How to play
Build your XI
Choose a formation, then answer 33 head-to-heads. Each set of four players is a mini-knockout: two semi-finals and a final. The winner takes his place in your team.
Enter it in the weekend cup
Name your team and enter. Entries close at 6pm on Friday, when every team in the world goes into one knockout.
Watch the rounds
Results land through Saturday and Sunday, from 12:30 to the final at 5:30pm on Sunday. Matches are simulated from the crowd's ratings of your eleven players.
Early roundsSat 3pm
Last 32Sat 5:30
Last 16 Sun 12:30
QuartersSun 3pm
SemisSun 5:30
Final
Improve it, climb the table
Monday to Friday you get three swaps a day: one of your players against a challenger. Every weekend gives you a score, and those build your place in the table (below). You can start a mini-league with friends, and challenge anyone by sharing your XI.
| 1 | Row Z Rovers | 68 |
| 2 | Your team | 65 |
| 3 | the gaffers xi | 63 |
How the table works
Each weekend your team scores out of 100: how much of the field you finished above. Go out in the first round and you finish above roughly a quarter of the teams, so you score about 25. Win the cup and you score 100.
| Out in round 1 | 25 |
| Out in round 2 | 63 |
| Reached the last 16 | 91 |
| Won the cup | 100 |
Your table score is your average over the last 10 cup weekends, so the table keeps moving all season: a good weekend always lifts you, a bad run drops out after ten weeks, and someone who joins in March can still climb. Everyone starts with three average weekends of 50, so one lucky run can't top the table before it means anything.
Say your first three weekends score 63, 91 and 25. Your average is 60, and with the three starting weekends of 50 your table score is 55.
Where the ratings come from
Every pick anyone makes is a vote. Add up thousands of them and you get a crowd rating for each Premier League player, built only from what people actually think, with no FIFA scores or pundits involved.
Ratings keep moving. They are refitted constantly as new picks come in, so a player who starts the season badly slides, and one who breaks into the team climbs as people start choosing him. The XI that wins in September may not be the XI that wins in April.
Those ratings are what decide your matches, so they are worth understanding: one person's votes barely move a player. A rating shifts only when thousands of picks point the same way.
So there is nothing to gain from voting for your own players to try to inflate them. Picking the player you genuinely think is better is the way to win, because your team is judged by what everyone else thinks, not by what you claimed.