Live, updated every gameweek
An AI picks a Fantasy Premier League team, every gameweek
This page will show the squad an AI has chosen for the 2026/27 season: the starting eleven in formation, the captain, the chip plan, and the reasoning behind every decision. Published before each deadline, never after the results are in.
First picks go live before the opening deadline, Friday 21 August 2026, 18:30 BST.
What will be on this page
Once the season starts, this becomes the live view of the team. Four things, updated every gameweek.
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The starting eleven
The full squad in a formation view, with the bench in order and the captain and vice marked.
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The captain call
Who is taking the armband and why, including when the model goes for a differential over the obvious premium.
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The reasoning
Every transfer explained. Who came in, who went out, and what the numbers said at the time.
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The chip plan
Triple Captain, Bench Boost, Free Hit and Wildcard, called in advance and aimed at double gameweeks.
Gameweek 1
4-5-1 · £100m of £100m
Bench, in order
- Calvert-Lewin LEE · FWD · 3.46xP
- Mitchell CRY · DEF · 3.4xP
- Dubravka TOT · GK · 2.62xP
- Barry EVE · FWD · 2.28xP
The captain
B.Fernandes (MUN), 6.06 expected points, owned by 48.5%.
The highest expected points in the squad. No differential was close enough to justify the risk.
Transfers
Opening squad, picked from scratch.
Picked 9 August 2026, before the deadline. Read the full reasoning.
How the AI decides
The base is unemotional. Models do not make the eleven o'clock Sunday transfer, do not captain out of spite, and do not burn a chip because three red arrows felt like a crisis. That alone removes most of what ruins a human season.
But purely sensible models converge on the template and finish forgettably, because Fantasy Premier League rewards being right when everyone else was wrong. So this one has explicit permission to be brave: differential captains when the upside justifies it, and chips timed for double gameweeks rather than hoarded until the fixtures run out.
The full argument, including the honest bit about how these experiments usually go, is in the launch post.
The data behind the picks
All public, all credited. Nothing proprietary and nothing scraped from anywhere it should not be.
- Core FPL scoring, minutes, cards, bonus, prices and ownership
- Official FPL API, which also carries Opta expected goals and an official injury flag, plus Vaastav's historical dataset for earlier seasons
- Player-level expected goals outside the Premier League
- Understat, covering the big five European leagues
- Results history, home and away splits, odds and referees
- Football-Data.co.uk
- Team strength
- ClubElo ratings
- Weather at each ground
- Open-Meteo, called at prediction time
- Fixtures, including televised reschedules
- Official Premier League calendar
- Also weighted
- Fixture difficulty and congestion, referee card tendencies, and per-league conversion factors, because a forty goal Ligue 1 striker is not a forty goal Premier League striker.
- Deliberately not used
- Transfermarkt bars automated extraction and FBref restricts scraping, so both are out. Fantasy Football Scout, Fantasy Football Hub and FootyStats are subscriptions, and this runs on sources anyone can check for free. The cost is no predicted lineups, so rotation risk is derived from starts and the official availability flag instead, and promoted club players are judged on shot volume rather than shot quality.
Join the league and beat it
The league is Algorithm By Coffee & Fun LLC, a free invitational classic league. It is open now.
- Log in to Fantasy Premier League.
- Go to Leagues, then Join a league.
- Enter the code bsg8nz.
No entry fee, no prizes, nothing to buy. Charging to enter a competition raises gambling and prize competition law questions, so a paid league was ruled out on purpose. Bragging rights only.
Questions
When do the picks go live?
The first squad is published before the opening deadline of the 2026/27 season, which is Friday 21 August 2026 at 18:30 BST. The season opens that evening with Arsenal against Coventry, not on the Saturday. After that a new set of picks goes up every gameweek, along with the reasoning.
Is the league free to join?
Yes. No entry fee and no prizes. Charging people to enter a competition walks into gambling and prize competition law, so it was ruled out deliberately in favour of bragging rights.
Can I join after the season has started?
Yes. Classic leagues can be joined at any point. Your league score counts from the gameweek you join onward, so joining in November means competing with fewer points banked.
What data does the AI use?
Free public data only, listed and linked in full above. The FPL API does most of the work, including Opta expected goals and official injury status. Understat adds player-level expected goals for the big five European leagues, Football-Data.co.uk supplies results, odds and referees, ClubElo the team strength ratings and Open-Meteo the weather.
It gets no insider information and no eye test. It sees numbers, and occasionally that will be an expensive limitation.
Will the bad weeks be published too?
Yes, written up identically to the good ones, with no quiet deletions. That is the entire premise. A transparency project that only publishes the wins is just marketing.
Is this betting advice?
No. It is a free fantasy football experiment run for fun by one person, and no money changes hands at any point.
Is this affiliated with the Premier League?
No. This is an independent project by Coffee & Fun LLC. It is not affiliated with, endorsed by, or connected to the Premier League or the official Fantasy Premier League game.