Squad Management - Football
Once you've opened your first packs, you’re ready to start building your squad!
There are three parts of the squad-building process for the GameDay Squad Football platform:
The Field - The Field is built from all your best players and consists of all the players that will be actively scoring for your team.
Emergencies - Where all your back up selections are placed. If a Field player does not play, the score from your emergency player (bound to position) will have their score count toward your overall squads score.
Reserves - This is where you’ll find all your non-active players. You can have an unlimited amount of Reserve players.
There is no limit to player movement in GameDay Squad Football. This means that you can bring as many players as you like from your Reserves onto The Field anytime outside of the players lockout.
Fixed Lockout
GameDay Squad Football operates under a fixed lockout system, meaning that all player selections for your squad are locked at the start of the first match of the round. Once this lockout time hits, no further changes can be made to your team, regardless of when your players are scheduled to play later in the round.
Let’s break it down with an example: If the first match of the round kicks off at 8:00 PM on Friday, you must have your entire squad selected and finalised before 8:00 PM Friday. Even if your players are playing in matches on Saturday or Sunday, you won’t be able to adjust your lineup or make any substitutions after that Friday 8:00 PM deadline.
This is different from a "rolling lockout" system (which some other fantasy platforms use), where individual players lock out only when their specific match begins. Instead, the fixed lockout approach simplifies squad management but requires more preparation, coaches must monitor team news and injury updates before the round begins to ensure their selections are locked in correctly.
In short, once the first ball is kicked to start the round, your team is locked for the entire weekend, so plan ahead and make your selections wisely!
Rules to consider
It is important to note that if a user swaps a player after, in OR out of their active team the player who is swapped in or out will score ZERO points for the round. This is to stop people taking advantage of any lock out exploits and to keep the game as fair as possible for all users. This rule applies even if the auto lockout is not active at the time. As per the rules of competitions for the GameDay Squads Football game, coaches are required to have fielded a complete Squad in order to be eligible for competitions and scoring. Coaches will score a 0 for any game within a round if they do not have a fully completed squad regardless of the squad's salary cap at the time of lockout. All position slots must be filled.
It is important to note that inactive players do NOT score points; even if an inactive player has played in a round/game. Players become active when they are added to offical team playing lists, there may be some lag time to process the player from inactive to active status on the GameDay Squad platform. If you would like to check if a player is listed as active or inactive, check our "Player Pool" tab in each sport page.
Please note: If new European football leagues are added to the GameDay Squad platform in the future, player cards will not be transferable across leagues in the event of a real-world transfer.
For example, if GameDay Squad introduces Spanish Football and Erling Haaland transfers from Manchester City to Barcelona, his existing English Football card will no longer be eligible for play. To use Haaland in the Spanish league, you would need to pack a new Spanish Football version of his card.
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