Short answer: yes, and by more than most people assume. A player in the easiest bracket of fixture scores twice what he scores in the hardest.
Long answer: the size of that effect depends almost entirely on what position he plays, and the difference between a defender and a forward is big enough to change how you plan transfers.
What we measured
FPL publishes its own Fixture Difficulty Rating, 1 (easiest) to 5 (hardest), from each side's point of view. It's the colour on every fixture ticker you've ever looked at.
We took every appearance of 60 minutes or more in 2025/26 — 7,813 of them — attached the FDR of that specific fixture from that player's side, and averaged the points.
Sixty minutes is the filter because it's the appearance-points threshold. Below it you're mostly measuring substitutions, and a substitute's scoreline has more to do with the manager than the opponent.
The headline
| Fixture difficulty | Appearances | Points per start | Clean sheet rate |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 — easiest | 404 | 4.93 | 50.0% |
| 2 | 1,171 | 4.59 | 43.6% |
| 3 | 4,090 | 3.85 | 29.1% |
| 4 | 1,761 | 3.28 | 17.9% |
| 5 — hardest | 387 | 2.47 | 8.0% |
It's a clean gradient with no reversals. Every step up in difficulty costs points, and the gap from end to end is 2.46 points a start — the difference between a good return and a wasted slot.
The clean-sheet column is doing most of the work: 50.0% in a rated-1 fixture against 8.0% in a rated-5. That is a sixfold swing, and it's the single biggest mechanism behind everything on this page.
Now the part that changes your transfers
Split it by position and the neat story breaks in a useful way.
| Position | FDR 1 | FDR 2 | FDR 3 | FDR 4 | FDR 5 | Drop, 1 → 5 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| DEF | 4.94 | 4.75 | 3.73 | 3.09 | 1.89 | −62% |
| GKP | 4.42 | 4.17 | 3.37 | 2.92 | 2.16 | −51% |
| MID | 4.94 | 4.53 | 4.04 | 3.44 | 2.96 | −40% |
| FWD | 5.36 | 4.62 | 4.03 | 3.76 | 3.43 | −36% |
A defender in the hardest bracket scores 1.89. A forward in the same bracket scores 3.43 — 82% more. In the easiest bracket they're almost level (4.94 against 5.36).
That's the whole finding in one sentence: fixtures decide what a defender scores, and only nudge what a forward scores.
It makes sense once you see the mechanism. A defender's return is mostly a clean sheet — a team outcome, and a team facing Arsenal away is not keeping one. A forward's return is a goal, and a good forward gets chances against anyone. The floor is much higher because the route to points doesn't depend on his team defending well.
What to do with it
Rotate your cheap defenders on fixtures. Aggressively. This is where the fixture ticker earns its place. Going from a rated-4 to a rated-2 fixture is worth about 1.7 points a game at the back. Over a five-week run that's more than a transfer hit costs, and the swap is usually cheap because budget defenders are interchangeable.
Don't sell a premium forward because of a hard run. You'd be paying a transfer to avoid about a 1.5-point drop, and giving up the weeks where he scores anyway. The maths doesn't support it.
Goalkeepers behave like defenders. Same mechanism, slightly softer, because saves pay points even in a defeat. A cheap keeper rotation on fixtures is a real strategy.
Midfielders sit in between, which is why they're the hardest to plan around. Attacking midfielders behave more like forwards, defensive ones more like defenders — and FPL calls both "MID". Our stats article has a note on separating them.
Three things this does not prove
1. FDR is not a great rating. It's set before the season and rarely updated, so it can't see form, injuries or a new manager. The gradient above shows it carries real information, not that it's the best available estimate of difficulty. Our own model prices each fixture from fitted attack and defence strengths instead, and updates them as the season runs.
2. The extremes are thin. Rated-1 and rated-5 fixtures are 404 and 387 appearances out of 7,813. The middle three brackets hold 90% of the season. Most of the time you are choosing between a 3 and a 4, where the gap is 0.57 points — real, but not a reason to take a hit.
3. This is one season. 2025/26 only, and the rules changed for 2026/27: the bonus system was rebuilt and defensive contributions now pay points. Both changes affect defenders most, which is exactly the group with the largest fixture effect. We'll re-run this in May.
The rule of thumb
Points swing on fixtures roughly in proportion to how much of a player's scoring depends on his team rather than on him.
Keepers and defenders: mostly the team. Rotate them. Forwards: mostly them. Hold them.
Check any club's run on the Fixtures grid, see who the swings favour on the Dashboard, or plan the rotation in the Team Planner. This week's fixtures and the model's picks are in Gameweek 1 model picks.