As the new Telegraph Fantasy Football season approaches, the fantasy football experts at Fantasy Football Hub will continue to bring you the very best in fantasy football knowledge, tips and tools to help you rise up the ranks and win your mini-leagues.
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What are the alternative leagues?
In Telegraph Fantasy Football you don’t just have prizes for finishing top of the Overall Leaderboard at the end of each week, month and season; we have a number of alternative leagues designed to add an extra dimension to your TFF experience.
First, we have the four Public Leagues that are open for anyone to join:
- Facebook League – a league for our Facebook community of fans to engage in.
- Twitter League – a league for our community of Twitter followers to engage in.
- Three Lions League – a league where your team must consist of only English players.
- Fantasy Football Hub League – a league sponsored by our friends at Fantasy Football Hub who give our players the best opportunity of winning and enjoying TFF.
Any single team can only enter one of the above leagues at once.
Following on from that we have our other great leaderboards with some fun angles:
- One League – similar to the Overall Leaderboard but each manager can only have one team in this league.
- Golden Boot League – a league that is won by the team that scores the most goals.
- Starting XI League – a league where only your team at the moment the season starts gain points.
- Wooden Spoon League – a league where the goal is to score as few points as possible. Often the winner is in negative numbers.
Enter your teams into the leagues here >
5 strategies to win alternative leagues
3-4-3 formation with set and forget defenders (applies to The Golden Boot League)
Optimising your 40 transfers on attacking assets on form, and with kind fixture runs, is key to success in this format. Starting with Gabriel (£4.3m) who averages around four goals a season, Dunk (£3.5m) who is an ever present in Brighton’s back-line and chips in with the odd goal, and Romero (£3.5m) who got five goals from defence for Spurs last season, gives a solid, and budget-friendly, base, to allow full use of transfers on rotating big hitting expensive attackers.
Include all the expensive English talent over spreading resources (applies to the Three Lions League)
Home grown players are now playing regularly for the top sides in the Premiership once again, and there isn’t a shortage of heavy hitting options to pick from. In the front line Watkins (£5.7m), Toney (£5.2m) and Solanke (£4.4m) are the most obvious and prolific choices, but keep an eye on Rashford (£5.7m), Wilson (£5.0m) and Calvert-Lewin (£4.9m), who given a clean bill of health, can be very streaky at times.
Despite their new price tags of £5.8m for Cole Palmer and £4.7m for Anthony Gordon, they are lock-ins if you are looking for success in this format. There are a plethora of other midfield options, with Saka (£5.8m), Bowen (£5.3m), Rice (£4.6m) and Eze (£3.9m) all worth consideration. In defence a potentially re-invigorated Alexander-Arnold (£5.2m) could be complimented with White (£4.6m), Walker (£4.8m) and Trippier (£4.0m) – if all managing to stay fit. There are less options in goal, where Pickford (£3.7m) feels like the only viable option to begin with, but Pope (£4.0m) and Ramsdale (£4.0) would attract TFF managers’ attention if game time is guarenteed.
Steady streams of points players (applies to Starting XI)
Often Telegraph Fantasy Football is about finding the on-form player and bringing them in early before the masses follow suit. However picking players that tick over with a predictable regularity in points helps in this format, particularly if looking at those players on the kinder end of the budget. Two players that fit this mould are Joao Gomes (£2.9m) and Bruno Guimaraes (£3.9m), with steady streams of tackling bonuses along with the odd attacking return.
Include cheap enablers who qualify for all competition formats (applies to all alternative leagues)
This tactic allows managers to assess their start before prioritising which competition to utilise transfers on. Gibbs-White (£3.4m) is a stand-out player to pick for this reason, and a punt on Branthwaite (£3.0m) could prove favourable should Everton start as solidly as they finished last season, or indeed if he makes the speculated move to Manchester United. Ipswich’s Leif Davis (£2.5m) is another who could prove handy at his price should he replicate his Championship form from last season where he ammassed 18 assits from left-back.
The wildcard pick (applies to all alternative leagues)
For the last two seasons the Hub has highlighted Solanke in this section, who went on to have very respectable returns in the Premier League, helping TFF managers across all alternative formats. This season’s tips are Ipswich’s Omari Hutchinson (£2.9m) and Aston Villa’s Jaden Philogene (£3.4m); both budget friendly options who offer attacking returns. They both have all the attributes to follow in the footsteps of predecessors who’ve made the step up from the Championship.
Pick your team for the 2024/25 season >
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