Guide · 8 min read

An FPL glossary

Every term you'll hear in a mini-league group chat, defined in plain English. Where a definition involves a rule, the rule has been checked against the game's own settings for this season.

The squad and the money

Squad. Your fifteen players: two goalkeepers, five defenders, five midfielders and three forwards, with no more than three from any one club.

Starting eleven. The eleven who score each gameweek. The game requires exactly one goalkeeper, at least three defenders, at least two midfielders and at least one forward, with a maximum of five defenders, five midfielders and three forwards.

Formation. How the ten outfield starters split. Within the rules above there are exactly eight legal shapes: 3-4-3, 3-5-2, 4-3-3, 4-4-2, 4-5-1, 5-2-3, 5-3-2 and 5-4-1.

Budget. The £100.0m every new team gets to build its fifteen. Prices are quoted in tenths of a million.

Bank. Money you hold but haven't spent on players. Also a verb: to "bank" a transfer is to roll it over.

Team value. The total selling price of your fifteen plus the bank. Not the same as what you paid, because of the sell-on fee.

Selling price. What the game gives you for a player when you sell him: your purchase price plus half of any rise since, or the full current price if he's fallen. The half is the sell-on fee, set at 50% in the game's rules. See Price rises, falls and the sell-on fee.

Price change. A £0.1m rise or fall in a player's price, processed by the game once a day and driven by how many managers are buying or selling him.

Deadline. The moment before a gameweek's first match when your team locks. Transfers, captaincy and chips all have to be in before it.

Transfers

Free transfer. The one change per gameweek you can make without penalty. Unused free transfers roll over, up to a bank of five.

Rolling. Deliberately not using a free transfer so you have two or more next week.

Hit, or points hit. The 4-point charge for each transfer beyond your free ones, deducted from that gameweek's score. "Taking a −4" and "taking an −8" mean one and two extra transfers. See Free transfers, rolling them, and when a hit pays.

Auto-sub. When a starter plays no minutes, the game brings on a bench player automatically, in bench order, provided the result is still a legal formation. It happens after the gameweek finishes.

Bench order. The sequence of your three outfield substitutes, which decides who comes on first. The substitute goalkeeper only replaces the starting goalkeeper.

Knee-jerk. A transfer made in reaction to one week's score. Usually a hit; usually regretted.

Scoring

Appearance points. 2 points for playing an hour or more, 1 for playing any less than that.

Goal. Worth 10 to a goalkeeper, 6 to a defender, 5 to a midfielder and 4 to a forward.

Assist. 3 points, for every position.

Clean sheet. 4 points for a goalkeeper or defender, 1 for a midfielder, nothing for a forward, and only for players on the pitch for an hour or more.

Goals conceded. Goalkeepers and defenders lose 1 point for every two goals their team lets in while they're on the pitch.

Saves. Goalkeepers earn 1 point for every three saves.

Cards and the rest. Yellow card −1, red card −3, own goal −2, missed penalty −2, saved penalty 5 (to the goalkeeper).

BPS. The Bonus Points System: a separate, finer-grained tally of everything a player does in a match, used only to decide who gets bonus.

Bonus. Three, two and one extra points to the three highest BPS scorers in each match, with ties shared. Provisional during the match, confirmed later. See How bonus points work.

Defensive contribution. 2 points to an outfield player who reaches a threshold of defensive actions in a match; goalkeepers don't earn it. Defenders have hit it from 10 actions this season, midfielders from 12.

Captain and armband. The player whose score is doubled. "Giving him the armband" means captaining him.

Vice-captain. The player whose score is doubled instead if your captain plays no part in the gameweek.

Blank. Two meanings. A player "blanks" when he returns only appearance points. A club or gameweek "blanks" when there is no fixture at all.

Haul. A big individual score, informally anything into double figures.

Points on the bench. What your substitutes scored while sitting out. Everyone's favourite number to quote at someone else.

Chips

Chip. A one-off power-up. There are eight a season: two each of Wildcard, Free Hit, Bench Boost and Triple Captain, one set for gameweeks 1–19 and one for 20–38. A first-half chip unused at the gameweek 19 deadline is lost. See Every FPL chip explained.

Wildcard. Unlimited free transfers for one gameweek; the new squad is permanent. Not playable in gameweek 1.

Free Hit. Unlimited transfers for one gameweek, after which your previous squad returns exactly as it was. Not playable in gameweek 1.

Bench Boost. All fifteen players score for one gameweek.

Triple Captain. Your captain's score is tripled instead of doubled.

Double gameweek. A gameweek in which a club has two fixtures because a postponed match has been fitted in. Often shortened to DGW.

Blank gameweek. A gameweek in which a club has no fixture, usually because of a cup clash. BGW for short.

Ranks and ownership

Gameweek. One round of fixtures and one round of scoring. There are 38 in a season.

Overall rank, or OR. Your position among every team in the game by total points. Teams on the same total share a rank.

Gameweek rank. Your position for one gameweek's score only.

Green arrow, red arrow. The indicator showing whether your overall rank improved or worsened this gameweek.

Percentile. Your rank as a share of the field. The game's settings define bands for the top 1% and then every 5%.

Average. The mean gameweek score across all teams. Beat it and your overall rank improves; fall short and it worsens. Also called "par".

Ownership. The percentage of teams with a player in their squad.

Effective ownership, or EO. Ownership counting only teams where the player starts, with captains counted twice and triple captains three times. The number that decides whether his goal moves you up or down. See Effective ownership.

Template. The set of players so heavily owned that most competitive teams have them. Owning the template protects rank; it doesn't build it.

Differential. A player few others own, chosen to separate yourself from the crowd, or from your rivals.

Punt. A speculative, low-ownership pick, usually cheap.

Live rank. An estimated rank calculated during a gameweek, before bonus is confirmed. An estimate until the game finalises the week.

Leagues and rivalries

Mini-league. A private league among people who know each other, ranked on total points. The only league most managers care about.

Classic league. The standard format: highest total points wins.

Head-to-head league. A format where you play one opponent each gameweek: 3 league points for a win, 1 for a draw, 0 for a loss, with ties broken on points scored and then points conceded. Private head-to-head leagues are capped at 16 teams.

Cup. A knockout competition run by the game alongside the season; its start and format are set each year. Private head-to-head leagues can add up to three knockout rounds of their own.

Phase. A month of the season with its own league table, so there's a September winner and a December winner as well as an overall one. See The shape of an FPL season.

Rivalry Report. FPL Rivals' comparison of two managers across seven categories, ending in a verdict with the evidence. See How the verdict is decided.

League Pass. The paid tier on FPL Rivals where one member pays for a whole mini-league, unlocking weekly written round-ups, a fixture league with honours and forfeits, chip watch and the Wager Ledger.

Wager Ledger. A record of a league's side bets with stakes in words, never money: a pint, a forfeit, a name change.

Chip watch. A view of which chips every manager in a league still has in hand.

The data words

xG, expected goals. A measure of the quality of the chances a player has had, published per player by the game. A player with high xG and few goals has been unlucky or wasteful; one with many goals and low xG has been over-performing his chances.

xA, expected assists. The same idea for the chances a player has created for others.

xGI, expected goal involvements. xG plus xA: the total attacking threat a player has generated.

xGC, expected goals conceded. The quality of chances a player's team has faced while he was on the pitch. Lower is better for defenders and goalkeepers.

ICT index. The game's own composite of three measures it publishes for every player: influence, creativity and threat.

Form. The game's form figure is a player's average points per match over the last 30 days; that window is in the game's settings.

Points per game. A player's total points divided by the matches he's appeared in. Better than total points for comparing players who've missed games.

Expected points. The game's own forecast of a player's score for the coming gameweek, published before each deadline. FPL Rivals captures these at the deadline and holds them to account afterwards.

Chance of playing. The percentage flag the game attaches to an injured or doubtful player, shown alongside a news note.

If a term you've heard isn't here, the FAQ covers how the site itself works, and the rest of the guides go deeper on everything above. Or skip the reading and compare two managers.