fantasy premier league 2015/16 is open

Fantasy Premier League, Preseason

Yesterday the fantasy premier league 2015/16 site opened.  It interestingly opened with a number of new rules.   Well outline these and give our initial thoughts plus we’ll also remind you of our league code for you to enter

fantasy premier league 2015/16 is open

The first thing that hits you is the tabs that suddenly appear giving you 3 new tabs which are known as “chips”.  They can be used once during the season and can’t be used in the same game week or in the same gameweek as a wildcard. Interestingly they can be cancelled at anytime before the Gameweek deadline.

Here they are with a few initial thoughts although it will obviously take  some time to digest

“The Chips”

There are 3 chips.  All out attack, Triple captain and Bonus Boost.

All out attack

This allows you to play 2-5-3 in the next game week.  Personally I don’t see this as the huge deal that some do.  I will always try and have a 5th playing midfielder anyway.  I can’t see myself investing significantly more money in that 5th midfielder for a one off chip.   I would probably just use it when my 5th midfielder has a decent fixture.

Triple Captain

This allows you to have triple captain points rather than double in the next gameweek

This is an interesting one.  It’s hard to see you not using this during a double gameweek which means leaving it for the 2nd half of the season.  As you can’t use the wildcard in the same gameweek as this it would mean you using the wildcard the week before the double gameweek.  Not ideal but probably necessary.

By the way the triple points bonus will be passed to your vice-captain if you captain doesn’t play. If your vice-captain doesn’t play either then the bonus is lost, the chip isn’t returned.

Bench Boost

The points scored by your bench players in the next gameweek are included in your total

This is probably the most significant of the 3 changes.  Again my thoughts are to leave it until a double gameweek.  It seems that there will be at least 2 double game weeks.  One for the FA Cup quarter finals and one for the Capital One Cup final.  This looks like the chip to focus on the most significant double gameweek which initially looks like FA Cup quarters.

It also means that the tactic in the 2nd half of the year will be to have 2 playing GKs rather than the emerging trend of using a GK and the teams cheaper reserve.

Wildcard changes

There are some changes to the wildcard and they’re quite significant.  The January wildcard no longer exists but there are still 2.

The Wildcard chip can be used twice a season, once in the first half of the season (before 28 Dec 14:00) and once in the second half of the season.

My thoughts on that is that it eliminates the decision over whether  you use the wildcard during the September international break or for double game weeks later in the year say in March for Cup or weather postponements.  The chances are now that I will use it for both.

As I said above they can’t be used in conjunction with the Chips above.

Bonus point adjustments

I wont go into the detail but the consensus seems to be that cheap goalkeepers will score better.  There are some adjustments which mean that pass numbers and completion bonus’ will be reduced meaning that the anomoly of bonus points collected by defenders passing around the back 4 will be lessened. Successful tackles will be better rewarded as well

2pm deadlines

There seems to be alot of 2pm deadlines in the gameweek summary which I assume is a new time for gameweeks where the first game is 3pm UK time rather than 12.45pm.  Useful for checking squads if you believe in leaving your transfers that late.  Personally I like getting my team done and then going our for lunch and a few beers so hanging around to check the squad doesn’t appeal even though it should benefit me as a normally late transfer person.  It also will be a pain for NZ and Australian FPL managers who are around 12 hours in front depending on where you are in Australia.

Join our league

Here’s our league code if you haven’t already been automatically joined.

68300-19117

We can now really ramp up the articles with a better view of the relevance of pre-season games.  I’ll also do an early draft team for a bit of interest. Just under a month to go before GW1

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