Underdog EPL Best Ball Strategy: How to Draft The Premier Pup

Everything you need for Underdog EPL best ball in 2026/27, including Premier Pup and False Nine rules, scoring, roster construction, player targets and the best stacks to draft.

Underdog has launched EPL best ball for the 2026/27 Premier League season, headlined by The Premier Pup, and it plays nothing like FPL or a managed Fantrax league. You draft an 18-player roster, you never touch it again, and Underdog starts your top scorers at each position every Gameweek. No transfers, no captaincy, no lineups. The whole game is the draft.

That's good news even if you don't live and breathe the Premier League. Get a few rules right and you can compete, so here's how I'm approaching it.

Underdog EPL Best Ball Rankings 2026/27: The Premier Pup & The False Nine

Underdog Premier Pup Best Ball Strategy (Quick Tips)

• Target players with a floor and a ceiling. Easy, right? The best picks bank volume every week and still spike, which in this scoring means creators and attacking full-backs, not pure goal-scorers or pure defenders.
• Know the scoring. The peripheral actions decide this game, not just goals and assists.
• Stack a strong defense: a keeper plus his defenders for correlated clean sheets.
• Prioritize nailed-on 90-minute players over bigger names who rotate.
• Build for the run-in, because the tournament is decided in Gameweeks 35-38.

How Underdog's Premier Pup Works

You draft in a 10-person room, 18 rounds, on a 30-second clock. Each Gameweek Underdog auto-starts your best nine: one goalkeeper, two defenders, two midfielders, two forwards and two flex spots that can be any outfielder. The other nine sit on your bench for the weeks your starters blank. You do nothing after the draft closes.

It's not a straight season-long points race, and that part matters. The Premier Pup runs in four rounds: a long qualifier over Gameweeks 1-26, then the quarterfinals across 27-30, the semifinals across 31-34, and the championship over the final four weeks, 35-38. You have to finish top two in your 10-person pod to survive the qualifier, then keep advancing through the shrinking rounds to reach the 300-seat final. You're drafting a team that has to be good early to survive and still firing in May.

The False Nine is the same game at a smaller buy-in and field, so everything here applies to both. Think of it as the lower-stakes way in.

Underdog Premier Pup Scoring

Goals are worth eight and assists four, but the peripheral scoring is where the draft value actually moves. Here's the full board:

Floor and Ceiling: Target the Players Who Do Both

The instinct in best ball is to chase ceiling, since your blank weeks get benched anyway. I wanted to know whether that actually holds here, so I ran my projections through a best-ball simulation and gave the goal-scorers full credit for dropping every dud week. It still came back in favor of the creators and attacking full-backs.

A striker's big week is a goal plus a couple of shots. A creator's big week is that same goal or assist stacked on top of the crosses, chances created and passes he was already banking, so he reaches the same ceiling far more often and almost never hands you a zero. In the numbers, an elite set-piece midfielder matched a top striker's best weeks while carrying a much higher floor. You aren't trading upside for safety by drafting him. You're getting both.

So the real split isn't floor versus ceiling, it's three profiles. Creators and attacking full-backs have a floor and a ceiling, and they're your core. The pure goal-scorer is ceiling only, which is why he belongs in your flex and the later rounds where his downside is genuinely free, and where he earns his keep is the short one-of-four semifinal and the 300-seat final, when a 30-point week steals a tight block that a steady 13 can't. The pure deep-lying defender is floor only, cheap and steady but capped, so he's filler, not a building block.

The advancement format reinforces the core. The early rounds are long, a 26-week qualifier and four-week blocks after, so you're accumulating rather than praying for one spike. Over that many weeks the player who produces something every game beats the one who posts one big score and three blanks. Layer the pure goals on top of that base, don't build on them.

That ties straight to the calendar. The money is won in the championship weeks of late May, so you want players who'll still be fit, motivated and playing heavy minutes in the run-in: title-race sides, teams chasing Europe, clubs scrapping to survive. Health and minutes are part of that reliability. A boom-or-bust scorer who gets rotated or nurses a knock through the final block is exactly the profile that sinks a roster. Of course, this would be easy if we could project every transfer or injury.

Optimal Roster Construction

You draft 18 and start nine every week: a keeper, two defenders, two midfielders, two forwards and two flex. Because the flex spots take any outfielder, and because defenders and midfielders carry the highest floors in this scoring, I'd tilt the roster heavily toward them. A build in the range of two goalkeepers, five or six defenders, five or six midfielders and four or five forwards is my starting point.

The logic: defenders and mids fill your two defenders, two midfielders and usually both flex spots, so you want real depth there, and their volume floors mean the weekly optimizer almost always has a strong option to start. Forwards are the goal variance, so you take fewer and make them count, the elite scorers and genuine high-volume shooters, not the fourth striker on a mid-table side. Two keepers is plenty: you only start one, but you want a backup for the weeks your No. 1 draws a brutal matchup or doesn't produce.

Don't over-stack a single club. Three or four players from one team is a healthy ceiling, enough to correlate without sinking your whole roster if that team has a bad month.

Goalkeeper and Defense: Where the Value Hides

Keepers on the best teams are genuinely worth it here. A win is 5, a clean sheet is 5 and saves are 2 each, so a No. 1 on a side that wins a lot and defends well is a weekly double-digit threat. Take one from a top defense and correlate him with your defenders. That matters even more in the final rounds, where I'd rather bank on a keeper favored to win than hope a weaker option reaches five or six saves.

The full-back is the position I'd hammer. Crosses, passes, the odd assist and clean-sheet points all stack in one player, and the attacking full-backs on possession sides do all of that at once. In a format that pays for volume, they're the best value on the board.

Value and Set-Piece Plays

The same late-round profile that carried in the World Pup works here: high-pass, high-volume players whose points don't depend on scoring. Deep-lying midfielders and set-piece takers on dominant teams rack up passes, crosses and tackles every week no matter the result, which gives you a floor most rosters can't manufacture from those slots.

Pair that with nailed-on starters on weaker sides, the players who log 90 every week because their club has no one better. They won't win you the week, but they plug your lineup with real minutes while you chase goals elsewhere.

Rotation and the Run-In

Rotation is the quiet killer in a season-long best ball. The biggest clubs rest starters and shuffle for cup and European midweeks, and a star who sits four times over a four-week playoff block can sink an otherwise strong roster. Weigh minutes security heavily, especially for the players you expect to carry you in the championship weeks. When two players are close, take the one you trust to start every week over the bigger name who rotates.

Big Fields and Multi-Entry

The Premier Pup is a large-field tournament with a top-heavy payout and up to 150 entries allowed, so if you're firing multiple lineups, treat it like a portfolio. Get your core right, then differentiate around the edges: vary your stacks and your late-round dart throws across entries rather than copy-pasting the same team. In a field this size, the roster that wins looks a little different from everyone else's.

Best Players for Underdog EPL Best Ball

I've grouped my top targets by why this format rewards them, not just by overall rank, because the scoring is the whole point.

Crossing full-backs. The signature edge of this game. Pedro Porro is the poster child, top 10 overall and almost none of it goals, just a Tottenham full-back (potentially wing-back) piling up crosses and passes every week. Antonee Robinson (Fulham), Milos Kerkez (Liverpool) and Neco Williams (Nottingham Forest) fit the same mold, and cheaper crossers like Adrien Truffert, Ian Maatsen and Lewis Hall hand you the archetype in the later rounds.

Ball-players in deep positions. Pass volume is free points, and nobody banks more than Virgil van Dijk, who projects for over 2,000 completed passes before he heads in a single set piece. Rodri (Manchester City), or Elliot Anderson if Rodri leaves, Marc Guehi and Moises Caicedo (Chelsea) do the same from the base of midfield and the back line. These are weekly floor machines, albeit the least exciting picks.

Set-piece creators. The players who mix chances created, crosses and passes with real goal threat and take the dead balls. Bruno Fernandes (my overall No. 1), Dominik Szoboszlai, Morgan Gibbs-White and Pascal Gross all pile up peripheral points on top of their end product, which is the best of both worlds.

Volume shooters. When you do reach for goals, take the players who shoot constantly so the shot points cushion the dry spells. Erling Haaland is the obvious one, with Benjamin Sesko, Ollie Watkins and Igor Thiago behind him.

Keepers worth it.David Raya and Gianluigi Donnarumma lead because wins and clean sheets pay, and both project for 15-plus shutouts behind elite defenses. Alisson and Emiliano Martinez are the next tier.

Best EPL Best Ball Stacks

Correlate where the points cluster. A few builds I like:

• Manchester City clean sheet:Gianluigi Donnarumma plus Nico O'Reilly or Matheus Nunes. When City shut the door, your keeper cashes the win, the clean sheet and the saves while your defender banks the same clean sheet, all off one result. That correlation is massive in the four-week rounds.
• Arsenal spine:David Raya, Jurrien Timber and Bukayo Saka. A top keeper, a passing right-back and the set-piece focal point, correlated through Arsenal clean sheets and Saka's creation.
• Liverpool left side:Milos Kerkez and Dominik Szoboszlai, the crosser and the creator, with Virgil van Dijk or Alisson layered in for the clean-sheet points.
• Manchester United attack:Bruno Fernandes with Matheus Cunha or Benjamin Sesko. Bruno's assists and dead balls pair with the shots and goals of the man on the end of them.
• Title-contender team stack: three or four Liverpool or Manchester City pieces across positions, so a big week for the club is a big week for your roster. Cap it around four so one bad month doesn't sink you.

Build on players who do both, lock in correlated stacks, respect the run-in, and don't punt the positions that quietly pay. That's the Premier Pup.