The leading question of this article is: “How do the different rules in Fanteam effect which players we should be choosing, when comparing to the regular Fantasy Premier League game?“
In this article, I (@Ramorey_FPL) will highlight the key differences between the traditional FPL game and the Fanteam 1 Million Season Game.
I will also discuss the key differences I believe you should take into consideration when drafting your 15-man squads, in order to give you the highest chance of taking home part of the life-changing €1,000,000 prize.
In Part 1 of this 4-part series, I’ll be analysing how the FanTeam scoring system impacts the men between the stick – Goalkeepers.
My aim is to help you get a better understanding of what you should be looking for in arguably the most important spot of your 15-man squad.
Before I begin, I ask that you take a look at the official Scoring System for Fanteam’s €1,000,000 season-long Fantasy Premier League contest below.
The key takeaways from this, which differentiate the Fanteam game from the FPL game, are as follows:
- Goal scored (+8, instead of +6)
- 1 goalkeeper save (+0.5, instead of +1 for every 3)
- Team “wins” in period player is on the pitch (+1)
- Team “loses” in period player is on the pitch (-1)
- Foul resulting in a penalty (-2)
- No Bonus Points
- No Chips (Free Hit/Bench Boost/Triple Captain)
For the sakes of simplicity, I won’t consider the goals scored or the penalties conceded in this article.
1 Goalkeeper save (+0.5)
I’d like to take a look at this rule first, because even though I think it looks simple enough, it has more of an impact than many initially think.
Due to his popular demand and rise to new levels of fame last season, I’m going to use the Burnley shot-stopper, Nick Pope, as an example to help me demonstrate.
Pope accumulated a total of 120 saves across his 38 Premier League appearances for Burnley last season; one of the highest among all goalkeepers in the League.
Using this number of total saves, 120, we can simply divide by 3 to give a total of roughly 40 points for saves in FPL, right? Easy.
Let’s break this down further. In the 2019/20 season, Pope accumulated a total of 25 save points from his 120 saves – less than if we simply divided his saves by 3.
The reasoning is quite simple: Goalkeepers in FPL only get a save point when a goalkeeper reaches a multiple of 3 in a single match.
This means that whether the keeper produces 3, 4, or 5 saves in a single match – they would still only get 1 save point!
1 save point for 5 saves has always annoyed me a little with FPL, so I’m pleasantly surprised at how Fanteam have improved the rules on this one.
Let’s have a look at how the above would translate on Fanteam.
1 Goalkeeper save = 0.5 points, simple right? It doesn’t matter if your goalie gets 2, 5 or 8 saves in a match – you simply divide by 2 and that’s how many save points you get!
If we further the example of Pope, we can see that with his 120 saves, he would have gained 60 save points. At 35 save points more than he got in the FPL game, you can see just how big a difference this seemingly slight rule difference makes.
For a more detailed view of each goalkeeper’s saves and the points they would gained on FPL, see the table below which shows all ‘keepers in the 2019/20 season, scaled to play all matches.
Team “wins/loses” in the period player is on the pitch (+1/-1)
This rule simplifies down to the following: on Fanteam, your player will gain a point if their team wins the game whilst the player is on the pitch. If the team loses the game whilst the player is on the pitch, he’ll lose a point. There’s nothing for a draw.
As most Goalkeepers play the full 90-minutes of most games (barring injuries or red cards), it’s fairly easy to plan for this extra point, as you will see below.
Let’s take a look at what effect this had on the goalkeepers last season.
As you can see, there is huge appeal for getting a top goalkeeper on Fanteam. This is quite interesting to me, as they’re generally considered poor value in the usual FPL game that I’m used to playing.
It also goes to show how much of a swing winning and losing causes. Initially, my brain registered it as a single 1-point swing – either gain or lose 1 point, based on the result.
However, as you can see, Liverpool only won 6 matches more than City, but they gained an extra 12 points.
I’m starting to come around to the idea that even though wins are crucial for points, it’s much better, in my opinion, to buy a Goalkeeper from a side that draws more often than losing, as the loss points hit hard too – especially if they don’t make many saves.
In my opinion, this is a scoring rule that will separate the goalies in points come the end of the season – one that most people will not pay appropriate attention towards. You can really get an edge on other players here.
Lack of bonus points for goalkeepers
Let’s take a look at the bonus points each keeper acquired last season on the official FPL game.
Using this information, we can see how much they depended on these for a source of points.
Because Fanteam doesn’t have a bonus points system, we can see which ‘keepers survive better when they are removed.
(Image scaled to assume every match played)
As you can see, apart from Kepa, each Goalkeeper received some form of bonus points last year on FPL. Ranging from ~2 for Ederson, up to a scaled 24.6 bonus for Lloris, had he played the whole season.
Nick Pope was the highest bonus points accumulator for all ‘keepers that played 90 minutes of every game, with 23 bonus to his name.
In my opinion, this is a really important thing to consider. Look for the names high up on this list and start to take this into consideration when picking your shot-stopper for Fanteam.
There are no bonus points to be gained here, so we need to remove this from our thought process when picking our main man.
Final Analysis and Concluding Thoughts
Now that we’ve attempted to change the way we view Goalkeepers and the points that they score, let’s look at how the total Fanteam versus FPL point standings compared at the end of last 2019/20 Fantasy Premier League season.
- Should Martinez start or Alisson get injured, they’re great options, but have a small sample size so bare that in mind.
- Alisson benefited greatly by how many games Liverpool won (and few they lost).
- Top 6 sides benefit a lot from winning games and are much more valuable on Fanteam.
- Save points are huge! All ‘keepers benefit overall from the Fanteam scoring system due to the way saves score points.
- Pope, Fabianski, Guaita and Ryan shouldn’t be anyway near your teams.
I hope you found this article useful and hopefully it provided you with a different way to think when choosing your Goalkeeper for your Fanteam entry to their €1,000,000 guaranteed prize pool contest.
If this is useful, I’ll be doing similar articles where I walk you through the 3 other positions in the game and how they are impacted by the slightly different scoring system differences and similarities.
A concluding thought for you all: Whilst the scoring systems have very subtle changes, these can heavily impact the player points and should not be overlooked, so do your research on the above information.
Thank you for reading ‘Rule Comparisons between FPL & Fanteam – Part 1: Goalkeepers‘ – if you’d like to see more insight from myself, please feel free to follow me on Twitter here > @Ramorey_FPL
If you are yet to join the Fanteam Million game, then be sure to click the banner below to check it out.
There’s a cool €200,000 1st place prize money up for grab and it’s not to be missed by any self-proclaimed FPL diehard.
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