Fantasy Premier League (FPL) is one of the most addictive pass time for Premier League enjoyers. Although calling it a leisure activity might not be the correct way to put it as for many it is much more than just online fantasy points.
Checking up on the official FPL website or twitter, you will find a pinned banner/tweet displaying a very peculiar message. It references game week 17 of the fantasy game, which has been declared to remain open even after all the matches have already concluded.
Passionate FPL team owners have been flocking the social media inquiring about their missing points and curious to find what this actually means for their season.
Bournemouth forward Dominic Solanke has turned a menace for the players not only in real matches but apparently in the fantasy game too.
Some users are seen asking where their Solanke bonus points for the week are, while others are speculating that the points are going to be taken away altogether, soon.
The whole issue stems from the Bournemouth vs Luton game this week, which was abandoned following Luton player Tom Lockyer’s collapse in the 65th min. It was a cardiac arrest issue and hence the fixture will be replayed at a later date.
Both team’s players have been awarded points which might need to be removed considering the situation. As of now Solanke is the center of attention because many users have the player selected in their fantasy squad and FPL had actually awarded the player bonus points for a short while.
A Bonus point system (BPS) is an integral mechanism of FPL through which the website decides upon the top 3 performers of a match. It consists of a range of statistics supplied by Opta that capture actions on the pitch, to create a performance score for every player.
The players with the top three BPS in a given match receive bonus points – three points to the highest-scoring player, two to the second best and one to the third.
The bonus points for Solanke, awarded earlier, were taken away, causing all the commotion but the player’s matchday points still remain. This, along with the gameweek not closing for auto-substitutions, has caused uncertainty and ruckus among the FPL faithful.
Users are worried about their head-to-head leagues and about what an abandonment would entail as some are happy about what substitutions will be made while others are angry about losing huge potential points on a player (Solanke) they gambled to make captain.
The solution seems simple enough: as the game has been abandoned, so should be the points. However, FPL team hasn’t made a decision yet so there must be some intricacies that the users aren’t privy to.
Or maybe, just maybe, the situation is as some user described, ” They are probably trying to revert the points for the game without making a mess of the whole server. But the 20 year old, never updated machinery might have given up.”
Recent Developments: The time has finally come. Occam’s razor has prevailed and FPL officials have announced abandonment of the points. Now the team players involved in the game in question have a blank dash under their names and soon the gameweek will be closed, bringing the story to an end. Go quick and check what Santa has brought for your teams.
