My interpretation of the new rules for the 2023/24 season

The game isn’t out yet but the new rules have been published, with a huge amount of change. I thought it would be useful to jot down some of the key changes and what my thoughts are around these initially. Here’s the full rules – https://www.thesun.co.uk/administration/23035895/dream-team-2023-24-game-rules/ 

Key changes

• Only 1 team can now be entered
  My thoughts: I like this change to a certain extent. It’s going to make things harder but I focus on one team anyway with my blog and often compare myself with people who run 10 teams and then quote their best team as their highest score of the season. This has always been a frustration of mine. Having said that, if your one team suffers from really bad luck, some could quickly lose interest. I also don’t know how this rule will work with entering teams into different mini leagues. I’m not sure if we will be able to create 10 different teams still and only enter 1 into the leaderboard and the rest can be entered into mini league or if we will simply only have the option to create 1 team.

• Seven formations are now available
  My thoughts: Not overly keen on this change as it creates a lot of options and more complexity when making decisions. The formations are:
  
  4-4-2
  4-3-3
  4-5-1
  3-4-3
  3-5-2
  5-4-1
  5-3-2

• We must nominate a weekly captain
  My thoughts: not a huge fan of this change as it brings more luck into the equation. For example, we could have a game week when Kane, Haaland and Salah all have a single Premier League easy fixture. It will be a lottery in terms of which one picks the points up and names may as well be drawn from a hat for captaincy. Some will get lucky, others won’t.

• More variables for player scoring (stats provided by OPTA)
  My thoughts: although complicated, I think this improves the fairness of how points are picked up by players as it’s more performance based. Here’s the breakdown of how points will be collected (new points in italics):
  
  ALL PLAYERS
  Goal Scored +5 
  Shot on target +1 
  Big Chance Created +1 
  Tackles +1 per 2 tackles 
  Appearance (Up to 60 minutes) +1 
  Appearance (60 minutes or more) +1 
  Assist +2 
  Yellow Card -1 
  Red Card -3 
  Penalty Miss -3 
  Own Goal -2 
  
  GOALKEEPERS ONLY 
  Saves +1 per 2 saves 
  Penalty Save +3 
  
  GOALKEEPERS & DEFENDERS 
  Clean sheet (minimum 60min played) +5 
  2 Goals Conceded -1 
  Each Goal Conceded Over 2 Goals -1

• Players can earn bonus points, which looks like it makes star man redundant 
  My thoughts: I’m not a huge fan of this one as I think the new metrics above is quite a lot of change already. Adding another layer only makes things more complicated, however we will have to see how it pans out. It looks like players can pick up extra points in a tiered system based on another set of sub stats:
  
  Tier 1 0-9 (scores 0 points)
  Tier 2 10-14 (scores 1 point)
  Tier 3 15-19 (scores 3 points)
  Tier 4 20+ (scores 5 points)
  
  The stats that feed into this system are:
  Successful dribbles +1 
  Crosses +1 
  Offsides -1 
  Pass completion rate (70-80%) +1 
  Pass completion rate (80-90%) +2 
  Pass completion rate (90%+) +3 
  Interceptions +1 
  Block +1 
  Goal outside of the area +1 
  Foul won +1 
  Foul conceded -1 
  Error leading to goal -2
  
  I personally think it’s going to be too difficult to try and judge a player selection on all of the above stats so we will just need to take pot luck on it.

• Game week now starts 1 hour before the first match of the week
  My thoughts: I’m not sure this will affect things much as we can usually see line ups for the first fixture of the game week anyway. I guess it helps with not having to rush transfers for price rises on Thursday evenings though.

• Gameweek 1 commences at 7pm on 11 August 2023, an hour before the first match of the Premier League season kicks off at 8pm
  My thoughts: I don’t like this as it may not allow us to see the line up for that game before locking in our starting 11.

• We now get 2 transfers per game week, 1 transfer can be rolled over if not used but we can only have a maximum of 4 transfers in the bank at any given time.
  My thoughts: I like this change, should make the game much more proactive and I like the idea of rolling unused transfers over. I often play a patient game so this should help me.

• Three “boosters” will be available across the season. I’ll give my thoughts on each one below:
  
  Park The Bus – basically doubles the points of your defenders once activated. I’m not a massive fan of this one as it will be a lottery like the captain role. It will also mean to maximise this we would need to change to a back 5, which would be disruptive to the team and could just backfire anyway. It’s a lot to think about considering the other changes that have been implemented.
  
  12th Man – we can pick a 12th player of any value or position for 1 game week. Another one that’s a lottery really, could pick Salah for an easy Premier League fixture and European fixture if he’s not already in your team. He might then flop and someone else might take a punt on him another week and he hits a huge score. 
  
  Max captain – whoever scores highest in your team that week gets their points doubled. Again pot luck in terms of how well this goes but I’ll be focusing on a busy week of fixtures in the early stages of the Champions League. 
  
  All in all, these will make the game more interesting, but luck will play a big part in them.

What’s stayed the same:

• Unlimited players from each club can be selected
• European and cup games still score points
• We still have a budget of 50m for 11 players
• Variable pricing remains the same with players rising or falling by up to 0.3m per game week.

That covers most of the key changes that I’ve managed to lift from the rules. All in all, I’m in favour of the changes. I certainly like the revamp of the scoring system and the flexibility with transfers. Hopefully, it will make the game more interesting across the season.