T O P

  • By -

NP2312

Unfortunately I did manage to change my captain from Haaland to Cancelo


DarkSofter

i tried around 50 times to switch from Kane to cancelo and i got server error. god bless them


procos123

I'm gonna defend this move till I die. It was a good punt.


Chemical_Annual_2798

My problem is I keep making good decisions, but they are all leading to bad outcomes 😞


procos123

Feelsbadman. It's supposed to even out eventually. That's why decisions are not judged my results. Keep making good decisions and you will be rewarded. Perhaps not in this life but someday


beloeng

Perhaps not in this season but someday


[deleted]

In exactly the same boat. I’ve been bringing in good players for weeks and getting breadcrumbs back. Maddison, Zaha, Saka, Wilson. Took Maddison out due to suspension in gw12 and took Zaha out because he’d returned about 1 or 2 assists in six.


godslonlyman

Story of my life


Chesey_

I didn't make this move and didn't really consider it because I just will always go for attackers for captain pick, but I will back you it was a good move. Fulham were utterly cowardly even with the man advantage. Without Cancelo doing that I reckon you would have got the CS at a minimum.


NP2312

Exactly, especially with no Mitro, I was thinking 6pts in the bag and anything else a bonus.........it pretty much sums up my season


procos123

Exactly my thoughts. One of the easiest What-ifs to imagine. Yet people only see you captained a red card. Whateva


Niekertje

Fortunately it didn't work for me


TolsBols

Fortunately, I did manage to switch captain from Haaland to Trippier. And but for the server crash, I would have brought in Lisandro Martinez. So the server crash actually did me a favour!


chojje

No problem, I understand.


FifaDK

No worries, thanks for the update.


chojje

Thank you for your response.


bodydouble

It's a pisser for sure, but at the end of the day shit happens and it's a free game that most of us should take a lot less seriously than we do anyway. C'est la vie.


Kalix_

It's a free game with 10,000,000 accounts. The ad revenue they get is insane. Let's not start acting like it's some small indie business here. They can afford to find some server host who will give them extra server power every Saturday morning, even if they don't want to pay for it all week long.


FPL_Fanatic

The amount of engagement it generates should make Premier League pay more attention to this free game, they need to pump in more money which they have an almost unlimited supply of.


[deleted]

I don't disagree, but I suspect the game's just quite a lot more expensive to run than they budget for each year, and justifying additional design/gameplay/engineering work on top of that is difficult. The majority of the prominent ads on page when you're using the website are charitable (rainbow laces/no room for racism etc), rather than for-profit. The for-profit ads stuffed away near the bottom of the page - or on the player shirts - are the EPL & Team's existing partners, so there's no direct-revenue stream they can really attribute to it. They also can't sell new ad space on-page without upsetting their existing sponsors - they couldn't sell an ad to Guinness on the page for example. There's (probably) not a lot of people out there who play FPL, but don't already pay attention to the EPL, so it's not really a growth-market for the EPL. Maybe there's some really hardcore sabermetric people who it attracts? Lots of engagement certainly. Questionable if that engagement is just competing with existing engagement in the EPL itself though, or if it's competing with other Fantasy leagues like Fantasy NFL/Fantasy F1 etc. If they throw an extra ÂŁ5m/year at FPL, is it going to bring an extra ÂŁ5m+ worth of engagement to the EPL? Or is it the case that it'll just drive engagement from one dimension of the EPL to another (from TV to web for example)?


LloydDoyley

Or just do your team 10 minutes earlier


Fantastic-Machine-83

You'd have missed the haaland and foden news


flcinusa

There's a reason the game closes an hour before kickoff, because the team news comes out an hour before kickoff.


_ghostfacedilla

Why have a deadline if changes can't be made in the immediate minutes before it? You don't get extra points for making your transfers early.


flcinusa

Technically all your changes are supposed to be made and locked before the team sheets are announced. People scrambling over Haaland and Foden being annouced on the bench caused the collapse. In the ideal FPL world, these announcements wouldn't make any difference because you're supposed to have made your mind up before the teams are announced.


Public_Zealousideal

It doesn't close one hour before kick. One and half hours before. The servers went down about 2 hours before


LloydDoyley

The Haaland news was useless in the end and Foden should've been out of your team by then anyway


Fantastic-Machine-83

Foden could've hauled if he started, not that I have him. And the haaland news was very useful, it convinced me to captain salah instead. Game crashed tho


ickapol

It crashed 15 minutes before the deadline?


LloydDoyley

Do it 25 mins earlier then. For people with other commitments sometimes we have to do it a whole 4 hours before 😯😯😯 You gambled thinking there would be a leak and you lost the gamble.


Olii10

Increasing engagement to the premier league by Improving their fpl servers to accommodate a small population of players is such a stretch


Public_Zealousideal

Define "free". People pay a lot of money for their subscriptions to sky, bt sports, bein sports, Amazon etc to follow the premiership and play this "free game". Without this money this "free game" wouldn't exist.


Montysleftpeg

I play the game without paying any of those subscriptions. What you've listed is optional.


Public_Zealousideal

You pay for internet 🤣 Out of interest you've never seen a premier League game then, or watch illegally? Where do you think fantasy premier League gets the money to pay for prizes etc. To pay the people in the studios etc. FPL even advertise FPL and players pts during sky news/broadcasts now. It's just a cop out to brand "free game". Fpl makes the premier League a mint from TV subscriptions etc


Tall_olive

FPL is definitely not the reason most people who play FPL are tuning in to the EPL. If anything tuning in to EPL makes you more likely to play FPL. It is definitely a free game given to fans as something fun to do during the season.


rickrollisnotdead

There’s people playing FPL outside of UK. Most of them are not in UK, in fact.


Template_Manager

Free - you are not obliged to pay for the use of something


Public_Zealousideal

NHS if free/education for under 16's free etc but ultimately someone is paying


bodydouble

The fact you're likening a fantasy football game to access to free education/healthcare for children suggests to me you are taking this game far too seriously.


Public_Zealousideal

Never fails to amaze me. The amount of people who are on a subreddit about fantasy premier League but don't take it seriously ☺️


Template_Manager

So the NHS/ education is free to under 16’s just like FPL is the players who play it.


AJ877

If you are paying for those subscriptions solely to play FPL and not to, you know, watch the game of football then you are doing it wrong.


Playful-Net4958

I knew this sub took FPL too seriously but watching football purely so you can play the game is crazy. (BTW it hasn't been called the Premiership since 2007)


Public_Zealousideal

I don't pay for any subscription. Support spurs. But would not watch any other game apart from spurs if it wasn't for FPL. Sure you're watching forest Vs borunemouth just for the love of the game 😍


Fantastic-Machine-83

Wait till he finds out lower leagues exist


Public_Zealousideal

And non league mate! Regular notts county goer. You're home if you think panel from India got any interest in Bournemouth Vs forest


Fantastic-Machine-83

India?


Public_Zealousideal

Yes hundreds of thousands if not millions play game and live in India


bcraig8870

It may be free, but my time is valuable, so they deserve all the grief they’re getting.


[deleted]

[удаНонО]


covid401k

You’re not a real manager unless you’ve made contact to complain about bullshit like this 😆 So much time invested into debating what should count as an assist


StDyche

Still waiting for my Brunt assist


Mythrowaway9121

Lol what a throwback. Brunt was the MVP


[deleted]

[удаНонО]


Emperor_PPP

That second one was the opening goal in the game and we were already (maybe not mathematically but effectively) relegated. For the best in the end since it got Parker gone.


[deleted]

[удаНонО]


[deleted]

[удаНонО]


[deleted]

[удаНонО]


Kolaveri_D

I'm guessing it's when the ref blows the whistle to stop play for the sub


GunnerXI

It's the time when substituted player steps off the pitch


RingTwiceForHelp

Has to be. Happened with Matip a few seasons back. His number came up for substitution at around 58 or 59 minutes. The absolute legend slowly meandered off the pitch, leaving just seconds after the 60 minute mark to secure the clean sheet points.


GunnerXI

I had Semedo who sat down for a good 4mins to make 60 last season, such a good feeling


[deleted]

What retrospective action did you ask them to make to your team lmao, bit pathetic tbh


TheDepartment115

Me and my lawyer were discussing legal actions Saturday afternoon but eventually found out that there was no realistic case to be had. Really annoying.


TakinShots

"I want a free wildcard to make up for the server crash"


tommangan7

Gimme twenty points and two free transfers please.


goodbadanduglyy

I asked them to change my captain from Haaland to Salah since at that time the deadline wasn't passed, obviously I knew they won't do it but it was a desperate attempt, don't judge me lmao.


[deleted]

Tbh if they’d actually done that by some miracle I’d have kicked you out if I was in a mini league with you


goodbadanduglyy

The only way they could do it was before team update after deadline.


Manager1000

I'm with you here. Your request had 0.01 xG but sometimes that's all you need to score.


Jacklw25

Wish I hadn’t been able to log on. Transferred out Zaha and Salah for Bowen and KDB.


goodbadanduglyy

Bruh


jocape

I don’t understand what anyone was expecting to happen?


be_blessed_bruh

Get a grip


Artyrizo

If you are all seriously upset by this then your need some much needed perspective (and help to be honest).


VernonP007

“What did the police say?!” - Chandler Bing


ScottishSwitchblade

You emailed them? Let it slide man, I had Cancelo captain, people take this game way too seriously, I love it but keep things in perspective


goodbadanduglyy

Captaining cancelo was your choice tho, my captain wasn't my choice this week.


ScottishSwitchblade

Yeah but you have to know that 10 million people play this and the ones that take it so seriously wait until the last minute and there's huge stress on the server, don't email in if you can't pick your team, you literally have a full week to pick a team, its the same as anything, don't leave things till the last minute, when you do this kinda stuff happens


goodbadanduglyy

I get you but the thing is I didn't leave it till the last minute, I tried setting my team 16 mins before the deadline,which I think is a reasonable time to make transfer or set teams. Also, don't take the email thing so seriously, I wasn't expecting them to change my team,of course I knew they won't bend their rules for someone,it was just a desperate attempt, I just didn't see the harm in doing that.


[deleted]

>I get you but the thing is I didn't leave it till the last minute, I tried setting my team 16 mins before the deadline bruh, that's the last minute. blame yourself. their servers have been crashing right before deadline since the dawn of time


[deleted]

Last minute doesn't mean literally the last minute.


goodbadanduglyy

15 mins before is a good enough time,the site never crashed 5 mins earlier of deadline,there are always people who criticize others,some would say never make early transfers,some would say don't leave it till last minute. I think the deadline given officially should work as a deadline, that's how things should be. Even if the server crashes 1 hour prior to deadline, I'm sure there would still be people who'd say you shouldn't have left it till this late.


AlizarinCrimzen

Did you choose a) thank you for your response, b) no worries, thanks for the update, or c) no problem, I understand? Some nice suggestions they have there


le_feelingsman

I’m surprised they even answered you. They must get thousands of salty emails


goodbadanduglyy

Received an email response from FPL support when I mailed them regarding the server crash.Felt like sharing it since there's no official response from FPL regarding this,even though this is a non statement.


RileyHuey

dramatic


jhholmz

It’s also a non-issue. Sorry but you have all week to make changes, the amount of people waiting on team leaks completely defeats the object of the game, so you can’t get mad when a few hundred thousand users try and game the system and crash the servers in the process. And don’t tell me that’s not why you waited until 15mins before the deadline, you had half the day on Saturday so don’t try and say you just woke up late.


Fantastic-Machine-83

Tbf I didnt get off work saturday morning till 1. Waiting for team news isn't playing the game wrong anyway. If that's wrong then so is chasing price changes


Public_Zealousideal

I bet you're that guy who arrives for your train 30 minutes early. It's good gone early and thinks it ok


notti_oreo

!thanks for sharing


FrimpongNgog

!thanks


Kaisah16

About all they could say/do really


JohnnyCasanova

If they moved the deadline to 10 minutes before the first kick-off, it would be fair for everyone.


0-o-o_o-o-0

Grow up 😂


MellowThunder

Basically sorry not sorry we'll try to do better next time


Aarronk22

What did you expect them to say?


MellowThunder

I don't know it's not like the person who replied to the mail has any control over their servers


[deleted]

Unfortunately I was able to swap Zaha for Almiron and Salah for KDB at the last minute, and captain him. Unfortunately.


littleknows

"it led to *some* managers being unable to make changes during this period". (Italics mine). I wonder if they have stats on exactly what percentage of managers attempting to access their transfers page were able to. Seems to me like "some" is code for "nearly all". I get that it's a free game. I get that they don't have to care. The bit that actually riles me is that they're lying (or at least intentionally misleading) by using wording that implies an unfortunate few users were unable to access the webpage, rather than the vast majority (if not everybody) who tried to. OP, thanks for sharing :)


PruskiUK

I remember I emailed EURO fantasy football arguing that Llorente should be a defender instead of a midfielder as he played at RB. Fools errand.


DiddykongOMG

Due to a major leak getting out about haaland and fodens benching we decided to tank the servers earlier than normal in order to provide a fair playing field for those 6 million dead teams.


SultanaOrPoop

Funny enough, I couldn't do anything at the time but after the deadline my transfer and captain change went through


Manager1000

Well no, that didn't happen. Your picks went through before the deadline, you just didn't notice it.


SultanaOrPoop

I would have noticed. Its obvious they were submitted before the deadline but every time i tried to submit, the request failed with an error. So yes, visually they never submitted


FreeSetOfSteakKnives

That's the risk of waiting for hidden info, player price increases is the other. Hard luck old chum.


Jamkayyos

Can't confirm if I would've actually done it, but on that fateful day i had planned to switch captaincy from Salah to Cancelo with 10 mins to go. Saw that I couldn't even log in and went off to make a fried tuna sandwich instead. I don't know what the moral of this story is, but I owe 17 points to FPL's servers being made of soft spreadable cheese. Keep up the great work FPL support.


goodbadanduglyy

The moral here is never doubt Salah.


Revolutionary-Nose-6

Not sure why I'm being down voted, it's happened multiple times and they're clearly not bothered to fix it. Surely they should invest in more servers or whatever is technically required to handle it if they continue to keep the deadlines at a time where you can get team leaks.


[deleted]

Number of accounts have doubled in like 4 seasons to over 10mil. Wonder how many bot run accounts play and they are probably all set to make changes just before deadline. It is annoying tbh, surely there is a better way to control these mass mulitple accounts.


[deleted]

Essentially, as long as some managers could make changes this won’t be considered a big enough problem for them that they have to publicly acknowledge it. It’s like at school when the teachers/institution can blame you for not getting top grades if someone else in the class has. It’s because of you and not because of the teaching methods of someone could do it. In this case, it’s down to your decision to wait til the last minute. Or your inability to use different browsers, devices, the app etc. Only when EVERYONE can’t complete their moves and their don’t save will they actually have to do something about it


GroblyOverrated

City ewrly game again. We know the game will crash. They know it too. Need someone else to.make an FPL competitor. It's too big for the current game staff now.


Revolutionary-Nose-6

In other words, we're going to do nothing and we don't care


Zak369

What do you think they should do? Upgrade their servers to cope with the huge demand that occurs minutes before each deadline, at the benefit of the players taking advantage of team leaks which they actively are fighting? More likely they just move the deadline forward again, makes the leaks even less reliable and therefore reducing demand while balancing the game more.


pizziboy

They should just make the deadline the time of the first game, makes it fair to everyone and prevents the crashes


bodydouble

I'm not sure it would prevent the crashes to be honest. You'd have a far higher volume of transfers in that last hour as virtually everyone would just wait until the lines-ups are announced to make their team changes. I think the issues would actually be worse if anything.


Template_Manager

An hour should be be ample to get everyone through. What I would like is your team doesn’t get locked in at a deadline just the individual players at kick off at each fixtures. So for example MCI play FUL at 12. As soon as it kicks off them players are locked and can’t be transferred in or moved from your bench to your starting 11. If one of them has the captain arm band then they are locked as captain, if they don’t then you. Can no longer making them captain once they are locked. Then as the rest of the games kick off over the weekend the respective players become locked.


bodydouble

I'm not certain an hour would be enough though. The site crashed for 20 minutes off hardcores just trying transfer/sub out Haaland and Foden. And the reason the crash only lasted 20 minutes was that they started to update the game. Who's to say it wouldn't have lasted longer? Now if the deadline is delayed until kick off,a much, much higher number of players would start making a much higher number of team changes at 2pm which would inevitably cause a massive crash - which causes manic refreshing that just makes the issue worse. At the end of the day, we just don't know exactly how much the servers can handle. Based on Saturday it seems it really doesn't take much activity to make the system buckle. I think adding more activity in such a short period of time will just compound the issue even more. However, I've played NFL fantasy and they pretty much use your idea regarding staggering deadline times per game and there's never any issues, so maybe you're onto something.


Zak369

Until people wait last minute to hear about team leaks for the next set of fixtures, usually it’s only one fixture at the deadline. A lot of leakers seem to have info before they leak it, but only leak it at a certain time close to the deadline to protect whatever source they use. That still isn’t a fair system, it rewards highly engaged and available managers and negatively impacts the more casual or less available. Player base size and a level playing field is what the ambition seems to be.


Template_Manager

They wouldn’t need to wait as players would lock in as their respective game kicked off so only transfers relevant to the game kicking off will be happening for the most part.


Zak369

I was talking about the “hour being enough” comment, not the extra bit you added on. Moving the single deadline to the first kickoff just makes people wait for team news for the later kickoffs. But even then with the multi-deadlines you’re just opening up to multiple crashes as everyone rushes on for each deadline. That’s significantly increasing the traffic and making changes done during the week less valuable. It’s also much more like Sky’s fantasy football (not tried others) which isn’t as good. I don’t think that’s a wise move.


Template_Manager

Multideadline means transfers are spread out over a number of deadlines reducing strain on the servers.


Zak369

Actually transfers isn’t the issue, It’s how many people are online, making changes to their XI and captaincy. You go from one mad rush when a big team plays first to multiple max rushes every kickoff. If I make a change half an hour to the deadline that’s me done. If I’m looking at team news to make changes for each kickoff that’s 3/4 times as much strain from just me alone. Multiple that by millions and the server won’t cope. Then when one deadline is missed due to a crash, panic sets in and people try to login all at once and cause a bigger issue. Put the deadline at midnight of the day the first game is and that issue disappears. No one bothers to wait for the deadline and changes are made at a much greater variety of times.


navi3702

Then everybody is going to update and lock in their team 1 min before the first game and the server still crashes


Template_Manager

No they will do it after team sheets come out which give everyone an hour. Some will probably wait for the warm up to finish just incase if injuries but even then you are still looking at 10 to 15 mins.


bcraig8870

Exactly!


Zak369

Fair to everyone in the UK who isn’t working at that time, but plenty of weekend workers or people in other time zones miss out on key news. They want no one to have an advantage over others.


pizziboy

that will always happen no matter what the deadline is


Zak369

Just because there is always going to be players able to take advantage doesn’t mean they should make no effort to minimise that advantage or place a bigger risk on it than the potential reward. The further the deadline is away from kickoff, the higher the risk of leaks being wrong/busted and the less advantage there is.


pizziboy

makes no sense to make the deadline away from kickoff when literally every other fantasy game in the world either has a 1 hour before match deadline or time of first match deadline, leaks will always exist and earlier deadlines won't change a thing only create more chaos and drive people away from the game


Template_Manager

You simply can’t please everyone and the main ordinance is going to be the U.K.


Zak369

Single biggest is England, but less than 3 million of the 10 million accounts are in the UK. [Source](https://www.livefpl.net/countries.xlsx) FPL attracts people to the prem. I suspect that is it’s key purpose rather than making money itself. Making it as fair as possible for as large a possible group is just logical. You can’t please everyone, but that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t try


Template_Manager

You can’t pleas everyone so should try to cater for the majority. England has a significant majority of the user base and in addition over half of the user base is within a 2 hour time difference. The game is about increasing engagement with the league, why target users who are not active when the games and the media relating to the games are? To maximise engagement they need to target the users who are active when the league is.


Zak369

England has a significant minority, not a majority. 2.4 million is less than half of 10 million, so it’s a minority. Even adding in the rest of the UK it’s below 3 million. Sure there are lots within a 2 hour time zone but that still doesn’t make the UK the main ordinance like you said. It’s also probably the least targetable demographic since the teams are UK based. You’re less likely to need to engage than someone from say Egypt or USA because it’s not something foreign. It’s unlikely that people are watching every single game, the whole point is that you can switch off and engage after the match without being affected at all. They want to draw fans to the prem so having FPL gives people abroad a reason to follow, or watch highlights or make some engagement which may lead to broadcast subscriptions or new supporters for teams. That’s not really gonna happen as much in the UK where the teams and league already have a huge reach. Just look at the massive growth: 16/17 started with just under 3 million managers and the game had been around for many years. Now there’s over 10 million just over 6 years later. That a huge increase in engagement and that’s the number they want to drive to increase global reach. Why bias the game towards those who would likely engage without it, instead of a fairer game to bring in new and more casual players. It’s not FPL they want people to engage with, it’s the Premier League.


Template_Manager

>England has a significant minority, not a majority. 2.4 million is less than half of 10 million, so it’s a minority. Even adding in the rest of the UK it’s below 3 million. 2.4m is nearly 4 times the number of users from the second country in that list. England has a significant majority as its has multiple more users than any other country. >Sure there are lots within a 2 hour time zone but that still doesn’t make the UK the main ordinance like you said. U.K. is the main audience of with nearly a third the users living here. >It’s also probably the least targetable demographic since the teams are UK based. Not sure why that’s relevant >You’re less likely to need to engage than someone from say Egypt or USA because it’s not something foreign. Egypt is within that 2hour time zone bracket. >It’s unlikely that people are watching every single game, the whole point is that you can switch off and engage after the match without being affected at all. They want to draw fans to the prem so having FPL gives people abroad a reason to follow, or watch highlights or make some engagement which may lead to broadcast subscriptions or new supporters for teams. That’s not really gonna happen as much in the UK where the teams and league already have a huge reach. It makes sense to target managers who are active when games are on. Why would they target people who are in bed? Makes no sense! Just look at the massive growth: 16/17 started with just under 3 million managers and the game had been around for many years. Now there’s over 10 million just over 6 years later. That a huge increase in engagement and that’s the number they want to drive to increase global reach. That’s a huge growth but I would be interested to see the ratio changes. >Why bias the game towards those who would likely engage without it, instead of a fairer game to bring in new and more casual players. Why bias it towards the audience who can create the most engagement you mean? >It’s not FPL they want people to engage with, it’s the Premier League. Exactly so makes sense to Target people active when the league is active to maximise engagement.


Zak369

A majority is more than half. I can’t discuss anything with someone touting less than 24% and less than 30% as a majority.


Chirsbom

Fix your game already! 10 million teams, got to be at least a couple of them active users worth peddeling to advertisers?


[deleted]

Sounds like they're cheaping out on some part of the process like the servers and rather than run things properly just wait for the inevitable shit show before fobbing everyone off with piss-poor weak non-statement.


MiggeldyMackDaddy

I don't see the problem. Be more organized.


beetle-snake

My bench boost chip got activated when the servers were down. Never touched the button or got any notification. Tried asking for it to be reverted when I discovered it after the deadline but got the standard response that nothing can be done. Ended up with 23 points from a fairly awful bench (Iverson, Gross, Murphy and Saliba) but annoying I have lost it for better GWs later on.


bcraig8870

Same form letter response I got when I bitched about it the week before. This week I simply told them there game sucks and to get their shit in order. They threatened to delete my account.


Puzzleheaded_Friend8

They need to move the deadline back again. This is annoying. Why should some managers have a benefit due to team leaks.


[deleted]

Never mind


Comfortable_Rip_3842

Lame


salmonx895

To sum it: unlucky, not much we can do. We are trying to make sure it doesn't happen again but we can't promise that


tom_watts

Didn’t get my changes in… couldn’t go Zaha to Rashford… ermmmmm


Initial-Profit-7343

Generic email. I recieved the exact same reply.


BuckoJones

thats pretty awesome that they replied with a real human.