How FPL scoring works

Every decision you make in Fantasy Premier League — who to captain, which defender to buy, whether a midfielder is worth £8.0m — comes back to one thing: how the game hands out points. Learn the scoring table properly and most of the "should I?" questions answer themselves.

Here is how a player earns, and loses, points in a single Gameweek.

Appearance points

Everyone who plays gets something for turning up:

• 1 point for playing at all (any number of minutes up to 60).
• 2 points for playing 60 minutes or more (stoppage time doesn't count towards the 60).

This is why minutes are the foundation of everything. A brilliant player who is rotated or injury-prone is a worse pick than his talent suggests, because so many of his Gameweeks start from one point instead of two — and a player benched for the whole match scores nothing at all. Our expected points model leans heavily on projected minutes for exactly this reason.

Goals and assists

Goals are worth different amounts by position, to reward attacking returns from players who aren't supposed to provide them:

• Goalkeeper or defender: 6 points a goal.
• Midfielder: 5 points a goal.
• Forward: 4 points a goal.

An assist is worth 3 points for everyone, regardless of position. The takeaway: a defender or midfielder who chips in with goals is disproportionately valuable, because he scores like an attacker and can earn clean-sheet points on the same day.

Clean sheets and goals conceded

Defensive returns are where positions diverge most:

• Clean sheet: 4 points for a goalkeeper or defender, 1 point for a midfielder, nothing for a forward. A clean sheet only counts if the player has played at least 60 minutes.
• Goals conceded: goalkeepers and defenders lose 1 point for every 2 goals their team concedes while they're on the pitch.

A defender from a strong, well-organised side is therefore a double threat: clean-sheet points plus the occasional goal. Reading the fixture difficulty grid is the quickest way to spot when those clean sheets are likely.

Defensive contribution

This is the newest scoring route and it has changed how the game values unglamorous players. A player earns 2 points in a match for hitting a defensive workload threshold:

• Defenders: 10 or more combined clearances, blocks, interceptions and tackles (CBIT).
• Midfielders and forwards: 12 or more combined clearances, blocks, interceptions, tackles and ball recoveries.

It's capped at 2 points per match — you either hit the threshold or you don't. But it means a busy, ball-winning defensive midfielder or an overlapping full-back can bank a reliable extra return most weeks, entirely separate from goals and clean sheets. When you're comparing two similar-priced players, the one who racks up defensive actions has a higher floor.

Goalkeeper specials

Keepers have two extra ways to score:

• 1 point for every 3 shots saved in a match.
• 5 points for saving a penalty.

A shot-stopper behind a leaky defence can still be a decent pick, because saves partly compensate for the clean sheets he won't keep.

Bonus points

After each match, the three best performers earn bonus points — 3, 2 and 1 — decided by the Bonus Points System (BPS). BPS rewards the whole performance: goals, assists, saves, tackles, passing, and clean sheets all feed in, while cards, missed penalties and errors drag it down. You can't buy bonus directly, but players who are central to their team's play — penalty takers, ball-progressors, dominant centre-backs — attract it consistently. Bonus is a meaningful slice of the top scorers' totals over a season.

The deductions

Points also go the other way, and ignoring the downside is how good-looking picks disappoint:

• Yellow card: −1
• Red card: −3 (this also includes the −1 for the yellow if it's a second booking)
• Own goal: −2
• Penalty miss: −2
• Goals conceded: −1 per 2 conceded (goalkeepers and defenders only)

Putting it together

A single Gameweek score is just the sum of all of the above. A defender might play 90 minutes (2), keep a clean sheet (4), hit his defensive threshold (2) and pick up 1 bonus — an eight-point haul without ever touching the opposition goal. A forward might score twice (8) and grab 3 bonus for eleven, but blank entirely the following week.

That variance is the whole game. The job isn't to predict single Gameweeks perfectly — it's to own players whose expected return, week after week, is high. From here, read up on expected points to see how we turn this scoring table into a projection, then head to the player pool to see who ranks where.