What is My FPL Mini-League?

A tool for running a Fantasy Premier League mini-league properly. You will paste your league ID, design the prizes you want to run, and get a public league page plus a recap card every gameweek that you can share with your league. It is for the person who organises the league and for the people in it. It is in development for the 2026/27 season: the site sets out the plans and takes registrations, and the product itself is not open yet.

What stops people dropping out of a mini-league after Christmas?

Running more than one race at once. Most mini-leagues have a single prize for whoever finishes top, so once the title is settled everyone else has nothing left to play for. Instead you run several races side by side over the same standings: the season, each month, each gameweek, and the second half on its own. Someone sitting eighth overall can still be leading the month, so there is nearly always something in reach.

Can the bottom of the league table matter too?

Yes. A wooden spoon for whoever finishes last, or a bench king for whoever leaves the most points on their bench, turns the bottom of the table into its own contest. Many leagues attach a forfeit rather than money. My FPL Mini-League will work out who came last; what happens next is between the league and its members.

Can we play for pride instead of money?

Yes. Prizes can be in-product coins, which have no cash value, or badges, which are recognition only. Every race is scored the same way and the standings look identical. The only difference is what sits at the end of it.

Do you hold our prize money?

No, never, at any point. My FPL Mini-League is not a payment processor or an escrow service. Entry fees and prizes are collected and settled entirely between the league host and the members. The ledger in the app records who owes what; it is a notepad, not a bank account, and marking something settled does not move money.

How much work is it to run each week?

None, once it is set up. Every gameweek each race will be scored automatically and a recap card produced with the standings and the story of the week. On the free plan the host downloads it; on the paid plans it is delivered over WhatsApp. Nobody maintains a spreadsheet.

Is there a free plan?

Yes. The entry plan is genuinely free for smaller leagues, with no card needed, and a small league can publish and run a full season without ever paying. Paid plans add higher member limits, insight cards each gameweek, messaging to members rather than just to the host, custom branding, and your own league URL.

Does a plan renew automatically?

No. You buy a season, once. Nothing is charged automatically and there is no subscription to cancel. To run your league again the following season, you buy it again.

Do I need to share my Fantasy Premier League password?

No, and you should never give it to anyone. My FPL Mini-League only reads data that Fantasy Premier League already publishes. It cannot see your password, make transfers, or change anything in your FPL account.

Is it affiliated with Fantasy Premier League?

No. My FPL Mini-League is not affiliated with, endorsed by, or connected to the Premier League, Fantasy Premier League, or any football club. It reads publicly available data from the official FPL API, and that is the extent of the relationship.

Articles FPL 2026/27

The GW1 deadline brief: the armband, the back four and the chip nobody needs yet

19 August 2026 · 4 min read

A dark navy floodlit stadium illustration with an anonymous footballer on the pitch, representing the GW1 deadline, Arsenal's unproven back four and the decisions behind the captaincy and Bench Boost.

Researched and drafted by @myfplminileague with AI

70.3% of Fantasy Premier League squads currently carry the same captain heading into GW1. That is not the most interesting number in this brief. The more interesting one is zero, as in zero senior centre-back pairings @Arsenal have had fully fit together all pre-season, with both first-choice options carrying an unknown return date into Friday night.

The GW1 deadline is 19:30 Amsterdam (17:30 UTC, 18:30 UK) on Friday 21 August, when champions @Arsenal host promoted @Coventry_City. Nine more fixtures follow across the weekend, closing with @ChelseaFC away at @FulhamFC on Monday night.

The armband is not really a debate

Haaland is captained by 70.3% of squads at £15.5m, and the Premier League's own preview this week called him a near-certainty to lead the captaincy count by a huge margin, as he has all of last season. The record backs it up: top scorer after the first six Gameweeks in all four of his @ManCity seasons, averaging nine goals and 61.3 points across that opening run. His GW1 fixture is a home game against @afcbournemouth rather than one of the three promoted sides, so nobody sensible is spending a Triple Captain on him yet.

Bruno Fernandes (£12m, 49.1%) remains the clear second, though @ManUtd travel to @HullCity. The player actually closing the gap is João Pedro (£7.5m, 60.3%), now the second most-owned player in the game, some way clear of Fernandes, on the back of eight pre-season goals and an opening schedule of @FulhamFC away then @OfficialBHAFC at home.

Gabriel (£8m, 28.8%) is the value case nobody captains. 209 points last season is the third-highest defensive total in Fantasy history, behind only Robertson's 213 and Alexander-Arnold's 210, built on set-piece threat rather than clean sheets alone.

Bar chart of Fantasy ownership for the players in this brief. Haaland leads at 70.3% as the GW1 captain pick, ahead of João Pedro at 60.3%, Bruno Fernandes at 49.1%, Szoboszlai at 41.3%, Raya at 34.5%, Gabriel at 28.8%, Calafiori at 27.8% and Isak at 15.5%. A callout notes Arsenal's Saliba at 0.4% and Manchester City's Rodri at 0.1%, both carrying an unknown-return-date back injury. — Source: official Fantasy Premier League API, pulled 18 August 2026. Ownership snapshot for this brief.

Arsenal's back four is the real GW1 puzzle

Arsenal open the season without William Saliba (back injury, no return date) and Jurrien Timber (groin injury, no return date), the pair who anchored most of last season's defence alongside Gabriel. The early lineup being pencilled in has Ben White, Cristhian Mosquera, Gabriel and Riccardo Calafiori across the back four, a combination that has not started a Premier League match together. Whatever happens against Coventry on Friday becomes the first data point for a defence going into round one unproven.

Elsewhere: @LFC travel to @NUFC without Mohamed Salah for the first time in nine years, under new head coach Andoni Iraola, with Alexander Isak, now £9m and 15.5% owned after an injury-hit debut season, facing his old club. @ChelseaFC are without Wesley Fofana, suspended until 6 September, and Bournemouth's Ryan Christie is suspended until 29 August.

The chip nobody needs yet

Every manager gets two sets of chips this season, one to use before the GW19 deadline on 2 January. Only one chip plays per Gameweek, and Free Hit cannot be used in GW1 at all.

Bench Boost is the live GW1 argument. One camp builds a full fifteen-man squad now and boosts it in GW1 or GW2, then shifts budget toward the starting eleven. A second camp waits for an early wildcard to build that squad first. The counter-argument: GW1 carries the least information of any week all season, with rebuilt defences, three promoted sides and formations nobody has seen live yet.

Triple Captain already has two early windows marked out by pre-season previews, and neither is this week: Bruno Fernandes at home to @IpswichTown in GW2, then Haaland at home to Coventry in GW3. Wildcard consensus sits around GW5 or GW6, once the transfer window has shut and pre-season form has been separated from the real thing.

What this means for your mini-league

Everyone in your mini-league is looking at the same captain and weighing the same Bench Boost timing. The gap this week comes from who actually locked in a squad against who left it for a last-minute team news scroll, and whether anyone in your group chat trusted Arsenal's back four enough to captain Gabriel.

None of that is visible unless your mini-league can see it. A Bench Boost sprung on Friday afternoon and a wildcard played on Tuesday night both just look like a final score to everyone else, unless the picks and chip plans are shared before kick-off. Claim your mini-league at myfplminileague.com and get commitments, captain picks and chip calls in front of the whole group before Friday.

70.3% of the game will point the armband the same way on Friday night. What separates one mini-league finish from another starts with the other 30%, and with whoever backed Arsenal's back four early.

Fact-checked, edited and produced by @addygunners with AI · Published by @myfplminileague

Sources: the official Fantasy Premier League API (deadline, prices, ownership, injury and suspension status, pulled 18 August 2026); premierleague.com, The Scout (captaincy framing, Haaland's six-Gameweek record, Gabriel's defensive total, GW2 and GW3 Triple Captain fixtures); Fantasy Football Scout (predicted Arsenal lineup and early team news, 18 August 2026); Fantasy Football Fix (Bench Boost and Wildcard strategy discussion, 12 August 2026). All figures correct as of 18 August 2026.

#PremierLeague #FPL #GW1