The ten-player draft pool
A valid draft board contains exactly ten unique players. It must include exactly two goalkeepers and at least two defenders, two midfielders and two forwards. The two remaining places can be extra defenders, midfielders or forwards, up to four candidates in any one outfield position.
This wider pool makes the deadline allocation resilient. Even if your rival wins a contested player, the allocator can move to your next priorities and still construct a legal final five. The picker protects the remaining places needed to complete every requirement.
- Exactly two goalkeeper candidates
- At least two defenders, midfielders and forwards
- Two additional outfield candidates
- Exactly ten ranked players in total
Spread the board across at least eight clubs
Your ten candidates must represent at least eight Premier League clubs, with no more than two players from the same club. This gives the allocator enough combinations to produce two final teams whose five players each come from five different clubs.
Using a second player from one club can be a useful backup, but it consumes one of only two duplicated-club spaces. Think about whether that insurance is more valuable than widening the board to another club and another fixture.
Why some players become unavailable
The player pool reacts to the draft board you have already built. A player is greyed out when their position or club is full, all ten places are taken, or choosing them would leave too few spaces to reach the minimum position and club requirements.
This feedback prevents a board from looking complete and then failing at lock. Removing a player immediately recalculates the available choices. Search, club and position filters do not alter your priorities; they only change which players are visible in the catalogue.
Set the exact order, then lock
The Player Picker chooses your pool; the Priority Order view decides how strongly you want each candidate. Number one is your first choice. Use the controls to move players until the list represents the order you want the deadline allocator to follow.
Locking freezes all ten players and their order, then opens your three-card Power Up draw. Once the football deadline has passed, an unfinished ranking cannot be submitted retrospectively. Preparing early protects against a missed lock while still allowing changes before confirmation.
Plan for a potential five, not one perfect five
Place the high-upside players you want most near the top, but treat priorities six to ten as genuine selections. A famous front five is weak draft planning if losing one clash forces the allocator deep into poorly considered cover.
At the deadline, higher priority wins a direct clash unless formation safety requires another legal combination. Equal-rank clashes use a deterministic coin flip. The result always contains one goalkeeper, every outfield position, one flexible outfielder and five different clubs, with no player shared by the two opponents.