Welcome to the Fantasy Football Experiment

For the 2026/27 season, I've decided to give fantasy football another go.

Yes, again.

Every season, I convince myself that this will be the year I take fantasy football seriously. I pick a team, make a few questionable transfers, forget to check my bench at some point and then quietly lose interest.

So naturally, this year I've made the sensible decision to play two fantasy games.

One I've played before. One is completely new. And somehow, I'm expecting the second one to go better.

Two games. Twice the opportunity for chaos.

There's the usual Fantasy Premier League, which I've played on and off for years and still haven't really figured out.

Then there's WSL Fantasy. I've spent years following women's football, talking about it and building content around it, so an official fantasy game feels like a pretty good excuse to follow the league in a completely different way.

FPL gives me the Premier League, a £100m budget and absolutely no guarantee that I know what I'm doing.

WSL Fantasy should be slightly different. I spend far too much time watching women's football, so surely some of that knowledge has to be useful.

Or, more realistically, I now have twice as many opportunities to make terrible decisions.

This isn't a fantasy football advice site.

I'm not a fantasy football expert, and I'm not going to pretend I've discovered some secret formula for finding the perfect captain.

The point of this project is much simpler.

There'll be teams, transfers, captain choices, occasional good decisions and quite a lot of "why the hell did I do that?"

At some point, I will almost certainly captain Lauren James purely because she's Lauren James. That is not analysis. That is a lifestyle choice.

WSL Fantasy is where things get interesting.

This is the side of fantasy football where I actually have something useful to contribute.

I've spent years following women's football, so I'm using the experiment as an excuse to track players, fixtures and the things that might actually matter when picking a WSL Fantasy team.

Rather than pretending I know exactly what I'm doing, I'm going to keep track of the players I'm interested in and see whether my picks actually hold up.

And then there's FPL.

FPL is the one I've played before.

I've spent years starting with good intentions, making a few transfers, convincing myself I've finally worked out the game and then wondering why my bench has scored more points than my entire starting XI.

So I'm giving it another go.

I'm not going to build a giant FPL advice section around the experiment. I'm mainly interested in seeing whether I can actually stick with the game this time.

The plan.

The theory is simple.

Then repeat until something goes horribly wrong.

There won't be a weekly diary for the sake of having a weekly diary.

If something is actually useful, interesting or ridiculous enough to share, I'll write about it.

So what's actually coming?

The useful stuff will live here.

For WSL Fantasy, that means player watchlists, useful resources and the occasional update when something actually changes.

For FPL, expect considerably less pretending that I know what I'm doing.

The goal isn't to turn theFFM into another fantasy football advice site.

It's to follow two fantasy games, see whether my football knowledge translates into fantasy points and find out whether I can actually stick with something for an entire season.

And if I disappear...

If I disappear halfway through the season, please assume one of two things has happened: I've forgotten to set my team for three consecutive Gameweeks, or I've quietly lost interest again.

Either way, that answers the question.

So, welcome to the experiment.

Two fantasy games. Two teams. A season full of decisions that will probably look sensible right up until they don't.

The difference now is that the experiment doesn't need a new post every Gameweek.

I'll keep playing. I'll keep tracking things. And when something is actually worth sharing, it'll have a home here.

The real question is whether I still remember I have a team in a month's time.