Rules

The format

Every Gameweek, each manager is drawn against one other manager in their division. Whoever scores more Fantasy Premier League points that Gameweek takes the win; level scores are a draw. Overall rank is not the competition — the fixture is.

TOP DOG Premier League

20 managers · three relegation places · no promotion places.

TOP DOG CHAMPIONSHIP

15 managers · three promotion places · no relegation places. An odd number, so the league’s AVERAGE opponent is drawn every week (see below).

How a tie is scored

• Win 3, draw 1, loss 0.
• A Gameweek score is net of transfer cost. Points spent on extra transfers are deducted before the head-to-head result is decided.
• Scoring is Fantasy Premier League’s own. Top Dog does not adjust, recompute or override it.

How the table is ordered

The Top Dog table starts with head-to-head league points. Managers level there pass through the canonical Premier League-style competition tiebreak below. A final position is not classified as shared before that sequence has been applied.

Promotion and relegation

• TOP DOG Premier League: the managers finishing 18th, 19th and 20th in the official table are relegated from it.
• TOP DOG CHAMPIONSHIP: the managers finishing 1st, 2nd and 3rd in the official table are promoted from it.
• Both outcomes are decided by the Top Dog competition table after the canonical tiebreak has been applied. Fantasy Premier League remains the scoring authority; Top Dog applies the competition sequence to place managers who are level.
• A promoted manager’s next-season entry fee is deducted from their winnings.

A final table position is a statement about a table. Division membership for the following season also turns on entry being paid before the deadline, so the honest reading of a relegation place is “not in next season’s TOP DOG Premier League on merit”, never a guarantee of where a manager will play.

Fines

• A fine attaches to the final position after the canonical competition tiebreak has been applied. A manager is not assigned a shared-position fine before that chain runs.
• Three amounts are ruled and no more; the site will not extrapolate a fourth.

The competition tiebreak

Top Dog uses the real Premier League-style final-position sequence. It is applied before final positions affecting promotion, relegation, fines or winnings are classified.

1. League points
2. Score difference (points for minus points against)
3. Points for
4. Points earned in the head-to-head fixtures between the tied managers, 3/1/0
5. Away scores in those fixtures — not applied: Fantasy Premier League fixtures have no home or away side, so there is nothing to read.
6. A deciding play-off if a consequential final position still cannot be resolved.

The AVERAGE opponent

A division with an odd number of managers cannot pair everyone in a Gameweek, so Fantasy Premier League fills the spare fixture with AVERAGE — the average score across the whole game that week.

• It is a real fixture and the result counts. A win against AVERAGE is three points.
• It is not a member and cannot be promoted or relegated, but it appears in the standings as a ranked row, so the TOP DOG CHAMPIONSHIP’s fifteen managers carry positions 1–16 with one number absent. That is Fantasy Premier League’s published rank, transcribed.
• It rotates: the manager who draws it changes from Gameweek to Gameweek.

Gameweek timing

• A Gameweek deadline is 90 minutes before its first fixture.
• Provisional bonus points are included from the 20th minute of a match.
• A Gameweek is treated as final the following day at 09:00 UK time, and only once Fantasy Premier League’s own event state agrees. All fixtures being finished never makes a Gameweek final on its own: the lock is what admits post-match review of bonus, BPS, defensive contribution and corrections.
• A Gameweek is provisional until then. This site labels every Gameweek with its state and does not describe a provisional tie as a result.

Entry and winnings

A promoted manager’s next-season entry fee is deducted from their winnings. The entry-fee amount, payment deadline, prize amounts and distribution terms are not recorded in the public rules source, so this page does not state them.

Not yet published

Each of these is a fair question. None has a recorded answer yet, and this page does not guess.

• How and when fines are collected, and what happens if one goes unpaid.
• Prize amounts, and whether a Top 4 finish earns anything beyond its place.
• The entry-fee amount, payment deadline and prize-distribution terms.
• Replacements and withdrawals: a manager leaving mid-season and their fixtures.
• The terms of the payment condition on division membership.
• Whether the site should show deadlines in UK time or the reader’s own.

Change history

1.1 — 4 September 2026

Removed unrecorded entry fees, payment and prize-distribution terms; clarified that Top Dog applies its canonical Premier League-style sequence before classifying final positions for promotion, relegation, fines or winnings.

1.0 — 3 September 2026

First compilation from the recorded decisions: table order (25 August 2026), promotion, relegation and fines (29 August 2026), the fines-only tiebreak (30 August 2026, narrowed 1 September 2026), and the official table as the authority for promotion and relegation (1 September 2026).