Players often produce their best hauls in home matches, so wouldn't it be handy if Fantasy Premier League managers could guarantee as many home fixtures for their starting XI as possible?
The 2025/26 fixture list has revealed a way that you can do just that.
There are some team pairings, such as Aston Villa and Burnley, who alternate home and away over the whole season.
If managers own a player from each club in their Fantasy squad, then in each Gameweek they can select the one who is at home, putting them in their starting XI, while benching the one who has the away match.
2025/26 rotation pairings
| Team 1 | Team 2 |
|---|---|
| Arsenal | Spurs |
| Aston Villa | Burnley |
| Brentford | Brighton |
| Chelsea | Fulham |
| Crystal Palace | Wolves |
| Liverpool | Everton |
| Man City | Man Utd |
| Newcastle | Sunderland |
| Nott'm Forest | Bournemouth |
| West Ham | Leeds |
This strategy is mainly used by managers in Fantasy when swapping between two cut-price players, either goalkeepers or defenders, who cost less than £5.0m.
You should therefore seek out pairings who offer the best potential for clean sheets.
As shown in the table above, Nottingham Forest and AFC Bournemouth rotate home and away over the 2025/26 campaign, and the statistics from last season in the table below highlight that both clubs are more likely to keep a clean sheet when playing in a home match.
Forest kept eight of their 13 clean sheets in such contests, while Bournemouth delivered seven of their nine shutouts at home.
By rotating their defenders such as Marcos Senesi and Nikola Milenkovic (pictured above) and always selecting the one who played at home, you would have collected a combined 15 clean sheets last season. That's one more than Liverpool, who claimed a league-high 14 clean sheets on their way to the title.
Last season's clean sheets
| Club | Home | Away | Total |
| Liverpool | 6 | 8 | 14 |
|---|---|---|---|
| Newcastle | 8 | 5 | 13 |
| Nott'm Forest | 8 | 5 | 13 |
| Arsenal | 7 | 6 | 13 |
| Man City | 5 | 8 | 13 |
| Everton | 6 | 6 | 12 |
| Chelsea | 6 | 5 | 11 |
| Crystal Palace | 4 | 7 | 11 |
| Man Utd | 5 | 5 | 10 |
| Bournemouth | 7 | 2 | 9 |
| Aston Villa | 4 | 5 | 9 |
| Brentford | 1 | 7 | 8 |
| Wolves | 5 | 3 | 8 |
| Brighton | 3 | 5 | 8 |
| West Ham | 2 | 5 | 7 |
| Spurs | 2 | 4 | 6 |
| Fulham | 2 | 3 | 5 |
However, a further analysis of the numbers above shows that looking for home/away rotation isn't necessarily the best strategy.
Of the 17 clubs who were part of the Premier League last season and will be there again in 2025/26, only SIX produced more clean sheets in home matches than they did on their travels.
Nine of them were actually more reliable for shutouts in AWAY matches.
Essentially, then, managers were rewarded more often in 2024/25 when they focused on the difficulty of the fixture, and the strength of the opposition attack, rather than whether the match was being played at home or away.
With that in mind, this week The Scout will be highlighting clubs and players who can be paired together effectively for the season ahead based on the difficulty of their schedules.
Next: FPL rotation pairings: Spurs and Wolves
