About FPL Assistant

From a ZX Spectrum to building my own app

I am old enough to remember the first computer my parents gave me in the 1980s.

It was a Sinclair ZX Spectrum 48K, complete with rubber keys.

The first game I remember playing was Horace Goes Skiing. It was loaded from a cassette tape, accompanied by all those strange screeching noises while you waited and hoped it would actually work.

Who remembers those?

Even back then, I remember reading about young people learning to code, creating games and eventually building businesses from their bedrooms.

I thought it was amazing.

But I also thought:

That is what other people do. There is no way I could ever do that.

That way of thinking stayed with me for most of my life.

Other people started businesses.

Other people created products.

Other people took ideas and turned them into something real.

I worked for those people.

I built teams, solved problems and helped other businesses succeed, but I never really believed I could build something of my own.

FPL Assistant began when I finally decided to challenge that belief.

The book that made me try

A while ago, I read a book called What’s Your Dream? by Simon Squibb.

This is not a paid promotion or an attempt to sell anyone a book. It is simply a genuine thank you.

By the time I reached the end, I felt inspired to have a go at something.

Not because I suddenly believed I was an expert.

Not because I had unlimited time, money or technical knowledge.

I just began to think that perhaps building something was not reserved for other people.

Perhaps I could try too.

That was where the idea started.

When work stopped feeling like mine

For much of my career, I have worked in logistics and warehouse management.

I have always been the type of manager who thinks outside the box and finds ways to get things done.

When I was trusted and given room to breathe, I loved my job.

I had brilliant people around me, and together we built a strong team. We solved problems, supported one another and created something I was genuinely proud of.

Over time, the environment changed.

I began to feel that decisions were being judged with the benefit of hindsight rather than with an understanding of the pressure, limited information and difficult circumstances in which they had originally been made.

It became harder to feel trusted.

Harder to feel respected.

Harder to take pride in something I had spent years helping to build.

Being challenged and held accountable is part of being a manager. But feeling as though your judgement, experience and contribution are no longer valued is different.

That can slowly take something out of you.

For me, it also created a question:

What could I build if I used some of that energy for myself?

FPL Assistant became part of the answer.

Building FPL Assistant

FPL Assistant was not created by a large technology company, a team of professional analysts or an experienced software developer.

It has been built by me, Jim Donnelly, part-time.

I still work full-time, and most of the development happens during evenings and weekends.

I am learning the trade as I go—coding, testing, fixing bugs, publishing updates and trying to understand things that were completely unfamiliar to me when I started.

Some evenings are productive.

Other evenings are spent trying to fix one small problem that refuses to behave.

There have been features that failed, ideas that had to be scrapped and updates that caused new problems somewhere else.

There have also been days when I have put hours of work into the project and wondered whether anybody would ever find it.

Building something alongside a demanding full-time job is difficult.

There are nights when I am exhausted.

There are moments of doubt.

There are times when visitor numbers or downloads remain small and it feels as though the work is disappearing into an empty room.

But I keep going.

Every bug fixed teaches me something.

Every feature released proves that I can learn something I once believed was beyond me.

Every person who visits the site, downloads the app or sends feedback makes the project feel a little more real.

Why I built it around FPL

I enjoy Fantasy Premier League, but I often found myself jumping between different websites, fixture lists, spreadsheets and social-media opinions just to make one decision.

I wanted to build something simpler.

Something that could help answer practical questions such as:

• Is my squad balanced?
• Are my players likely to start?
• Who should I captain?
• Which transfer would genuinely improve my team?
• Am I spending too much in one position?
• Am I reacting emotionally to one good or bad Gameweek?

That became FPL Assistant.

The aim is not to pretend that an algorithm can predict football perfectly.

It cannot.

Football is unpredictable. Managers rotate players, injuries happen and sometimes the best decision still produces the worst result.

FPL Assistant exists to help managers understand the information, compare their options and make calmer, better-informed decisions.

You are still the manager.

The app is there to help.

What FPL Assistant offers

FPL Assistant is being developed to support the decisions managers make throughout the season, including:

• Rate My Team analysis
• Captain recommendations
• Transfer suggestions
• Expected-minutes and starting-security analysis
• Fixture comparisons
• Budget-player recommendations
• Differential finding
• Price-change monitoring
• Squad structure and value analysis
• Practical FPL guides

The website is also growing into a library of guides covering player picks, squad building, chip strategy and weekly Gameweek decisions.

Everything is being built and improved gradually.

About Simpatico

Simpatico is the independent name behind FPL Assistant.

It represents the projects I am creating while learning how to turn ideas into real digital products.

Simpatico is not a large software company.

At the moment, it is one person working full-time, learning to code in the evenings and trying to build something useful from scratch.

FPL Assistant is the first major app released under the Simpatico name.

For me, it represents more than an FPL tool.

It is proof that you do not need to spend your whole life believing that creating things is only for other people.

You can start later in life.

You can learn slowly.

You can make mistakes.

You can have doubts.

You can still build something.

An honest promise

I will not pretend FPL Assistant is perfect.

It is still growing, and I am still learning.

There may be occasional bugs, outdated information or features that need improving.

Player roles, injuries, fixtures and prices can also change quickly, so important FPL decisions should always be checked against the latest official news.

What I can promise is that I care about the project.

I will listen to feedback, correct mistakes and continue trying to make it better.

Critical feedback is welcome.

I would rather be told that something is confusing or not working than continue building in the wrong direction.

Every visitor and every user matters because this project has been built one person at a time.

A final thank you

I want to finish with two genuine thank-yous.

The first is to Simon Squibb.

Reading What’s Your Dream? did not suddenly give me all the answers. It did something more important: it made me question the belief that building something of my own was only for other people.

This is not a sponsored mention or a sales pitch.

It is simply a thank you for helping provide the push that made me finally have a go.

The second thank you is to my family.

They have put up with countless evenings where the glow of a laptop has lit up my face from the other side of the room.

They have listened to me talk about bugs, downloads, articles, rankings and features they probably never asked to hear about.

They have tolerated the distracted moments, the late nights and the repeated phrase:

I just need to fix one more thing.

Building something part-time does not only take time from the person doing it. It also takes patience from the people around them.

I am incredibly grateful for theirs.

Thank you to everyone who has visited the website, tried the app, read a guide, reported a problem or offered encouragement.

This is still only the beginning.

Jim Donnelly
Creator of FPL Assistant
Simpatico