The league

You can pull out anyone who did not play. If a starter's match finishes without him coming on, he turns red in My team and you swap him for anyone on your bench whose match has not kicked off yet. The one thing you can never do is bring in a player who has already started: that would be picking with the results in front of you.

And the automatic substitute is still there as a net. If you never look, then at the end of the gameweek anyone in your eleven who played zero minutes is replaced automatically, and any spot you left empty gets filled. Doing it yourself is better, because you choose who comes on instead of taking whoever happens to be first.

How the bench order works. Your bench is a queue, numbered 1 to whatever you carry, and you set that order by dragging. We walk it from the top and bring on the first player who actually played and who leaves you with a legal eleven. Somebody who did not play cannot come on for somebody who did not play, so a bench full of unplayed players saves nobody. A goalkeeper can only be replaced by a goalkeeper, and the reserve spot never comes on.

A substitution lands as soon as it is certain, not at the end. The moment a substitution can no longer change, it counts. That happens once the player who did not play has finished and every bench player above his replacement has finished too, because from then on nobody can jump the queue. In gameweek 1 that would have locked substitutions ten hours before the end on average, and in one case fifty-three hours early. It also means our live score can sit above the official app during a gameweek, since the official one waits until the end: the matchup card says how many substitutions are already counted, and by full time both agree exactly. A substitution that is already counted is drawn right in the lineup: the player who came on stands in the eleven with an auto-sub tag, in the matchup and in My team. Anything still pending shows as with subs.

The reserve spot is separate and it is only for injured or suspended players. Whoever sits there scores nothing and never comes on.

Nobody scores zero here. If the deadline arrives and you never saved a lineup, the site puts in the strongest legal XI your squad allows and tells you it did. Losing a week because you were busy is not a fantasy result, it is a bad app. You still get a warning a day before and again three hours before the deadline, and another one whenever a player of yours gets hurt.

While the games are on, every screen shows the gameweek being played with the real points ticking up. Setting a lineup at that point is already for the following week, and the app says so.

Waivers and free agents

Every gameweek has a waiver round that settles 24 hours before the deadline. Claims you make before the cut go into a queue and are resolved by priority order, lowest number first. Winning a claim does not cancel your other claims: it only sends you to the back of the priority queue. After the cut, free agency opens and it is first come, first served, with the player joining your squad instantly.

Every claim needs a drop, because your squad has to stay at 2 GK, 5 DEF, 5 MID and 3 FWD. A player who has just signed with a Premier League club always arrives through waivers: no instant adds, claims only, until his first round settles. After that round he is a regular free agent like anyone else.

Trades

You propose, the other team accepts or rejects. They have 72 hours to answer before the offer expires. Once accepted, the rest of the league gets a 24 hour window to veto it: three of the six teams that are not involved have to vote against for the trade to be killed. If it survives the window, it goes through on its own.

Both squads have to end up legal, so trades are position for position. The two teams involved cannot vote on their own trade.

Scoring

Playing 1 to 59 minutes is worth 1 point, 60 or more is worth 2. On top of that:

Same for everyone: penalty missed -2, yellow card -1, red card -3, own goal -2. On top of that, the three best players in each match by the BPS index get 3, 2 and 1 bonus points.

DefCon, the rule that changed the game

Since 2025-26 the game pays for defending. If a player hits a threshold of defensive actions in a match he takes 2 points, no matter the result and no matter if his team conceded five.

• Defenders: 2 points for 10 or more clearances, blocks, interceptions and tackles in a match.
• Midfielders and forwards: 2 points for 12 or more of those same actions, recoveries included.
• Capped at 2 points per match: you cannot stack more even with triple the actions.

Why it matters so much: these are points that do not depend on anything going right. A goal needs the ball to go in; defensive contribution only needs the player to do his normal job. A nailed destroyer gets it in 30 odd of the 38 matches, which is 60 to 70 guaranteed points before a single clean sheet or a goal from a corner. That is the same as 12 goals from a midfielder, except it arrives every week and does not depend on luck.

Real consequence from last season: Gabriel, a defender, scored 209 points, third in the whole game, while premium wingers without penalties like Salah (116) and Palmer (102) burned their owners.

New for 2026-27: BPS was adjusted so it does not double count defensive contribution (defensive actions give less BPS, saves give more). It helps goalkeepers, full backs and attackers in the bonus. The point values and the DefCon thresholds did not change.

Who runs it

The league lives on this site. Points come from the official Premier League feed with the exact same scoring, and every transaction, lineup and standing is computed here. Waivers settle on their own at the cut, trades execute on their own when the veto window closes, and the player list resyncs with the Premier League every day so a new signing shows up without anyone doing anything.

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