Rate My FPL Team: A Better Way to Analyse Your Squad

Why rating your team matters

Fantasy Premier League is a game of small edges. Over a 38-gameweek season, the difference between a top 100k finish and a mid-table one is usually just a handful of better decisions — a captain call here, an avoided transfer there.

The problem is that most managers judge their team emotionally. You picked these players, so you want them to be good. You have watched Reddit threads where someone posts "rate my team" and gets ten contradictory opinions in an hour. One person says sell your striker, the next says he is essential. None of them are looking at the same data.

A structured rating fixes that. Instead of asking strangers for gut feelings, you measure your squad against the things that actually predict points: whether your players start, whether they are in form, whether their fixtures are kind, and whether your money is working hard.

The five pillars of a strong FPL squad

When elite managers assess a squad, they are implicitly scoring it across five areas. Make these explicit and you have a repeatable rating system.

Score each pillar out of 20 and you get a rating out of 100. Anything above 80 is genuinely strong. Between 60 and 80, one or two pillars need work. Below 60, you have structural problems that transfers alone might not fix quickly.

Structure: the pillar most managers ignore

Structure is about how your £100m budget is distributed, and it is the least discussed pillar because it is invisible week to week. But bad structure quietly costs points all season.

Common structural mistakes:

• Too much money in goal. The difference between a £4.5m and £5.5m goalkeeper is rarely worth £1m that could upgrade a midfielder.
• An expensive bench. Bench players score you nothing most weeks. Every pound beyond cheap, playing fodder is wasted.
• Mid-price traps. Squads full of £6.5m–£7.5m players often lack the ceiling of premium-heavy squads. The best teams usually pair two or three premiums with genuine budget enablers.

A well-structured squad concentrates money where points concentrate: premium attackers who take penalties, defenders from clean-sheet teams, and cheap players who start every week.

For a deeper look at how to distribute the £100m, see our FPL budget strategy.

Minutes and form: points only come from the pitch

Minutes are the foundation of everything. A player with elite talent who plays 60 minutes every other week will lose to an average player who plays 90 every match. Before any transfer, ask: is this player nailed?

Signals a player is nailed:

• Started the last five league games regardless of opposition
• Takes set pieces or penalties (managers rarely rotate their taker)
• No natural replacement in the squad for their role

Form is the second filter — but be careful how you read it. A two-game purple patch is noise; a six-game run of attacking returns is signal. The best approach blends recent form with season-long output, so you neither panic-sell a proven premium after one blank nor chase a one-week wonder.

Minutes security is easier to assess with the most nailed FPL players shortlist.

Fixtures and value: the final two rings

Fixtures swing points more than most managers accept. A mid-price midfielder at home to a bottom-three side often outscores a premium away at a title contender. Look four to six gameweeks ahead, not just at the next deadline — that is how you time transfers instead of reacting to them.

Value is points per million. Your budget players matter here most: a £5m defender returning like a £6m one frees money elsewhere. But do not chase value into your captaincy positions — premium players cost more because their ceiling wins you gameweeks.

An example of how the pillars interact: suppose your squad scores 18/20 on form but 11/20 on fixtures. You are hot now, but a difficult run is coming. That is the perfect moment to plan two or three transfers ahead — moving early to teams whose fixtures turn kind, before their prices rise.

You can then compare the best opening fixtures before committing to a transfer.

Simulate transfers before you commit

The biggest advantage of a numeric rating is that you can test decisions before making them. Thinking about selling your underperforming winger for an in-form forward? Simulate the move and watch what happens to each pillar:

• Does the overall score go up — or did you fix form while wrecking structure?
• Did your fixture ring improve over the next five gameweeks?
• Is the new player's minutes score actually secure?

This turns transfers from gut calls into measured trades. Some of the worst moves in FPL feel right — the simulation catches the ones that only feel right.