Chelsea's Joao Pedro injury news breaks through fantasy football first

Chelsea forward Joao Pedro missed the 2-0 defeat to Tottenham with what head coach Xabi Alonso called "fluid on his knee". The first clue, though, came from a free online game that millions of people play, not from the club.

That game is Fantasy Premier League, or FPL. Players pick an imaginary squad of real Premier League footballers and earn points when those players score, assist or keep a clean sheet. Each week, a player also picks a captain, whose points count double. BBC Sport reports that more than 11 million people play, according to official figures.

Before the deadline for that week's changes, FPL watchers noticed a run of managers selling Joao Pedro. Accounts that trackers believe belong to Chelsea staff, a player and a relative of a player were among those who transferred him out or dropped him from their teams. One manager, known as FPL Karim, said he worked it out after spotting an account believed to belong to a player's relative sell Joao Pedro and bring in Nicolas Jackson.

The confirmation came too late for those managers. It emerged only after the deadline had passed, by which point 1.7 million managers had named Joao Pedro as their captain. Joao Pedro had also been pictured in training in the week before the Tottenham game.

Asked about the leak, Alonso said: "I am not into the fantasy team thing, so I didn't know that." He said Joao Pedro had been ruled out the day before the match. Last month, the Spaniard had said he "prefer[s] not to give more information than needed" when it comes to team news.

It is not the first time this has happened. The best-known case came in February 2021, when Jack Grealish was absent from Aston Villa's match against Leicester City. Leicester manager Brendan Rodgers admitted he had heard about the absence beforehand. Pep Guardiola, then managing Manchester City, called the leaking of team news "unethical and unprofessional" at the time.

The sums involved are not small. Joao Pedro was priced at £7.9 million in FPL when he was ruled out, according to the Premier League. Anyone who sold him early avoided a points hit from his absence, and anyone who held on had to find a replacement quickly.

For the casual player, the rule is simpler than the drama. FPL's own rules say that a substitute on the bench automatically replaces a starter who does not play in a gameweek, which is the game's name for a round of matches. That safety net is there for injuries, and it works whether or not you knew the news in advance.

The bigger question is what a club owes its players and its rivals when a fantasy game can be read like a team sheet. Alonso's answer on Monday was that he had not heard, and that he would rather say less. The people who play the game will keep watching the transfers as closely as the football.