Fantasy League Professional is not only about your main league season. There’s plenty of extra opportunities throughout the season for managers to demonstrate their tactical ability, as explained below. One of the benefits of this is that there is always something to play for right up until the end of the season, so if you slide down the table in your main league, fear not.
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The League Series is the ultimate head-to-head competition for those of you who want to inflict maximum pain on your fellow league members.
Fixtures will be drawn up in advance of the League Series and, during the specified weeks, each team will go head to head with another team in the league in a match-up that is determined by the weekly total of Fantasy League points gained. Just like the real-life Premier League, teams gain three points for a win and one point for a draw. The manager with the most Round Robin points at the end of the season is crowned League Series Champion.
League series costs just £2.00 per season in addition to your registration but comes free with the Interactive and Premium packages (see the Which Package? page for more information.
Last season's league champions in your league qualify for entry into our Champions League competition, with the second and third placed teams going into the Europa League competition. Some leagues give their second Europa League place to lest season's FA Cup winner instead. The format is the same for both competitions. Each team is entered into a group of four randomly drawn teams and plays each side in their group twice. The top two from these groups qualify for the knockout stages to face the best of the best.
The European Competition group stages will begin with the first fixture on game week commencing 25th September 2012. Before this time, each league chairman will be emailed to confirm the correct teams in their league are submitted to the group stages. As states above, the convention is for the best-performing managers from the previous year to receive the honour of competing in these competitions, but the ultimate decision lies with the league and its chairman to decide who goes through.
All teams are entered into the Professional National Cup that begins shortly after New Year's Day. The Cup is split into four different cup categories to cater for league sizes (leagues of 5-7, 8-10, 11-13 and 14-16). This ensures that all teams have an equal opportunity against teams from similar sized leagues. The competition proceeds as a weekly knock out series decided by weekly Fantasy League points. As the rounds progress, teams are whittled down until only one team – the Fantasy Cup champions – remains in each cup category.
Each knockout cup tie runs from Tuesday to Monday, with the team amassing the most points during that week being declared the winner and progressing to the next round of the cup. In the event of both teams gaining the same weekly score, the team with the most goals scored during the week will progress. If points and goals are tied, then the team with the most assists will be deemed the winner of the tie. And if points, goals and assists are all equal, the away team (i.e. the team listed last in the fixture) will progress.
The Custom Cup generator is available to all Interactive and Premium Leagues. The generator allows you to create your league's own cup competition, played over as long a period as you like, featuring two, three, or even four-legged encounters. The Custom Cup generator can even be used to create end of season play-offs for your league, or inter-divisional competitions if you have more than one division.
Interactive Leagues are able to create one Custom Cup per season, while Premium Leagues can create an unlimited number of cups during the year.
Your overall ranking is shown beside your team name on your league table. The ranking is based on a researched weighting process to give managers from larger leagues the chance to test themselves against managers from those little leagues. The ranking takes into account season score, league size and the amount of transfers made during the season, so the less transfers you make the better your ranking could be.
You can compete for Manager of the Month in your own league, and if you've had a really great run you might even figure in the overall list against all other Professional managers. Above your league table, there's a tab showing everyone's month-by-month form.
As news of your league widens, those jealous people who were initially left out in the cold will start to want a piece of the action. What better way to include them (and reinforce your own superiority) than to set up a second division within your league structure?
A second (or third, fourth, and so on...) division is included within your main league umbrella, but has its own auction and separate Player List. You may decide to have promotion and relegation between each league at the end of the season, and you can use the custom cup generator to set up league-wide knockout competitions.
The FA Cup can offer the fantasy manager some much-needed salvation come January. While the big-boys battle it out for the league, the FA Cup competition can provide a welcome distraction for the less successful among you. The opportunity to salvage some pride shouldn't be scoffed at. Players score points based on their performance in cup games - including replays and extra-time, but not including penalty shoot-outs - from the FA Cup third round onwards. It is the perfect opportunity for your group of overpriced underachievers to prove that they are a 'cup-side.'