Fantasy Football Team Selection Explained
Once you enter a contest you will need to submit your line-up. You are generally allowed to edit your selections at any time prior to the starting time of the opening game(s) in the contest which allows you to factor in any official team news that is announced prior to the first fixture in the contest commencing. However, as mentioned previously be sure to check the site’s rules for clarity on this issue.
If available formations are displayed you can click on one to switch from the default formation. Team selection for many sites involves dragging and dropping or double-clicking players to add them to your line-up. If a ‘pitch view’ is included the player will appear on the playing surface once he is added and the remaining budget will decrease so that you can see how much expenditure you have left to complete your line-up with.
In the above example you can see that Juan Mata has been added to the line-up, decreasing the budget from the initial £100m to £90.1m and this process is repeated for each player you add until you have the full complement of players. Your line-up will not be eligible if you spend more that the stipulated budget so you will be forced to make changes. If you have added the maximum number of allowed players for one playing position the system will also block any further attempts to include more.
If captain and/or vice-captain are mandatory requirements for your chosen contest make sure that you indicate which player(s) you want to assign these roles to.
The game operator usually provides some information on each player so that you can analyse his past performances. This data can usually be viewed by clicking on the player’s name or an info icon next to it. A summary may be included as well giving you more of an overview of his profile and most sites will add some form of notation to a player if he is an injury doubt.
All sites have filters in place to make the player selection process smoother. Players can be filtered by team or match and starting position. It’s also possible to toggle columns so that you can see the most expensive or cheapest option etc.
Some sites will allow you to export full player data via a CSV file so that you can break down all the individual skill sets even further while others will include additional filters so that you can see which players are performing best for specific actions.
Once you have finalised your line-up you may be asked to add a team name or save your team before confirming your entry into your chosen contest.