Fantasy Premier League (FPL), the most popular fantasy game covering English football’s top division, is booming. Yet despite having more than 11million registered players globally in 2024-25, its rules and quirks can often feel mysterious.
That rings especially true when it comes to understanding the arcane process of the Premier League’s fixture scheduling, governing when teams and players have ultra-valuable opportunities to earn extra points in FPL.
Enter FPL guru Ben Crellin, whose total of 300 followers on social media site Twitter (now X) in 2010 has skyrocketed to more than a thousand times that today. As arguably one of the most vital and authoritative FPL content creators out there, he is a cornerstone of the game’s online community, relied upon by experts and beginners alike.
On June 23 this year, it was his turn to rely on the FPL community for support as he bared his soul in a candid, brave and deeply personal post, revealing publicly that he has level one autism, the mildest form of autism spectrum disorder (ASD). The response, he tells The Athletic, has been “wild”.
“I’m just being so open about everything,” says Crellin. “I’ve never spoken so much. My life is going to change in the coming months and years.”
It already has.
Crellin, 35, who is from Northumberland in the north-east of England and now works for website Fantasy Football Hub, got into FPL after seeing fellow students playing it on the computers at school — and won the first mini-league he entered.
Though he played competitive poker at college, joining money leagues, after he dropped out in 2011, he started taking FPL more seriously, finding it as fun and competitive as cards but without the pressure and stress.
“A lot of neurodiverse people like FPL; it just suits their needs,” says Crellin. “You don’t have to think about it all the time. You can do it once a week.
“Most of the time, it’s being calm and making decisions logically, then enjoying the weekend with its ups and downs.”
Wanting to give back to those helping to answer his FPL questions online, he took the next step in the 2015-16 season.
That’s when ‘chips’ were introduced in a big tweak to the game — power-ups that allow FPL managers rare chances to gain extra points in a handful of the 38 gameweeks that comprise a season. That can come via points from players not in your starting lineup (Bench Boost) or gaining Triple Captain points rather than the usual double-points weighting for a team’s designated skipper that week.
When matches had to be rescheduled, due to cup games taking precedence or bad weather, for example, the teams not playing would have ‘blank gameweeks’ (scoring zero points), and subsequent ‘double gameweeks’ where they would play these rescheduled games, with twice the opportunity to rack up high scores.
As the Premier League’s most popular companion game became more sophisticated and more open to the detail in deep-dive data, marginal gains over your friends, family, colleagues and competitors became crucial. So knowing when these blanks and doubles would come, and being able to plan for them by transferring players in or out accordingly to ensure you benefit as much as possible, became a unique and highly prized resource.
Crellin, who has finished in the game’s top 10,000 (in broad terms, better than 99.9 per cent of all FPL players, assuming 10 million players) for six years in a row, explains: “I just made a simple schedule spreadsheet for myself to figure out when the blank and double gameweeks were going to come.
“I shared it with someone, and it was a snowball effect from there. I found the niche. It fits my life, and it’s solved a lot of my problems. I’m no longer lonely on the internet.
“Having a big following on X, I’ve always got someone to talk to there. It’s helped my self-confidence and helped my mental health. It’s amazing, really.”
Crellin’s colour-coded schedules — based on meticulous research into probabilities — are informative, visually appealing… and phenomenally useful. Simply, nobody else is doing this kind of work.
Here’s are the fixtures for the 2025/26 @premierleague season: pic.twitter.com/9rFZOYy3o8
— Ben Crellin (@BenCrellin) June 18, 2025
He adds: “I’ve got to be on top of the double gameweeks. I’ve got to be awake when the announcements happen, but I don’t feel pressure.
“My job in the FPL community requires way less work than content creators who do YouTube videos and podcasts and articles, and spend a lot of time on that. I have a stress-free role: it’s just spreadsheets, and I enjoy making them.
“I do a transfer planner spreadsheet for Fantasy Football Hub subscribers — that’s quite a lot of work, especially in August and September — but really that’s three to four hours a day, maximum.”
FPL mirrors his preferred environment. It offers structure, predictability and interaction. He doesn’t necessarily have to talk, or show his face. But, on his own terms, Crellin decided to open up to the online community he had cultivated and revealed something profoundly personal to nearly a third of a million followers on X.
Here’s my updated Blank and Double GW spreadsheet pic.twitter.com/dW8Pomqi88
— Ben Crellin (@BenCrellin) April 18, 2025
Crellin took a significant step in publicly discussing his autism, a lifelong neurodivergence that impacts how people experience and interact with the world. Despite being anxious about negative replies, he was keen to help other people who might have autism.
And the reaction to his post — nearly a million views, almost 800 replies, around 200 direct messages — was overwhelmingly positive. His platform had become a space for openness, vulnerability and genuine connection.
He continues: “I can’t even think of any negative stuff. It’s crazy because, normally, one negative comment can outweigh a hundred positive comments, but I haven’t had any, really.
“I’ve got so many messages from people who either know they’re autistic and have said what I said has helped them feel better about themselves, or people who didn’t even consider they’re autistic and are now starting to think about it. I’ve always felt supported by the community. I felt very lucky to be treated the way I am. I don’t know why I get so much love. It was amazing. It couldn’t have gone better. The response I got was unexpected but perfect.”
I’ve had an emotionally overwhelming and potentially life-changing week, and I want to share what I’ve gone through.
I’m autistic. I’d never properly considered it before.
I’ve always felt different, but I had very little knowledge of what the autism spectrum entails.
Writing…
— Ben Crellin (@BenCrellin) June 23, 2025
And the future?
“I’m optimistic,” Crellin continues. “Since writing the post, I can socialise with anybody in situations which don’t cause me anxiety and it’s (now) going to be easier to make connections. I’ve had so many situations in the past few years where I had anxiety attacks (but) it’s settled now.
“I’ve got a very good platform to build on and it would feel good to use that platform to do some more good, and actually do something to raise awareness of autism.
“FPL is perfect for me. I don’t really have responsibilities. I don’t have stress. It’s kind of a miracle, and I just want it to last as long as possible.”
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(Top photos courtesy of Ben Crellin)
