Fantasy Football: Time for your free hit?

Another weekend brings another glorious selection of Premier League fixtures, with gameweek 13 kicking off tomorrow at 15:00 as Manchester City host Leeds United. 

This also means the Insurance Times Fantasy Football League is back, with managers having until 13:30 tomorrow to lock in their team choices for this week. 

Transfers are increasingly important for the busy December fixture schedule, with games coming thick and fast between now and 2026. Many teams are playing every three days or so now, with squads still in all competitions having up to eight games across the month of December.

This brings up the Fantasy Football manager’s worst fear – squad rotation. Premier League managers will be looking to ensure their squads make it through the frantic festive period without injuries and will have to manage workload for their players to allow for proper recovery, where they can. 

With that in mind, this gameweek could be a good opportunity to play your free hit chip – allowing you to take advantage of as many transfers as you like for a single gameweek, with your squad then reverting to its original form in the subsequent week. 

Squads at this part of this season are often in need of a refresh, but managers should also be aware they will all receive five free transfers in gameweek 16 as many Premier League stars head off to represent their countries in the Africa Cup of Nations (Afcon).

Manchester United will arguably be the most affected by this tournament, with almost its entire right side – Bryan Mbeumo, Amad Diallo and Noussair Mazraoui – heading off to host country Morocco. 

Sunderland will also lose seven players to the tournament, including Arthur Masuaku and Noah Sadiki. 

However, popular players like Brighton’s Carlos Baleba, Crystal Palace’s Ismaila Sarr will also drop out of the game. 

Table update

The previous gameweek saw the mysterious Steve Fisher, manager of the Caerbannog Bunnies, move into the top spot with 797 points. Insurance Times humbly requests that Fisher show himself, as our journalistic powers of identification – searching his name on LinkedIn – have failed. 

Fisher’s gameweek 12 tally of 59 points put him just one place above Aviva’s Archie Taylor-Salmon – manager of A Work of Arteta – who sits in second on 796 total points.

Further down the top 10, Insurance Times senior reporter Harry McNeil – otherwise known as The McNeil Deal, although he typed it with caps lock on – is making a determined showing with 773 points, placing him in sixth. 

And, in eighth, we have Lumara Insurance’s Mark Greig, who slipped from fourth last gameweek with a total of 768 points. 

Just below the top 10, which starts at 757 points, there are a whole host of players looking to break in. Is this the gameweek to do it?