Guide · 6 min read

Building a squad: £100m, fifteen players and three per club

Every FPL team is built from the same budget under the same rules. The difference between a good squad and an average one is rarely the stars. It's where the rest of the money went.

The rules

You pick fifteen players: two goalkeepers, five defenders, five midfielders and three forwards. You have £100m to spend, and no more than three players from any one club. Each week eleven of them play, in any formation that has one goalkeeper, at least three defenders, at least two midfielders and at least one forward. Those are the game's own settings, not house rules.

Where the money can go

Prices are set by the game and move during the season, so the ranges change, but the shape doesn't. Early in 2026/27 the cheapest goalkeeper cost £4.0m and the dearest £6.1m. Defenders ran from £3.9m to £8.0m, midfielders from £4.4m to £11.9m, and forwards from £4.5m to £15.6m.

That spread tells you where decisions are made. There's only £2.1m between the cheapest and dearest goalkeeper, so a keeper is never where your team is won. There's £11.1m between the cheapest and dearest forward, and that's where most managers spend big. The question every squad answers, whether its manager knows it or not, is how much to put into the two or three players who score the most, and what that leaves for the other twelve.

The players who fill the squad

Four of your fifteen sit on the bench most weeks, and a sensible squad spends as little on them as it can while still having someone who'll play. A bench player who never gets a game is worse than useless: when a starter drops out, nobody comes on. The ideal cheap player costs close to the minimum and starts every week for his club.

Those players are worth looking for, because they're what pays for everything else. Early in 2026/27, three of the ten highest-scoring players in the game cost £5.0m or less: two defenders and a goalkeeper, owned by far fewer managers than the expensive forwards. Cheap doesn't mean filler. Some of the best value in any season is at the bottom of the price list.

Three per club

The limit of three players from one club matters most when a club is flying. If a side is scoring freely and keeping clean sheets, you'll want its keeper, two defenders, a midfielder and a striker, and you can only have three. That forces a choice about which three, and it's usually a choice between the expensive attacker and the cheaper defenders who each score from the same clean sheets.

It also shapes your transfers. If you already hold three from one club, buying a fourth means selling one of them in the same move.

Money in the bank

Unspent money scores nothing. A squad that finishes the first week with £2m in the bank has, in effect, a player £2m worse than it could have had somewhere in the team. A little left over for flexibility is fine; anything more is points you chose not to have.

Your budget can grow during the season as prices rise, but only partly. When you sell a player whose price has gone up, you receive half of the rise, rounded down, which is the game's sell-on rule. Price rises, falls and the sell-on fee works through what that means.

A way to start

Pick your most expensive players first, because they decide what's left. Then fill the cheapest slots with players who will start. Then spend what remains on the middle of the team, where the choices are closest. Check the three-per-club rule last, because it's easy to break without noticing when you're filling from the bottom.

Once your squad has played a few weeks, the Rivalry Report shows how its choices have actually performed against a rival's, from the captaincy calls to the points left on the bench. For how the four players on that bench come into your team, read Auto-subs, bench order and the vice-captain.