Two things every FPL manager does before a ball is kicked: pick a name they will have to look at until May, and sort out the leagues they actually care about. Neither decides your rank. Both decide how much you enjoy the season.
Fair warning on what follows: unlike most things we publish, the names section is not derived from a database. It is jokes. The mini-league mechanics below are accurate, and the player names are all in this season's game — but nobody should mistake this for analysis.
Team names for 2026/27
FPL caps team names at 20 characters, so the long ones don't fit. Everything below is within the limit and built from players actually in the 2026/27 game.
On the new arrivals and movers
- Szobo-slay
- Rogers That
- Isak Newton
- The Full Mbeumo
- Cunha Matata
- Gyökeres Anatomy
- Kroupi Therapy
On the perennials
- Haaland Oates
- Bruno Mars Attacks
- Guéhi Force One
- Raya Of Light
- Palmer Sunday
- Semenyo Says
- Watkins The Money
On the budget picks
- Calvert-Lewinsky
- Mateta Of Fact
- Wood You Believe It
- Ndiaye Another Day
- Welbeck At It Again
- Brobbey Dazzler
On this season's rule changes
- Defcon Artists
- CBI Or Not CBI
- One Per Three
- Bench Boost Ya
Two rules to keep in mind: names must stay clean — any manager can report an offensive name to the Premier League, and they do get changed — and you can rename your team at any point in the season, so nothing here is a life sentence.
Setting up a mini-league properly
Mini-leagues are the actual game for most people. Overall rank is abstract; being fourth out of nine in a work league in April is not.
To create one: Leagues & Cups → Create & join new leagues & cups → Create a league & cup. You name it and choose a scoring type.
Classic or head-to-head? Classic ranks everyone on cumulative points and is the right default — it stays meaningful all season and rewards consistency. Head-to-head pairs you against one rival each gameweek, which is more dramatic and much noisier: a good week against someone's better week counts for nothing. For a league of friends who want it to still matter in March, classic. For a small group who want weekly needle, head-to-head.
A detail worth knowing: a league only scores from the gameweek it is created in. Set yours up before the Gameweek 1 deadline or early entrants get a free head start that never washes out.
Sharing it: every league has a join code, and an auto-join link that fills the code in for people. The link converts far better than asking people to type a code into a menu they have never opened. You can be in up to 30 private leagues.
The leagues you're in automatically
You're entered into a few global leagues without doing anything: Overall, your chosen club's supporter league, your country's league, and a gameweek-by-gameweek league. New this season there is also a Rookie League for first-time managers, which is a genuinely good addition — finishing 400,000th overall in your first year feels very different when you can see you were 900th among people who also started this year.
Some honest advice on the first draft
The most common first-season mistake is treating the Gameweek 1 deadline as though it were permanent. It isn't. You get a free transfer every week, you bank up to five, and both Wildcards let you rebuild the entire squad at no cost. A first draft that is 80% right and adjusted in September beats an agonised one that never moves.
The second most common mistake is taking early hits to chase last week's points. −4 is a real cost and it compounds quietly.
If you want the numbers rather than the vibes for that first squad:
- The pre-season guide — everything that changed this season in one place.
- What everyone else is picking — live ownership, so you can see the template forming.
- Assistant Manager — builds the best legal £100.0m squad against our model.
- Fixture Tracker — every club's opening run, rated.
Play alongside us
We run a mini-league for people who use the dashboard, and a Discord for arguing about captaincy at half past ten on a Saturday morning. Both are free and both are open to anyone who plays.
It is more fun with a scoreboard and someone to blame.
Part of the FPL 2026/27 pre-season guide.