🚨 FPL's new rules and what they mean 🤐

The stuff you should know:

🤑 The 24/25 season is LIVE. Register here.

💰 You can now bank up to five free transfers.

👀 And there’s a “Mystery Chip” that won’t be revealed until later this year.

🧤 There’s also a few tweaks to the bonus points system, and goalkeepers score 10 points for a goal.

😢 Double and Blank Gameweeks are expected to be fewer and smaller too.

 🧠 Today we’ll explore the implications of all of this.

Stick around for The Professor’s Gameweek 1 draft(s).

Alright?

The end of the Euros has dovetailed nicely with the launch of FPL, which is convenient given that FPL managers tend to resort to civil disobedience if left to their own devices for longer than a few days.

But it wasn’t your bog-standard launch, was it?

The introduction of an ambiguous new chip (which FPL HQ have inventively called “the Mystery Chip”) and the ability to bank up to five free transfers could have significant implications on how we play the game.

Not to mention the fact that goalkeepers score 10 points for a goal now: do we all captain Jordan Pickford?

Suffice to say, none of this is conducive to the lazy lifestyle. Fresh learning is required, and that means we’ll have to exert a blacklisted word around these parts: effort.

But fear not: over the next four minutes, we’re going to tell you what it all means and how to use it to your advantage.

Welcome to the 24/25 season. Get ready to recline your way to glory.

Five free transfers.

Lazy summary of this section: banking free transfers rewards the patient, but also widens the gulf between the lucky and the unlucky. Think medium-long term, practice patience and hope for a great Gameweek 1.

The number of free transfers you can bank has increased from two to five.

Five free transfers is a potent weapon; managers have Wildcarded for less. As the eponymous pop group famously sang back in 1998, five free transfers is even enough to make you get down now.

In essence, FPL HQ has raised interest rates, giving managers more incentive to save. The rich will get richer, the poor will suffer.

Let’s explore five big implications of this new Machiavellian society:

1) Different ways to play.

Don’t be under the illusion that every FPL manager will seek to save where they can. Some will continue to use free transfers when they get ‘em - either by choice or obligation. Some won’t have noticed that there’s been a rule change at all.

Others will look to save whenever possible, ensuring they always have a bank of five free transfers in case the proverbial shit really hits the fan.

The result? There’s more room for tactics to differ.

Manager A may not need a chip to navigate the Blank and Double gameweeks.

Manager B might decide that making five, transformative transfers in one go every month is more effective than bit-part transfers every gameweek.

And transfer wealth inequality means it’ll be hard to dish out one-size-fits-all advice too.

2) Some chips could be made less useful.

The Wildcard and Free Hit have dug us out of many a hole. Particularly during the COVID seasons, where the sight of a player sneezing was enough to consider activating them.

But whilst they’ll still be a welcomed option, the ability to save five free transfers dilutes their importance.

Combined with the news that there’ll be fewer Blank and Double gameweeks this season (we’ll get into this shortly), it might be that some FPL managers end up with an embarrassment of riches when it comes to transfers.

3) Your Gameweek 1 team means more.

Your ability to pick an excellent Gameweek 1 team could have big implications on your season.*

Nailing your early picks will negate the need for transfers in subsequent gameweeks, and storing a repository of transfers as soon as possible gives you an advantage over those forced into early changes. It also means telegraphing transfers could be less appealing for some.

*Don’t worry, we’ll make sure you nail yours.

4) Fewer frivolous transfers and hits.

All of this could mean a culture shift: from seeing transfers as something that ought to be done every gameweek in FPL, to seeing them as something that should only be done if absolutely necessary (until you’ve maxed out your savings).

5) Invest in your bench.

Often we’re forced to make transfers to deal with short term injuries/suspensions because our bench options suck.

Having a strong bench means you can deal with these obstacles without needing to use a transfer.

How to capitalise on all of this:

Ultimately, this change rewards those who are willing to apply the sort of virtues we regularly bang on about: patience, a strong bench and an ability to think medium-to-long term.

The Professor, always a little miserly, thinks it’ll be harder to save transfers than we might imagine, and that the new feature will mostly just benefit those who come back to their team after abandoning it for a few gameweeks.

Our advice is simple: save where you can, build your repository and have it in your back pocket. It’ll afford you more freedoms in the long run.

The new chip.

It’s a mystery, hence why it’s called The Mystery Chip. As things stand it sounds more like an indie band than something we might use to score extra FPL points.

FPL HQ won’t tell us what it is until later this year, which we think is a tactic to try and keep managers engaged for longer.

But it also puts extra pressure on the big reveal. Our best guess so far is that it’s an all-out-defence chip in honour of Gareth Southgate’s Euro 2024 campaign.

Fewer Doubles and Blanks.

We’re expecting fewer and smaller Double and Blank gameweeks next season, a fact confirmed by OfficialFPL themselves.

That’s because of the FA Cup quarter-final scheduling, which isn’t going to clash with the Premier League’s calendar as it typically would. The quarter-final round is usually responsible for the biggest Blank (and thus biggest double) Gameweek of the season.

This has obvious implications for chip usage, particularly when factoring in the ability to bank more transfers.

If a Free Hit isn’t needed to navigate a blank, it could be used to capitalise on a particularly fixture-friendly gameweek instead.

And without chunky doubles, perhaps the onus to ensure you have 15 doublers on a Bench Boost won’t be as strong either.

It’s hard to telegraph this stuff until we know more, and The Mystery Chip could yet play a part in all of this too.

Scoring changes.

Goalkeepers now score 10 points (instead of six) for a goal, a fact that will almost certainly have zero impact on you next season.

The bonus points system has also changed. Players will still receive bonuses as they always have done, but the criteria has been tweaked. Shots on target will be rewarded, defenders/goalkeepers will be penalised for conceding etc. The details are here.

Again, this probably isn’t going to impose upon your decision-making too much, but it’s something to bear in mind next time you kick-off about how your captain was hard done by.

The Professor’s Gameweek 1 team.

The Prof has been dabbling with a Gameweek 1 squad.

In fact, he’s actually built two squads. They’re like children to him, and just like all good parents, he loves them both equally. Couldn’t pick between them, not on his life.

So he’ll probably just bin them both off before long and get some new ones.

Here’s his non-Haaland (Naaland) draft:

And here’s his Haaland draft:

Btw, this was built on Fantasy Football Hub’s My Team. Guess which one it rates highest?…

The non-Haaland team 👀

Wanna get your current team rated? Do it for free here.

What else has happened this week?

Man United have signed Dutch forward Joshua Zirkzee from Bologna.

His goal-scoring record is…alright. He managed 11 goals from 34 Serie A games last season, but he likes to drop deep and create too. He completed the second-most throughballs of any forward in Serie A last season.

Here he is pretending to write:

They’ve also signed 18-year-old centre-back Leny Yoro from Lille for £52m. He impressed in his debut on Saturday in a 2-0 friendly win against Rangers.

Elsewhere in preseason, Arne Slot lost his first game as Liverpool boss to the mighty Preston North End, Southampton thrashed Eastleigh 7-1, Spurs beat Hearts 5-1 and Ipswich ousted FC Shakhtar Donetsk 1-0. A full list of preseason results is right here.

Other stuff we found interesting.

• These excellent write-ups from Reddit user u/nevermind721 about the tactics that Brighton and Chelsea’s new managers will employ.

• Joao Pedro (£5.5m) - a popular budget forward - has a non-serious injury and hasn’t travelled with Brighton to Japan.

• Moussa Diaby is going to Saudi, freeing up space for Leon Bailey.

Right, we’ll be back next week.

After this there are four newsletters until Man United host Fulham on Friday 16th August. We’ll be using them to help you to construct the optimal Gameweek 1 team, from hidden budget gems to where (and how) to invest the big bucks.

Until then, stay lazy.

The LazyFPL Team.