or if you have a huge injury or suspension crisis. If you use it before a blank gameweek then it will require extreme planning to save yourself when these roll around.
Remember that you can only play each chip one time and only one chip in a gameweek. Thereby a good rule of thumb is to save these until late in the season. For instance in the 2017/2018 season it would look like this: GW31: Freehit as CHE,ARS, LEI, MCI, TOT and MUN (+ 6 lesser teams) all had a blank gameweek (or save it to play it in GW31 if you had a lot of players playing). GW32-33: prepare for double GW34 and blank GW35. GW34: Triple captain a player from CHE as they are playing both SOU and BUR in the same gameweek. GW35: Maximize points without too many hits (or play free hit if you didn’t use it in GW31). GW36: Play Wildcard to get in as many players with two games in GW37 as possible (preferable 15 players) to use with bench boost . GW37: Play Bench boost with as many players with 2 games or easy games as possible.