The Gaffa Player's Guide

Gaffa is a dynasty fantasy football league built around one idea: it should track reality, not reward a meta.

Most fantasy games invent a points table — 6 for a goal, 4 for a clean sheet — and managers then optimise against that table rather than against football. Gaffa instead rates each performance the way a match-rating site would, against what a player in that role is actually expected to produce, and converts the rating into points. The consequence is deliberate: the way to win Gaffa is to be right about footballers. There is no scoring quirk to farm.

Everything else follows from that. Positions are the twelve real tactical roles, not three buckets. A player is judged by the job you asked him to do, not the label on his profile. Your squad carries over forever, and you build your budget the way a director of football does — through signings, sales, loans and trades.

This guide explains every system and why it works the way it does. It doesn't cover how the app is built.

On numbers: many figures below can be changed by your commissioner, so your league may differ — where that's the case, this guide gives the common default. Money is shown as €m.

1. Positions & Formations

Gaffa uses 12 tactical positions, not the generic DEF/MID/FWD buckets:

• Goalkeeper: GK
• Defenders: CB, LB, RB, LWB (left wing-back), RWB (right wing-back)
• Midfielders: DM (defensive), CM (central), AM (attacking)
• Attackers: LW, RW, ST

Why this granular? Because "midfielder" isn't a job. A defensive midfielder and an attacking midfielder are asked for opposite things, and grading them on one scale is how fantasy football ends up rewarding whoever happens to sit in the most generous bucket. Twelve roles means the yardstick matches the job.

Eligibility is strict

A slot accepts only its own position. A CB fills CB slots — not LB, not RWB. Flexibility comes from a player genuinely being listed at more than one position, never from the game inferring that "a defender is a defender."

This matters most on your bench, and it's the single most common squad-building mistake: a bench CB cannot auto-sub for an injured LB. Cover means cover at the exact position.

The twelve formations

Your starting XI must fit one of twelve supported shapes:

You pick a shape each gameweek based on who you actually have.

Bench

You field exactly 11 starters and exactly 4 bench players, in four slots:

• DEF — CB, LB, RB, LWB, RWB
• MID — DM, CM, AM
• ATT — ST, LW, RW
• FLEX — anyone starter-eligible, including an emergency goalkeeper

If a starter is out, Gaffa checks your bench for cover in a fixed order — DEF, then MID, then ATT, then FLEX (§5). Note the distinction: the DEF/MID/ATT grouping controls where a player may sit; whether he can actually cover a specific empty slot is the strict eligibility rule above.

When things lock

There are two locks, and they're different:

• Your formation locks as soon as the first match involving any of your squad kicks off.
• An individual player locks only when his own club kicks off.

So the gameweek does not shut in one go. Until a player's club kicks off you can still move him, which means you can react to Saturday lunchtime results before the late games. What you can't do is reshape the side after your first player is already out there.

Once this gameweek's last match kicks off, you can set next week's lineup and move players to academy — same moment for everyone. IR moves open then too, except for a player in this week's lineup, starting or on the bench: he stays locked until the week settles, because moving him on or off IR would change the points he already scored. This week's matchup, scores, and live XI stay up until the week actually settles (the morning review). A postponed match with no kickoff time is ignored, so one abandoned fixture cannot hold the league on this week's editor.

2. Your Squad

Every club's roster is split by status:

• Active / Bench — in play this week.
• IR (Injured Reserve) — a parking spot for injured players that doesn't count against your active roster limit, capped at 2 players (3 with a Club Facilities upgrade, §11).
• Academy — a prospect stash for U21 players (§12).
• Loaned out / Loaned in — players temporarily at another club, or borrowed from one (§10).
• Held — a player who arrived when your squad was full, waiting off it until you activate or drop him (below).

Roster size is a league setting, commonly 22 (11 starters plus 11 bench). IR and Academy players don't count toward it, so a full squad is 22 + 3 Academy + 2 IR = 27.

Held players

Sometimes a player arrives when your squad is already full: a loan comes to an end, a player you retained comes back to the Premier League, or you win an auction that nobody with room bid on. He isn't dropped and he doesn't push you over the limit. He's held: still yours, off the squad, and not counted toward your roster limit.

• You activate him yourself. Once you've made room, activate him into your reserves, or straight into your academy or IR if he qualifies. Nothing activates him for you, not even a drop.
• Not mid-gameweek. Activation is closed from a gameweek's first kickoff until its last match has kicked off, the same window as academy moves.
• While anyone is held, your squad can't grow. You can't bid, borrow, recall a loan, move a player up from the academy or IR, or accept a trade that brings in more players than it sends out. A held player going out in a trade doesn't count as a player leaving, because he was never in the squad. Drops, sales, one-for-one trades, moves to IR or the academy and loaning players out all still work.
• Your live bids are withdrawn the moment a player is held. You can bid again once you've resolved him, if the auction is still open.
• Your lineup locks if you wait. If he's still held when the next gameweek's first match kicks off, your lineup locks from then until you resolve him. Your last saved lineup is used each week and you're told it was set for you. If a player in it is no longer available, only that slot is filled. This includes gameweek 1 after the summer.
• Dropping a held player costs normal severance and sends him to auction. A held player can be sold or traded away, but not loaned out.

Why a hold rather than an auto-drop or going over the limit? Arrivals you didn't choose shouldn't cost you a player you did, and a squad over the limit breaks lineups and trades. The freeze is the price: the only thing a held player can do for you is wait, so there's nothing to gain from keeping him there. The lineup lock stops the one thing that would pay, keeping him as spare cover you activate when someone gets injured. It starts at the next gameweek rather than immediately, so a return you only just heard about never costs you a lineup.

IR isn't a free extra slot. IR is capped at 2 players (a league setting, or 3 if your club has bought the upgrade), and on top of that the game polices it at the point it matters: you cannot place an auction bid while a healthy player is sitting on IR. You have to activate him first. Rather than auditing injuries continuously, Gaffa blocks the benefit you'd be stashing him for, in addition to bounding how many you can stash at once.

Setting up your club

When you join you pick a club name (up to 20 characters) and a 2–4 character abbreviation, then build a crest: shield shape, background pattern, primary/secondary/border colours, optional icon and text, with live preview and a randomiser. There's no image upload — every crest is assembled from the same parts, so no badge in the league looks out of place next to another.

Leaving a league, and the Caretaker

Before the draft, leaving a league removes your club, and a commissioner who leaves deletes the league: nothing has been played yet.

After the draft, your club stays. If you leave, or the commissioner removes you, the Caretaker runs your club until a new manager takes it over. The club keeps its squad, Club Balance, record and fixtures, so the table and the cup brackets never change. Your live bids are withdrawn and your open trade and loan offers are cancelled, along with any listing nobody has bid on. Deals you'd already agreed still go through at the end of the gameweek.

The Caretaker keeps the club playing and never does business: it doesn't bid, sell, trade or loan, and nobody can propose a deal to a club it runs. Each morning before a gameweek starts, it picks the club's best lineup from that week's projected points, so a fit, in-form player starts ahead of an injured one. Between gameweeks it moves injured players onto IR, brings fit ones back, and activates held players when there's room. Once one of the club's players has kicked off, its lineup stands, the same as yours would. A new manager can take the club over at any time, in or out of season, from the league's invite code. They keep everything the club has and can rename it and change its crest. A league's history keeps the club's results under the names it had at the time.

A commissioner can't leave a league that has drafted until they hand the role to another manager, from Settings. The commissioner also removes managers there, and can see when each manager last opened the league.

If you go quiet. Opening any page of your league counts as being active, and so does opening your dashboard. If you haven't for five full gameweeks, you get a warning. If you still haven't after one more gameweek, your commissioner is told your club looks inactive. That's all that happens automatically: whether to remove you is the commissioner's decision. Gameweeks are counted rather than days, so an international break or the summer never counts against you.

Why a Caretaker rather than deleting the club? Deleting a club deletes every match it played, so every rival's results against it would vanish from the table and from the league's history. And a club with nobody in charge can't be allowed to do business, because it can't say no to a bad trade.

3. The Draft

A dynasty league drafts once, before its first season (a redraft league drafts every season; see Redraft Leagues). After that your squad carries forward forever and changes through auctions, trades and loans — there are no future drafts.

• The league needs at least 4 managers.
• The commissioner sets or randomises the order, and either starts immediately or schedules it. Everyone gets an email and an in-app notice, and it auto-starts at that time — or auto-cancels and tells the commissioner if there still aren't 4 managers.
• It's a snake draft: order reverses every round, running for as many rounds as your roster size, so everyone finishes with a full squad.
• Any active, undrafted Premier League player is available. There's no separate rookie pool.
• Each pick has a 90-second clock. Miss it and the system picks for you — from players you've pre-starred if you set a queue, otherwise by whichever position you need most.
• When the last pick lands, the season schedule is generated and normal play switches on. Cup brackets wait until gameweek 7 in a league's first season, so the seeds reflect real form (§6).

Why only one draft ever? Because a dynasty league where talent arrives by lottery every year isn't a dynasty. After the initial draft, every player who enters the league has to be bought — which is what makes the Club Balance meaningful and a good squad an achievement rather than a draft slot.

4. How Scoring Works

Instead of a flat points table, Gaffa judges every player against realistic expectations for his specific position. A centre-back and a striker are graded on different scales, because they're asked for different things — so a clean sheet plus real defensive volume can outscore a striker's quiet hour.

Each match a player earns a rating from roughly 1.0 to 10.0, calibrated so an average Premier League starter sits near 6.5, built from:

• Overall match impact — influence beyond the box score: involvement, pressing, contribution to build-up
• Creativity and attacking threat — chances created, shots, dangerous touches
• Defensive work — tackles, interceptions, clearances, blocks, recoveries; weighted far more heavily for defenders and defensive midfielders than for wingers
• Clean sheets — a bonus for goalkeepers and defenders, smaller for central midfielders, none for attackers. For a keeper it is deliberately modest: the saves that earned the shutout count for more than the shutout itself
• Goals conceded — costly for goalkeepers; for outfielders, measured against how many the team's performance suggested they should have conceded, not the raw scoreline
• Goals and assists — rewarded identically regardless of position, with a bonus for beating your expected-goals numbers
• Saves (goalkeepers) — including a larger bonus for penalty saves

The flex boost. Whichever of a player's role-relevant components is his best that match receives extra weighting, so a standout game in one part of his role isn't flattened by an average one elsewhere.

Rating and points are two different scales

Your fantasy points come from the same performance, but they are not a straightforward conversion of the rating on the card — the two run on separate scales. The practical effect surprises everyone once:

There are no points for turning up. Your score comes from the performance curve alone:

Two things follow. A displayed rating of 5.5 or below scores exactly zero — a below-par performance is worth nothing, not a small amount, and every game under that line is worth the same whether it rated 4.0 or 5.4. And the curve is steeply front-loaded: 7.0 → 8.0 gains you more than 6.0 → 7.0 did. One genuinely excellent performance outweighs several adequate ones, which is the intended shape. Gaffa rewards players who decide matches, not players who merely appear in them. Points never go negative; zero is the floor.

Goalkeepers run on exactly the same table, with no adjustment. A keeper is rated on how he kept, not on whether the defence held: the saves he made, and how the goals he conceded compare with the quality of the chances he faced. A clean sheet helps, but an untroubled one is worth far less than one he earned — and a keeper can rate highly in a defeat, which is how it should be.

The rare-feat bonus

A hat-trick, three or more assists, or a handful of the season's most exceptional chance-creating performances carry a small bonus on top of what the curve above already pays them — usually 3 to 5 extra points, growing further for something even rarer.

Why: the curve already rewards two goals or two assists heavily, but two goals and three goals were landing within a fraction of a rating point of each other. By the time a player has two goals, almost every part of his rating — not just the goals themselves — is already near its ceiling, so a third goal has almost nowhere left to register. The bonus restores some of that separation for the rarest performances, without inflating the ordinary run of good games underneath it.

The out-of-position penalty

If a player whose primary position is a midfield or attacking role (DM, CM, AM, LW, RW, ST) is fielded in a defensive slot (CB, LB, RB, LWB, RWB), he takes a 20% penalty to both rating and points. This applies whether or not he's also listed at that defensive position.

Why: baseline mismatch. Defensive baselines expect defensive volume, and a midfielder dropped into a back line accumulates touches and recoveries that flatter him against the wrong yardstick. The penalty removes the arbitrage. It doesn't apply in reverse — a defender filling a midfield or attacking slot isn't penalised, because he's being measured against a harder standard, not an easier one.

Common questions

My player started and played 90 minutes. Why did he score zero?

Because he was below par, and below par is worth nothing. Anything at or under a 5.5 displayed rating scores 0 — and everything below that line scores the same nothing, so a dreadful game and a merely poor one come to the same. This is the most common surprise in Gaffa and it's deliberate on both counts: appearing in a match isn't an achievement, so there are no participation points, and separating out degrees of poor would mean flattening the whole curve, which would take most of the meaning out of a genuinely big performance.

Why did my centre-back outscore my striker?

Because they're graded against different expectations. A centre-back who keeps a clean sheet with real defensive volume has done his job excellently; a striker who didn't score hasn't. That's the whole design — the striker isn't being punished, he's being measured against strikers.

Does a substitute get punished for only playing 20 minutes?

No. There's no minutes multiplier anywhere. A short appearance rates low only because it usually accumulates too little to beat the baseline.

A substitute who does something is credited for it. A five-minute cameo with a goal in it rates about 7.8 and pays around 19 points; the same five minutes with nothing in them pays about 2. Impact counts, not time served.

What about a double gameweek?

Both matches count and the points add together. Your player is rated separately for each fixture and you get the sum, so a double gameweek is genuinely twice the opportunity.

Does a red card cost me points?

Yes — a sending-off is usually catastrophic for that player's week, often costing the entire return.

There's no separate "−3 for a red card" line item, because there doesn't need to be one. Cards are already reflected in how his match impact is scored, and being sent off stops him accumulating anything else. A midfielder sent off around the 25-minute mark typically lands near a 5.5 rating and scores 0, where the same player completing an unremarkable 90 minutes would have returned around 12 points. He falls under the zero threshold and takes nothing.

The one mercy is that it bottoms out. A player's contribution can be reduced to nothing but can't go below it, so a disaster costs you his points — it never subtracts from your team score.

Can I lose points?

No. Zero is the floor for any individual performance, so a bad week can leave you with very little but never a negative.

5. Weekly Matchups

Each week your club plays another head-to-head. Your score is the total fantasy points of your starting XI, plus the bench bonus below.

Auto-subs

If a starter finishes the gameweek on zero minutes, Gaffa replaces him — but only once that starter's own fixture is confirmed finished, so a late team-sheet surprise isn't acted on prematurely.

It then checks your bench in a fixed order — DEF, then MID, then ATT, then FLEX — and takes the first player who:

1. actually played (more than zero minutes), and
2. is eligible for that exact slot — his primary or secondary position must match it

Each bench player can only be used once. Remember the strict eligibility rule: a bench CB will not cover an LB slot no matter which of the four bench categories he's sitting in.

The sub is then re-rated at the slot he filled, not his own position. If your bench full-back comes into a centre-back slot, his contribution to your team score is judged against centre-back expectations — because that's the job he did. His own season stats still record his real position.

Bench Depth Bonus

Bench players who played but weren't needed each add 25% of the points they scored to your team total, credited at their normal position.

Why: a deep squad should be worth something. Without this, the optimal bench is four players you expect not to play, which is the opposite of squad-building. With it, genuine depth pays a small dividend every week.

Draws

If the gap between the two scores is 10 points or less, it's a draw. A larger gap gives the win to the higher score.

Why a draw band at all? Because a 0.4-point margin isn't a result — it's noise in the ratings themselves. Football has draws; a league that resolves every coin-flip into a win would overstate how much of the table is skill.

Regular-season matchups run alongside the cups, so you're usually playing two fixtures a week — off the same score and the same XI (§6).

Common questions

What if I forget to set a lineup?

You won't score zero. Gaffa carries your previous gameweek's lineup forward, and if that isn't usable it builds a valid one from your roster. It's not a substitute for managing your team — a carried-forward XI won't know about this week's injuries — but forgetting once doesn't forfeit the week.

What if I don't have the right positions for a formation?

You can't save it. A lineup must fill every slot in the chosen shape with an eligible player, exactly 11 starters and exactly 4 bench. This is why the strict eligibility rule in §1 shapes squad-building: you need real cover at real positions, not four vaguely defensive players.

Should I start someone I know is injured, so the auto-sub fires?

It works — an absent starter is replaced from your bench once his fixture finishes — but you lose the Bench Depth Bonus you'd have earned from that bench player, since a player used as a sub doesn't also pay the 25%. Starting the fit player is normally better.

Both of us scored nothing. What happens?

In the league it's a draw — a gap of 10 or fewer is a draw, and 0–0 qualifies.

In a cup tie there are no draws, so it has to resolve. The first tie-break is the best individual performer, but at 0–0 nobody has one: every player scored zero, so there's nothing to compare. In that case the club in the higher bracket position advances: the better seed in a seeded round, or the club higher in the table at the draw in a League Cup round that was drawn. So a genuine 0–0 cup tie is settled by where you stand in the league, which is the only thing left to separate the two sides.

6. Cup Tournaments

Three knockout competitions run alongside the league, not instead of it:

• Champions Cup — the primary competition
• League Cup — the secondary knockout
• Consolation Cup — for clubs who miss out on the other two

Why cups exist

Real clubs don't play for one thing. A season has a league campaign and knockout runs, which is why a manager can finish fifth and still have silverware, or win the title and get knocked out by someone mid-table. That's the shape Gaffa is after — a season with more than one story in it.

It solves a real problem with league-only fantasy football, too: by March, half the table has nothing to play for. Three parallel knockouts mean a club with no title hope is still in a cup, still has a tie next week, and can still finish the year with something to point at. The trophy is the point. A treble is possible. So is a season where you win nothing in the league and go home with the Champions Cup, which is a perfectly good season.

How ties are decided

You don't set a separate cup lineup. Your gameweek score is calculated once from your one XI, and that same score counts for your league match and any cup tie you have that week. One team, one performance, multiple competitions — exactly as a real squad plays a midweek cup game with the players it has.

• Brackets are seeded on league position in the standard pattern (1 v 16, 8 v 9, 5 v 12 …), and byes go to the top seeds. Finishing high in the table is worth something beyond the table.
• In a league's first season, brackets are seeded at gameweek 7, not at the draft. Seeding before anyone has played makes the seeds and byes arbitrary. A league with a previous season seeds immediately from its archived standings.
• Some rounds are two-legged, decided on aggregate across both gameweeks.
• There are no draws in a cup. The league's 10-point draw band doesn't apply — somebody has to advance.
• Level ties are settled by your best individual performer. If the scores are equal, the club whose highest-scoring single player outscored the other's goes through.
• If even that is level — including a 0–0, where nobody has a best performer — the club in the higher bracket position advances. In a seeded round that's the better seed; in a drawn League Cup round it's the club that stood higher in the table when the round was drawn.

That tie-break is worth thinking about in a cup week. A side built on one outstanding player and a thin supporting cast can lose a league match on aggregate points and still survive a cup tie on the strength of that one performance.

Everything advances automatically as gameweeks resolve — there's nothing to confirm.

The League Cup draw

The Champions Cup is a fixed, seeded bracket: you can see your whole path to the final from the start. The League Cup is drawn round by round. Its first round is seeded, with byes to the top seeds, and every round after that is drawn at random once the round before it finishes. You get a notification with your opponent as soon as the draw is made.

Why a draw? Two seeded cups taken from the same table come out as the same bracket: in a small league, the Champions Cup and the League Cup would be the same ties in the same order, one story told twice. An open draw is also how domestic cups work in real football, where you don't know who you'll get until the balls come out.

Small leagues (4–6 managers)

Every club enters the Champions Cup, and the Consolation Cup is played by the clubs it knocks out:

• 6 clubs: both quarter-final losers and both semi-final losers. Their semi-finals are drawn once all four are known, and played over MW36 and MW37, with the final at MW38.
• 5 clubs: the quarter-final loser and both semi-final losers. The highest-placed of the three gets a bye to the final.
• 4 clubs: the two semi-final losers, in a single final at MW38.

So in a small league, going out of the Champions Cup isn't the end of your season: there's still a trophy to play for.

Cup results feed end-of-season prize money (§14) — so a cup run pays as well as flatters.

7. Standings & Stats

• Standings — the league table: win/draw/loss, league points, points for and against, difference, rank, and a five-match form guide.
• Players — every Premier League player, owned or not, in three views.

Players is deliberately league-wide rather than limited to free agents: scouting in a dynasty league means knowing who's good, including players you'd have to prise off somebody.

The three views

• Cards (the default) lead with the first line of that player's scouting report. Filter by quality, minutes role, and Watch for, which surfaces players linked with a Premier League exit.
• Table is the sortable leaderboard: total points, points per game, average rating, market value, form and minutes, filterable by position and gameweek.
• Explorer plots the pool on any two of eight stats, opening on market value against points per game.

Scouting reports

Every regular carries a written outlook from Futbolpedia: how he's used, how secure his place is, what to expect week to week, and where he is in his career.

It's a football judgment, drawn from match data, minutes, set-piece duty and transfer news. It never reads your league's scoring, and it never tells you whether to bid. A report is dated, because it describes the player now — view an older season and the figures change but the report doesn't.

Alongside the writing, each player carries tags you can filter on: quality at his position, how nailed-on he is, career phase, dynasty value, playing style, and any risks.

Player pages

Tap any player for his own page, split in two.

• The football side — his scouting report, minutes and starts, goals against xG, assists against xA, set-piece order from FPL, and his xGI/90 percentile among players in the same position. That percentile is only shown for attacking positions: an elite centre-back ranks near the bottom of it, so the bar would read as a verdict it isn't.
• Your league's side — points, points per game, average rating, who owns him, and this week's fixture.

The two never mix. League scoring doesn't feed the scouting report, and the report doesn't affect your points.

8. The Transfer Market

Every player you don't already own — genuine free agents and players listed by other managers alike — sits on one board, behind one bid button. You buy them the same way: an open auction paid from your Club Balance.

Open means open. You can see the current highest bid, which club holds it, and how many clubs have bid. When someone outbids you, you're told who — and at what fee. There is no sealed envelope and no hidden phase.

Why open rather than sealed? For the same reason as everything else in Gaffa: it's closer to how football works. Real transfer business isn't conducted in sealed envelopes — it's semi-open. Clubs know who else is in for a player, agents brief journalists, and a price gets driven up in public. An open auction simulates a negotiation; a blind bid simulates a raffle.

It also keeps the skill in the right place. In a sealed format the winner is usually whoever overshot hardest, and what's being tested is bid psychology. Open bidding asks a cleaner question: what is this player worth to your squad, now that someone else has told you what he's worth to theirs?

Semi-open is the honest description of what's here today. Genuine transfer negotiation has asymmetric information — some clubs know more than others — and that's a direction this may develop in, with secrecy and ways to pay for intel. For now, everyone sees the same board.

• Every club starts with a league-set Club Balance, commonly 250.
• Your Club Balance never resets between seasons — it's a permanent dynasty asset, and it can be traded like any other.
• Your bid must beat the current high. Matching it is rejected, as is lowering your own standing bid. There is therefore no such thing as a tied bid.
• If you're at your roster limit you nominate a player to drop as part of your bid. Dropping charges a severance fee of 20% of his market value, minimum €2m, on top of your winning bid — so churn isn't free.
• If you win but your active roster is full and the player is U21, he can be routed to your Academy rather than blocking the transfer.
• When an auction ends, the highest bidder with room wins. If the top bidder has no room left by then (they won something else in the meantime, say), the next bidder who does have room wins at their own bid. Only if nobody who bid has room does the highest bidder win him, and he's held (§2). You can't bid while holding a player, and any bids you have live when a player is held are withdrawn.
• Free agent bids must reach at least the league's minimum bid floor (default 60% of market value, rounded down, so a €2m player still opens at €1m).
• A brand-new Premier League arrival can't be bid on until Transfermarkt has priced them — usually within a day of them appearing in the app. There's no floor to enforce before that, so bidding is blocked outright rather than left open at zero.
• The league seeds auctions automatically at season kickoff for any player worth €50m or more, or who plays for a newly-promoted club. Everyone is emailed. Promoted-club players are seeded regardless of price, because at kickoff nobody owns them and a cheap newly-promoted starter is exactly the kind of asset a dynasty league should compete for rather than claim first. To keep managers focused on the same marquee targets, elite-tier auctions (€50m+) are released in staggered waves (roughly half the league size per wave, spaced 3 days apart).

How long an auction runs

There's no fixed duration and no hard ceiling. How long a lot stays open depends on what the player is worth, and after that it runs on bidding activity.

Minimum length by market value:

A marquee signing sits there long enough for everyone to plan a bid. A cheap rotation player can be streamed the same afternoon instead of tying up the board for three days.

After the last bid, a lot ends on inactivity, and that window shortens as the auction ages: 6h under 48h old, 4h at 48–72h, 2h at 72–96h, 1h beyond that. Every bid resets it, so a contested auction never freezes on a public deadline anyone can snipe.

Nothing settles before midday. A lot due to expire between 23:00 and noon local moves to midday instead, so the next manager to wake gets a full morning to answer. The same goes for a bid placed in those hours: it can't leave the previous leader only sleeping hours to answer, so the lot stays open until at least midday. One exception: an uncontested weekend lot — a single bid, under €20m, on a Saturday or Sunday — settles at 06:45, ahead of the early kickoff, so a last-minute streamer is available to play. Anything at €20m or more, or with a second bid, waits for midday. Your league's quiet-hours setting switches this protection on or off; it doesn't change the 23:00 and midday edges.

Auctions over €50m open at midday, rather than the moment the overnight sync sweeps the player in. The bidding runs the same whenever it opens, but the "new auction" notice doesn't: released at 4am, it only reaches whoever happens to be awake.

When the clock hits zero, a free-agent auction settles immediately — the winning bid lands even if that player's Premier League club has already kicked off. There is no seller XI to protect. The card reads settling until the win posts, not "ended."

Listed players wait. If you put one of your own players up for auction and his club has already kicked off this gameweek, the sale holds until the week finishes, so he cannot leave a lineup that already started. The same wait applies if the winning bidder nominated a locked player to drop to make room.

Selling your own players

You can list one of your rostered players, and the listing is shaped by which of three prices you set — no separate "auction or negotiation" switch to configure:

• Minimum bid opens him to a genuine open auction, same as a free agent. Set at all, it must be at least 60% of the player's market value — without that floor, two managers could move a €90m striker for €1m and call it a sale.
• Release clause lets anyone buy him outright at that price, no bidding required.
• Asking price is advertising for a negotiated Offer — it names a number without committing to accept it.

Set only the ones that apply. Skip the minimum bid and only set a release clause, and there's no open auction at all — the only way in is paying the clause outright, or negotiating an Offer. Skip all three prices except the asking price (or set none) and the listing is negotiation-only: nobody can bid, only propose. At least one of the three has to be set, or there's nothing here to advertise. Whatever you do set, others bid through the same open auction and you can't bid on your own listing; when he sells the winning bid is paid to you as Club Balance income — a genuine transfer fee, not a release.

For the same reason a minimum bid needs a real value to be floored against, a player who hasn't been priced by Transfermarkt yet can't be listed at all until they are.

When you list a player you can also flag whether you want cash, players, or a loan. These flags advertise what you're after and set the headline other managers see — they don't restrict how people can approach you. Anyone can still make any kind of offer.

Before anyone bids, you can also negotiate directly. Send an Offer — cash, players, or a mix — and it lands as a private proposal in your DMs with the seller, who can accept, counter, or decline it, exactly like any other trade. It's a quieter route than the open auction: nobody else sees it, and unlike a bid it needs the seller's yes rather than just being the highest number on the board. A cash-only offer still has to clear your minimum bid, when you have one set — the floor protects the auction itself, not just who's allowed to open it — but an offer that includes players isn't priced against anything, since their value isn't one number. Once real bidding starts, this door closes and the listing becomes auction-only.

Where a transfer fee goes

When you sign a free agent, the fee doesn't vanish. 20% of every winning bid returns to the league, split two ways:

• Half to the Scout — the manager who opened that auction by nominating the player, whether they won it or not. That's 10% of the winning bid, with no cap: surfacing a €150m signing pays €15m. If the Scout wins, it comes back to them as a rebate on their own bid.
• Half shared equally among the other clubs who didn't win, as a solidarity payment.

The remaining 80% is retired from the league's money supply.

Why pay the Scout on a win too? If the fee only came when you lost, losing would be worth 10% of the price, so you'd have a reason to stop bidding below what the player is actually worth to you. Paying the same 10% either way means you can bid up to exactly what the player is worth to your squad. It's no more than 10%, so opening an auction first never lets you outbid a club that values the player more.

Why? Because a fee that simply disappears drains the league every time somebody spends. Your squad is only sellable if the other managers still have money, so a market where every big signing destroys cash eventually has no buyers in it. Football handles this the same way — a slice of every transfer fee is distributed to a player's former clubs, and the Premier League's central pot is largely an equal share. A bidding war between two clubs now funds everyone else.

Only a manager can be the Scout. Auctions the system opens on its own — a new arrival or promoted-club signing swept onto the market, a player re-auctioned after a drop, a post-departure return auction, the season-kickoff sweep — pay no Scout's Fee even if a manager is first to bid; the whole 20% splits as solidarity instead. The same 20% applies to the severance fee when you drop a player and to the loan slot buyback fee. There's no Scout's Fee on either, because no auction was opened.

Amounts are always whole millions, so a split that doesn't divide evenly leaves a remainder, and the remainder is retired.

Rosters are locked during the offseason — no bids until the new season begins.

9. Trades

Direct manager-to-manager deals. No commissioner approval, no trade deadline.

• Offer any combination of your players plus Club Balance against any combination of theirs plus theirs.
• The other manager can accept, reject, ignore, or counter (which cancels the original).
• Retained rights (§13) are tradeable assets and can be included.
• If any player in an accepted trade has already kicked off in a live gameweek, the trade is marked deferred and executes when that gameweek finishes. You can't use a mid-week trade to escape a bad lineup. The same deferral applies to loans and to drops of a locked player.
• A player with an active sale listing can't be traded until it resolves or is cancelled.
• The Trades page shows a league-wide feed as well as your own pending offers and history.

Why no approval and no deadline? Commissioner veto assumes someone can referee whether a trade is "fair," which in a dynasty league means adjudicating other people's long-term plans. Gaffa polices the mechanisms that make collusion possible instead — the 60% listing floor, the deferred-trade rule, the buy-back exclusion — and then lets managers deal freely.

10. Player Loans

Send a rostered player to another club temporarily — for 4 to 16 gameweeks.

• Either side can open the conversation: propose a loan out, or request one of theirs. Both sides must agree. Academy players can be loaned the same way.
• If the player has already kicked off in a live gameweek, an accepted loan is deferred until that week finishes — same reason as trades.
• Terms are an upfront fee and, optionally, a performance bonus paid per fantasy point the player scores while away, subject to a cap. Presets — Fixed Fee Only, Balanced, Performance-Heavy — or hand-adjust.
• A recall clause lets the lender pull him back early for a flat penalty. The lender can instead pay a slot buyback fee (commonly 25) to reclaim the roster spot without recalling the player.
• While he's away he keeps his place in the lender's squad count, and doesn't count against the borrower's (the loan-in cap limits those instead). A slot buyback frees the lender's place for the length of the loan.
• Recalling needs room. You can't recall a player into a full squad, or while you're holding a player (§2).
• There are hard caps: by default you may have only 1 player out on loan and 2 in at any time. A club can raise its own loan-out cap to 2 with a Club Facilities upgrade (§11); the loan-in cap never changes.
• At expiry everything settles automatically: bonus paid, player returns to the spot they left — academy back to academy if they still qualify and a slot is free, otherwise Reserves. A returning player is never written into this week's XI or a matchday bench slot. If the lender's squad is full and he can't go back to the academy, he's held (§2) until the lender activates or drops him. Nothing is dropped automatically.

Why cap loans so tightly? Without a cap, loans become a way to warehouse a squad you can't field — stash your surplus with a friend, reclaim it when useful. One out and two in keeps a loan what it should be: a specific deal about a specific player, not a second roster.

11. Finance

Your Finance page is your club's bank statement:

• Current Club Balance
• Spending and earnings broken down by category: signings, severance, trades, departure compensation, sale proceeds, loan fees and bonuses, recall penalties, prize payouts, monthly revenue and solidarity payments
• Money created vs destroyed — whether your club has taken more out of the league's money supply than it has put back
• A full paginated transaction history — date, type and amount of every move your club has made

Match Revenue

You are paid during the season, not only at the end of it. Every four gameweeks your results over that block are settled into your Club Balance:

Ten payments a season — after gameweeks 4, 8, 12, 16, 20, 24, 28, 32 and 36, plus a final settlement covering 37–38. A perfect month pays €10m; a winless one still pays €2m.

Why during the season? Because money that only arrives in June can only be spent in June. A club that has to wait until the reset to be paid does its business in one summer splurge and then sits out the year. Paying monthly means you can respond to an injury in October with a signing rather than a shrug.

Why does a draw pay less than half a win? Because of the draw band in §5. A margin of ten points or fewer is noise in the ratings rather than a result, so it shouldn't pay like one.

Note that a win and a loss together pay exactly the same as two draws, so the league's total outlay is identical however the results fall. Nobody is paid out of anybody else's pocket.

Club Facilities

Club Balance can buy capacity as well as players. Each upgrade adds one slot for your club, permanently:

Buy them from Club Facilities at the top of your club page. Slot 5 of the Academy needs slot 4 first. Every upgrade is a one-time payment: there's no upkeep, it stays with your club every season, and it can't be sold back. Other managers can see how far your facilities are built, and the purchase appears on your finance ledger, not the league's activity feed. The money goes to nobody, so it counts as money destroyed.

Why buy slots rather than players? Cash doesn't score points, and with 22-man squads already full there's often nothing worth spending it on. Facilities give a well-run club somewhere lasting to put a surplus, and the money leaves the league instead of inflating the next auction.

Why not sell extra squad places? Your active roster stays at the league's size for everyone. Buying extra starters' places would let the richest clubs hoard players the rest of the league needs from the free-agent pool. Academy, IR and loan-out slots add depth and flexibility without taking players out of circulation for good.

Why the same price for the third IR slot and the fourth Academy slot? So the choice is about how you run your club, not which is the bargain: cover for an injury crisis, or room for another prospect. The fifth Academy slot costs half as much again because it's a luxury.

12. The Academy

A stash — commonly 3 slots, expandable to 5 with Club Facilities upgrades (§11) — for U21 players that you want to hold long-term without using an active roster spot. They can still be listed, traded, or loaned. A loan takes them off the academy for the spell; they come back there if they still qualify and a slot is free.

Who qualifies. A player qualifies if he's 21 or younger on 1 August, the start of the season. That age holds all season: a birthday in October doesn't change it. On the next 1 August, he's judged again.

When he ages out. Nothing moves him for you, and nothing is dropped. He can stay in your Academy, but while he does, you can't place a bid or move anyone else into the Academy. Promote him to your squad or drop him to clear it.

Why 1 August? So eligibility is settled for a whole season at once. A prospect you sign in September is still a prospect in May, and a birthday never forces a move mid-season.

Why an age cutoff rather than a games-played rule? Because the Academy is meant for prospects you're betting on, not for hiding useful squad players off the books. Age is the one criterion a manager can't manufacture.

13. Departures & the Retained List

When a rostered player leaves the Premier League — transfer abroad, relegation, retirement — you don't simply lose him. You get a choice, per departure (a loan works differently, see below):

• RELEASE — take compensation worth 60% of his market value. He enters the auction pool. You are then barred from bidding on his return auction.
• RETAIN — forfeit the compensation and keep his rights. He's off your roster and out of the competition, but he's still yours: if he ever returns to the Premier League he reverts to you with no auction. He joins your squad if there's room; if not, he's held (§2), and you can still decline him for nothing, which sends him to auction.

The rate is deliberately below full value. Paid in full, taking the cash would beat keeping the rights in almost every case, and the Retained List would be decoration. At 60% the trade is real: cash now against a claim on a player who might come back.

You get one week to choose. A departure spotted mid-season gives you until the deadline shown on the decision to pick Release or Retain — if you let it pass, he's released automatically at the compensation rate above, same as choosing Release yourself. (A departure caught during the offseason has no clock — Kickoff is the deadline instead, since there's no need to force a call before the commissioner's own action ends the grace period anyway.)

Retention itself uses scarce slots, commonly 3 — not an expiry clock.

Why it works this way. The original design paid you out automatically and deleted the player, which created a genuine exploit: a player paid out at kickoff can sign for a Premier League club before the window shuts weeks later. The ex-owner then held a windfall equal to his value and could spend it bidding on him at the return auction — a free option nobody else had. An established player at a relegated club is the single most likely profile for exactly that. Forcing the choice closes it: take the money and you're excluded from the buy-back, or keep the claim and take no money.

The slot limit rather than a timer is deliberate too. No one can know when a player might come back, so any expiry date would be arbitrary; scarcity instead makes holding one claim cost you the ability to hold another. Rights can be given up for nothing but never cashed in — otherwise "retain everything, cash out whatever doesn't return" would be strictly optimal.

Players who leave on loan

A player who leaves the Premier League on loan doesn't get a Release/Retain decision. He's still yours, and he goes on the Retained List under On Loan Abroad:

• He's off your squad and doesn't count toward your roster limit. If he was in your academy, he doesn't hold an academy place either.
• He doesn't use a retained slot, and there's no compensation.
• When he's back in the Premier League he rejoins your squad automatically, or your academy if he left from it and still qualifies. If your squad is full, he's held (§2) until you activate or drop him.
• You can trade him like any other retained right, or drop him for nothing. There's no severance, and when he returns he's a free agent.
• If a new season is under way and he hasn't come back or gone out on loan again, the loan is treated as a permanent move and you get the normal Release/Retain decision.

Why loans are different. The 60% rate and the slot limit assume nobody knows whether a departed player will come back. A loan has a return built in. Treating it as a departure made Release a forced sale of a player you'd have back within a year, into an auction you couldn't bid in, and made Retain spend a scarce slot on a near-certain claim. He doesn't take a squad place while he's away because you didn't choose to send him, so there's nothing to stockpile.

Loans are recognised from the Premier League's own player news ("has joined Juventus on loan"). Anything that doesn't clearly say loan gets the normal decision.

Retained rights are tradeable

A claim on a player outside the Premier League is a real dynasty asset — one manager rates the player, another just wants the slot — so it can be traded like anything else. Once he's back and held on your roster, he's traded as a player instead.

One thing deliberately doesn't move with it: the buy-back exclusion stays with whoever took the compensation. Otherwise you could release a player, trade the resulting claim to a friend, and bid on his return with the exclusion laundered off.

14. The Offseason Reset

Once every gameweek and cup tie is complete, the commissioner triggers the reset. A preflight check confirms nothing is unfinished, then:

1. Rosters lock immediately — no bids, trades or loans until the new season opens.
2. The season is archived — final standings, every matchup, cup winners, and each player's season stats and ranks are written to the permanent record.
3. Placement and cup prizes are paid into Club Balances. Finishing first pays €40m, scaling down to €20m for last — a flatter curve than it looks, because the bulk of league earnings now arrives monthly during the season (§11). Cup money is on top: €50m to the Champions Cup winner (€20m runner-up), €25m to the League Cup or Consolation Cup winner (€10m runner-up each).
4. Records reset, money doesn't. Wins, losses, draws and points go to zero. Club Balance carries over untouched.
5. A new season is generated — the season counter advances, and a fresh schedule plus all three cup brackets are created.

Departures are not part of the reset. Players leaving the Premier League — including everyone at a relegated club — are picked up continuously as it happens, and each one opens a release-or-retain decision for you to answer (§13). So relegation doesn't hit you in one lump at the reset; it arrives as decisions as the summer unfolds.

Your squad is not touched. The reset is about records and money — never your players.

Expansion Draft

A dynasty league can grow. In the offseason, after the reset and before Kickoff, the commissioner can open an expansion draft for up to 4 new clubs, and new managers join with the league's invite code.

1. Protect. Every existing club protects 8 players. Your academy and anyone you have out on loan are safe on top of that, so the 8 are only about your senior squad. If you don't choose, your 8 most valuable players are protected when the picks start.
2. Pick. The new clubs take turns in a random order. Each pick is either an unprotected player from an existing club or a free agent, until every new squad is full. No existing club loses more than 2 players, so you keep at least 20 of your 22 however the picks fall. The commissioner can make a pick for a club that's on the clock, so one absent manager can't hold the draft up.
3. Kick off. When the last squad is full, the season's fixtures and cups are rebuilt with the new clubs in them. Kickoff waits until the expansion draft is finished or cancelled.

A new club starts with the league's median Club Balance and pays nothing for the players it takes. The clubs that lose a player aren't paid for him either.

Why these numbers? They were tested on the real alpha squads and on simulated leagues of 6 to 12 clubs. Protecting 8 and taking up to 2 per club costs an existing club about 2% of its strength while putting the new club within reach of the league's middle. Protecting more barely helps the existing clubs and leaves the new one hopeless in a bigger league. Charging fees for the players taken would cost a new club around double a typical balance, so it would arrive broke. The median balance, rather than a fixed sum, gives it the same money its rivals have for the summer's new arrivals, which is where it closes the rest of the gap.

Redraft Leagues

Everything above describes a dynasty league, Gaffa's main format, where your squad carries over forever. When a league is created, the commissioner can choose Redraft instead: the format most fantasy players already know, where every season is its own competition.

Every season starts with a draft. At the end of a season the league's results go into its history, as in dynasty. Then every squad is cleared, every Club Balance goes back to the league's budget, and the league waits for its next draft. The draft order is shuffled at random, and the commissioner can still change it or schedule the draft from the lobby. A new manager can join while the league waits. When the draft finishes, the season's schedule and cups are built. The cups are seeded from last season's final table.

A redraft league plays the same game: the same positions, scoring, lineups, auto-subs, matchups, draw band and cups. You still trade, use IR, and sign free agents in open auctions from your Club Balance. What it leaves out is everything that only pays off over several seasons:

• No academy, loans or Club Facilities. They're bets on future seasons.
• No listings. You can't put your own players up for sale. Trade them with other clubs instead.
• No severance. Dropping a player is free, because swapping players in and out is how redraft is played.
• No retained list. A player who leaves the Premier League simply comes off your squad. His place is free, and there's no compensation and no decision to make.
• No Match Revenue or prizes. Your Club Balance is for signing free agents.
• Every free agent opens at €1m, whatever his market value. The recommended Club Balance is €100m.

Transfer Day. Instead of rolling auctions, every bid in a redraft league settles together on Transfer Day: 24 hours before the gameweek's first kickoff (in a congested week, halfway between the previous gameweek's last match and the next one's first). Bid openly all week; a later bid doesn't move the deadline. When Transfer Day passes, the highest bidder with room wins each player, the top-priced players first. After that, until his club kicks off, any free agent nobody bid on can be signed instantly for nothing with Sign Now. A player you drop is up for auction until the next Transfer Day, so he can't be dropped straight into a friend's squad.

Why Transfer Day? It's the waiver rhythm most fantasy players know: one moment a week when contested signings are decided, and quick pickups afterwards for the injury news that breaks on a Friday. Most free agents draw a single bid, so a rolling clock only made those signings wait.

Why money matters less here. A simulation of full redraft seasons on last season's real points found that, with a snake draft, the draft decides most of a season and the money spent on free agents changes very little: even doubling one club's budget moved it by a handful of points. So in redraft the budget is a fair way to settle who gets a player two clubs both want, the way it works on other fantasy platforms. It isn't the strategic resource it is in dynasty. A floor tied to market value would only make prices follow Transfermarkt instead of points, which is the wrong signal for a one-season league.

15. History

The permanent record book: final standings and podium for every past season, each cup's winner, and all-time records such as the highest single-gameweek score ever posted in the league.

16. Chat, Activity & Inbox

• Chat — a league-wide Lobby plus direct messages. Trade offers appear as system cards inside your DM thread with that manager, so negotiating and talking happen in one place.
• Activity — a filterable league-wide feed of every roster move: signings, drops, trades, departure compensation, sale proceeds, draft picks, prize payouts, plus any auction currently live.
• Inbox — your notifications: trade offers and outcomes, draft alerts, outbid warnings, auction results, loan proposals and settlements, gameweek summaries. Each deep-links to the relevant page.

Quick Glossary