Ultimate Fantasy Premier League – 2015/16 Guide

Ultimate Fantasy Premier League (UFPL) returns for the 2015/16 season to compliment our efforts in the free Fantasy Premier League game.

This quick start “beginners” guide is intended for those who are new to the features of UFPL. It will summarise the factors that make this game different and we’ll be following this up with more in-depth guides before the season kick-off.

For those already familiar with UFPL, it’s worth noting that there has been one key change to the game delivered last season: the price of loans has been significantly lowered; we’ve provided details later in this guide.

For now, let’s go over the key elements…

UFPL – The Basics

The first point to stress is that UFPL is not free to play – there’s a £5 entry fee per team.

The flipside is that the Premier League are offering an array of cash prizes – not least £25,000 to the overall winner. In addition, the game offers £1000 monthly prizes – a popular facet of the game which, last season, saw many create new teams tailored to compete for that monthly cash pot.

Once you’ve paid up, you’ll choose a squad of 25 players within a £160 million budget, then each Gameweek you’ll select a starting XI plus seven substitutes.

After each matchday within the Gameweek, you can replace your starters with your chosen substitutes to (hopefully) build you score.

A captain scores double points for the Gameweek, and can be switched between matchdays also.

Scoring Points

Whilst very similar to FPL in terms of appearance points, goals, assists and clean sheets; there are no Bonus Point awards in this game. Instead there are small point allocations for on-pitch actions including Key Passes, Big Chances Created, Recoveries and CBIs (Clearances, Blocks and Interceptions). Points are subtracted for yellow and red cards, own goals, Errors Leading to Goal Scored, and Big Chances Missed.

Making Transfers

The biggest deviation from FPL – transfers are not available to managers outside of the set transfer windows.

Once the season gets underway, you can make as many as 16 transfers in the first four Gameweeks before the window closes on September 12. When the window is open, these trades can be carried over to the following Gameweek (ie, the limit for Gameweek 1 would be four and the limit for Gameweek 2 is eight and so on) but they do not carry over to the next window – you either use them or lose them when it closes.

In the second transfer window (Gameweek 20-23) you can make a maximum of 12 transfers over the four rounds of fixtures. Once these windows close, you cannot swap any players out or in without sacrificing points – more on that in a bit.

As a result, before each Transfer Window closes it’s important to equip yourself with a set of players that can absorb the fluctuation of form and the inevitable injuries that will start to eat into your 25-man squad.

As we’ve mentioned, that’s not a major concern until Gameweek 4 has concluded and, at that point, we’ll publish further articles to guide your selection process.

Gameweek Management

This is very different to FPL: with no weekly transfers or price changes, there is no need to make changes to your team before the weekend aside from setting your first XI, captain, and naming your seven substitutes. The bench selection can often be your most difficult decision – you can only choose seven substitutes, meaning that eight of your players will be inactive for the Gameweek and cannot be called upon at any time.

Once the Gameweek is underway, you’ll need to check your lineup before Sunday’s matches, and again if there is a Monday fixture, to make the necessary substitutions and captaincy change. There is an ‘auto-sub’ mechanism if you don’t make changes, but you’ll miss out on a lot of points by going this route.

The Loan System

If you elect to make changes to your squad outside of Transfer Windows, “emergency loans” can be used – temporary “transfers” that come packaged with a points penalty. Players can be loaned for one, two or three Gameweeks after which your original player swaps back in.

As mentioned, the major change this season is that the cost of a loan has been reduced considerably.

You’ll now lose just three points for a single player for a single Gameweek, five points for two Gameweeks and six points for three Gameweeks.

Loans are therefore far more viable as a tactic and will likely play a far greater role in our week-to-week strategy. Apart from solving an injury crisis, they now have a bigger part to play in double Gameweeks and can even be used for short-term punts on in-form players with strong fixtures.

Feasibly, you could loan in your captain on a regular basis (gambling three points) if you felt that the new player offered a greater potential for returns than a player in your current squad. This could be particularly fruitful when considering players for matchday 2 (Sunday fixtures) or matchday 3 (Monday fixtures), when you’re perhaps less likely to have a wide pool of talent available to you. Work this in tandem with favourable fixtures and extend the load period to three Gameweeks and the return on your points investment could be very significant.

The reduction in loan payments look set to be key. The tactics involved in “playing the system” are suddenly opened up.

There is one notable caveat, however – you can only ever have one set of loans active at any one time. If you sign a player on a three-Gameweek loan, you’ll have to cancel that loan if you then choose to loan in another player during that spell. You should therefore consider your long-term loans very carefully.

Initial Selection

You can certainly consider short-term in mind when forming your initial squad. You still have 16 transfers in hand until the conclusion of Gameweek 5, meaning that you have the ability to react to form and team selections.

However, a certain amount of planning is required to ensure that your initial lineup has a spine that offers potential to see you through this period. You ideally want to be using your transfers to swoop for form players and perhaps the bargains that may emerge, rather than fixing fundamental issues.

The season ticker can be your friend here – you can use this to assess the first four Gameweeks and strike a balance between a solid foundation for your squad, combined with one or two players that are targeted at the early fixtures.

Playing the Fixtures

Which brings us nicely to the next major strategy: the spread of fixtures across the Gameweek matchdays is absolutely vital to the selection of your squad.

It’s important to have squad coverage across the different matchdays because this will give you the greatest level of flexibility when it comes to swapping players in and out.

You need to balance this carefully. Players who don’t perform on Saturday can be swapped for those yet to play on Sunday and Monday, but only if you ensure that you give yourself options. If you’ve just a couple of players involved on Sunday, you’re forcing yourself to get the Saturday selection spot on. Equally, if your squad is biased towards those sides playing Sunday, you’ll be stuck with a limited XI for Saturday, with a big dependency on the following day’s matches.

Ideally, you’ll have a starting XI for Saturday, along with seven options to bring on from the bench on Sunday and Monday; this offers the very best chance of achieving a strong haul through substitutions over the course of the Gameweek.

From the off, you should look for clubs that are in Champions League and Europa League action, or that are likely to be featured in televised matches frequently. This season, this includes Man City, Arsenal, Chelsea and Man United in the top price brackets, along with Liverpool, Tottenham and possibly Southampton and West Ham when it comes to mid-price assets.

All these teams will be assured of Sunday/Monday matches. However, while you should target them, make sure your squad is evenly split between these seven and the remaining 13 sides to give you the best chance of covering the two or three days of any given Gameweek.

We’ll publish an initial squad selection guide next week that will hopefully aid your decision making prior to the Gameweek 1 deadline and up to the Transfer Window ahead of Gameweek 5.

The Fantasy Football Scout League

For those who are looking to get involved or have already began to tinker with their first squad lineups, you can join the official Fantasy Football Scout league: the code is 1258-516.