Fixture Difficulty Ratings (FDR) are released by FPL at the start of the season, reviewed each week and updated if need be. It takes into consideration the teams home and away form, performance against the opponent and multiple other Opta data variables and is an important tool in the hands of the right manager. To begin, just search up for FPL FDR in your browser or scroll through the FPL blogs to find them, remember to use the updated version every week! The current version can be found here.



As a manager, the first time you interact with FDR is when you click on a player to view more info and check the Fixtures tab.

FDR shown in the player info for Lucas Digne.

Theoretically the difficulty ratings vary from 1 to 5, but as the Premier League is more balanced (duh) than most leagues we never see a rating of 1. In the FDR document you won’t find the numbers but the fixtures are color coded. Green=2, Grey=3, Pink=4 and Burgundy=5.

FDR color codes

A snippet of Arsenal’s first 5 fixtures which covers all four difficulty ratings.

Okay so now you know the basics, how do you put it into use?

Well for starters, identify stretches of green patches with slight sprinkles of grey and an odd pink. FPL is a long run game of form and fixture, these green stretches are the fixture part of the game, which give you elevated odds to score better than your opponents.

Some examples of good fixture stretches at the start of the season include BOU and EVE.

This makes the assets from those teams really lucrative over players from better teams but worse fixtures.

“Turn of Fixtures”

FDR readers often use the term “turn of fixtures when a team has a sudden change of fixtures from green/grey to pink/burgundy or vice versa which dictates whether you bring a player from that team into your team or not. This term affects the decision if a mediocre player is going through a good patch but you would still be apprehensive to include him in your team if his fixtures turn next week.

Crystal Palace fixtures take a sharp turn during midseason.

“Rotate well”

Another term which is closely associated with FDR is when you want two cheap defenders or GKs so that they rotate well with respect to each other. This means that when one player gets into the red zone of fixtures the other is in a green patch and vice versa. this helps you predecide on wich player to play in that particular stretch and can lessen your load to worry about atleast one position.

Everton and Leicester have a nice rotation which runs deep into the start of the season.

Although FDR is a great tool, you cannot really grasp all the info from one tool. Some of the points where FDR is often criticized include:

1. FDR is a team tool in a game about individual players.

2. FDR does not differentiate between attack and defense.

Although the points are right we should understand that FDR is a information tool and not something you directly base your team off, but is something that you should use in consonance with other tools available at your disposal.



Join our Official FPL Replace League for the 19/20 season using the invite code invz15.

Check out all our informative blogs here: Latest Blogs

Follow us on twitter for real time tips: FPL Replace Twitter

Join our Discord for real time discussing and much more: FPL Replace Discord

Check out our videos on our YouTube: FPL Replace YouTube

Do you want to write for us? Click here: Write for us

