“When is he back?” How SquadCheck reads return dates
Last updated 19 September 2026
For almost every absence, the first thing anyone wants to know is when the player will be back. The honest answer is usually that nobody outside the club knows — and the official feed says so. SquadCheck’s rule is simple: show a return date only when one has been stated, and say plainly when it has not.
What the official feed actually says
Absences come from the Premier League’s official Fantasy Premier League feed. Each unavailable player carries a short news line written by the league’s data team. On 14 September 2026 we counted all of them: of 658 registered players, 189 had a news line — 102 about transfers and loans, and 87 about availability. The 87 used a handful of fixed wordings:
| Wording in the feed | Notes | Share |
|---|---|---|
| “Expected back 10 Oct” | 21 | 24% |
| “Suspended until 10 Oct” | 4 | 5% |
| “Unknown return date” | 44 | 51% |
| “75% chance of playing” and other percentages | 16 | 18% |
| Other | 2 | 2% |
A date was stated for 25 of the 87 — about one absence in four. For half of them, the feed says outright that it does not know.
Three kinds of answer
Every return line on SquadCheck is one of three kinds, and the page always says which:
- A stated date. The feed gave one — “Expected back” or “Suspended until”. SquadCheck shows it as the league’s date and never overrides it.
- A chance of playing. The feed gave a percentage instead of a date. The player page shows the percentage as given, next to the feed’s own status for him — usually doubtful.
- Unknown. The feed says the date is unknown, or says nothing about it. SquadCheck shows no date.
The feed writes dates without a year (“10 Oct”). SquadCheck picks the year that puts the date between 60 days in the past and about ten months ahead, so a note written in December about a January return lands in the right year.
Why there are no estimated dates
It would be easy to fill the gaps with an estimate: a hamstring injury usually takes a few weeks, so add a few weeks to the injury date. The trouble is that the feed’s wording is not specific enough to support it. “Hamstring injury” covers everything from a tight muscle that costs one match to a tendon injury that ends a season.
SquadCheck will estimate only when the injury is described precisely enough. For a hamstring injury with a stated grade, it uses the average lay-off that the UEFA Elite Club Injury Study (Ekstrand and colleagues) reports for that grade, and shows the spread and the source beside the date, so an estimate can never be mistaken for the club’s word.
In practice the official feed does not state grades. None of the 87 notes on 14 September did; they read like “Hamstring injury” or “Knee injury”. An ungraded note does not borrow a grade’s average; it stays unknown. No date is better than a precise-looking guess.
When an absence becomes history
Each absence on SquadCheck is attached to the club’s next match. Once that match kicks off, the record stops describing the present. The player page then says there is nothing on file for the next match, and shows the old note as history — for example, “Last on file: thigh injury, for the 12 September match, which has since been played.”
The rule exists because of a real mistake. Earlier this season one player’s page kept showing a “75% chance of playing” note after the feed had already cleared him, because the old record carried no date and read as current. Every record is now tied to a fixture, and the fixture decides whether it is news or history.
Transfers
When an injured player changes clubs, the feed starts listing him at his new club. SquadCheck closes the absence at the old club at that point, so a club is never charged for a player it has sold. If he has not yet played for his new club, he is listed there as Impact not rated — see how Power Loss is calculated.
How to read a return line
- A date means the league’s data team published one. Clubs revise these, so treat it as the current plan rather than a promise.
- A percentage is a matchday call. It usually changes after training and the pre-match press conference.
- “Unknown” is information too: the club has not said. It is the most common answer, and the honest one.
Every team’s current list is on its team page, and the whole league is on the injury hub.