1.7 million FPL managers captained João Pedro, and the people who knew he was out were playing the same game

Xabi Alonso had no idea. Asked after Chelsea’s 2-0 home defeat by Tottenham on Saturday whether he knew João Pedro’s injury had leaked through Fantasy Premier League, Chelsea’s head coach told reporters: “I am not into the fantasy team thing, so I didn’t know that.”

Plenty of other people were. According to BBC Sport, FPL trackers had spotted accounts they believe belong to Chelsea staff, a player and a player’s relative transferring João Pedro out or benching him before the gameweek deadline. The club only confirmed he was missing after that deadline had passed. By then, 1.7 million managers had made him their captain.

The people who knew were playing too

That number is the story. João Pedro is Chelsea’s top scorer with five Premier League goals, and the Premier League’s own FPL site says he was owned by 68 per cent of teams, second only to one other player in the game. He was the obvious captain. On Tuesday Alonso confirmed a thigh injury that will keep him out for “a few weeks”, so the damage now runs well beyond one weekend.

Nobody at Chelsea broke a rule. There isn’t one. The BBC reports that the Premier League treats these leaks as a matter for the clubs, and there is nothing stopping players, staff or their families from entering the same game as everyone else. That is fine until one of them knows something the other few million don’t.

Villa went through this in 2021

The template is more than five years old. In February 2021 Jack Grealish missed Aston Villa’s 2-1 home defeat by Leicester after several Villa players and staff were seen dropping him from their FPL teams before the deadline. The Times reported that Villa then banned their players from the game. Pep Guardiola, asked about it, called leaking team news “incredibly unethical and unprofessional”, then admitted you cannot control it.

He was right about the second part. Chelsea have tightened security at their training ground and reminded players to be careful who they talk to, and team news still got out this year through a social media post by Marc Cucurella’s barber, of all people. A club can tell its own staff what to do. It can’t do much about a player’s brother, cousin or best mate from school.

The fix sits with the league, not the clubs

Here is my problem with “it’s a club matter”. The Premier League runs Fantasy Premier League. It sets the rules and decides what a game played by more than 11 million people shows in public. If club-linked accounts can be found and read before a deadline, that is a design choice, and one the league could revisit rather than passing the problem to 20 clubs who cannot police families anyway.

Managers are making it worse without meaning to. Alonso has said he prefers “not to give more information than needed” at press conferences, and he is far from alone. The less a coach gives away before a game, the more a relative’s transfer before the deadline is worth. Some top FPL players, the BBC notes, keep these finds to small circles to protect their own rank.

Most managers will shrug and move on. But a game built on public leaderboards shouldn’t leave its biggest decisions to whoever follows the right accounts. If the league wants FPL to stay a test of judgement, it will probably have to shut that door itself.

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