GUIDE / THE WEEKLY COUNT
How fantasy football scoring works
From eleven marks to a final result, including the points where counting by hand always goes wrong.
The score: the mark plus what the player did
Every player starts from the mark the editors gave them, usually between 4 and 8. Bonuses are added and penalties subtracted: the result is the player's score, and it is the only number that enters the team total.
The difference between mark and score matters more than it seems, because two rules use different numbers. The team total uses scores; the defence modifier uses raw marks. A defender who scores adds three points to the total but nothing to the defensive average.
A player who did not play does not get zero: they get "no mark", which is a different thing. A zero drops the total by six points compared with an average performance; no mark instead means the player is replaced from the bench, in the order agreed before kick-off.
Bonuses and penalties, one by one
The common convention gives +3 for a goal, +1 for an assist, −0.5 for a yellow card, −1 for a red, +3 for a saved penalty, −3 for a missed one, −2 for an own goal and −1 for every goal the keeper concedes.
None of these numbers is compulsory. Many leagues drop the assist because it is the most disputed call of all; others increase the value of a defender's goal. All are legitimate variants: what matters is agreeing them in advance, not on Sunday evening with the results in front of you.
The yellow card is the item most often forgotten, because half a point feels irrelevant. Across eleven players, three cards make a point and a half — and a point and a half, near a threshold, is exactly the distance between a goal and no goal.
A conceded goal counts once per goal, not once in total. A keeper on 5 who concedes three ends on 2, not 4: it is the heaviest penalty in the game and the most underrated when choosing a line-up.
From points to goals: threshold and step
The sum of scores converts into goals using two numbers: the threshold, meaning how many points the first goal costs, and the step, meaning how many points each further goal costs. The common convention is 66 for the first goal and 6 for each one after: 66 is 1-0, 72 is 2-0, 78 is 3-0.
Below the threshold nothing is scored and nothing goes negative: a team on 40 points loses 0-1, not −4. It is the only asymmetry in the system, and the one that makes bad weeks less brutal than they look.
The practical consequence is that four points can be worth nothing and half a point can decide a match. A team on 67 and a team on 71 both score one: four points wasted in between. A team on 71.5 and a team on 72 are half a point and a whole goal apart. That is why the right question at the end of a round is not "how many points did I get" but "how many do I need for the next goal".
Some leagues use different values — 65 and 5, or 60 and 4 — to get higher-scoring results and fewer draws. Changing those two numbers changes a season far more than any bonus does.
The defence modifier
The defence modifier rewards a defence that played well, and is calculated on the average of the keeper's mark and the three highest defender marks. Marks count here, not scores.
In the common variant the average gives +1 from 6, +3 from 6.5, +4 from 7, +6 from 7.5 and +8 from 8 upwards; below 6 it gives nothing and takes nothing. It is a reward, not a punishment.
The rule people discover too late is a different one: it needs at least three defenders with a mark, plus the keeper. Playing a back three and losing one to injury means no modifier at all, and it is usually noticed once the counting is done.
The mistakes people make counting by hand
The first is summing marks instead of scores, or the other way round, for half the team. It happens when counting in blocks: defenders with their bonuses first, then midfielders "who did nothing anyway", and a yellow card goes missing in between.
The second is treating no mark as zero, which moves the total by six or seven points in one go — almost always in the direction that loses.
The third is misremembering the threshold. "Sixty-five" is a common answer and it is wrong in the standard convention: it is sixty-six, and stopping at 65.5 means no goal.
The fourth is arithmetic and has no cure: half points. Summing eleven decimal numbers in your head while talking goes wrong roughly one time in three. That is why this page exists.
If your league has its own rules
The calculator above starts from the common convention, but every value can be changed: bonuses, penalties, threshold and step. Changes stay on your device, so next week you do not have to type them again.
There is no sign-up and nothing is stored on our servers: you enter the marks, from wherever you prefer, and they stay in your browser until you close the page. We keep no third-party player lists, marks or valuations, because that data belongs to whoever produces it.