Last Man Standing
spreadsheet

What is in it

• ✓A pick grid for 40 players over 15 rounds
• ✓Team dropdowns, so nobody invents a club
• ✓A teams-used count per player
• ✓A duplicate-pick check that flags itself red
• ✓Eliminated players fade out automatically
• ✓A rules sheet you can print and pin up

Three things to decide first

The rules of Last Man Standing are simple and written up in full here. These three are not rules but decisions, they are the ones no spreadsheet can make for you, and they cause every argument we have ever heard about.

1. 1

   What a missed pick means

   Somebody will forget. Decide before round one whether that is elimination or the loss of a life, say it out loud, and then hold to it. Changing this halfway through is the single quickest way to fall out with people.

2. 2

   When picks lock

   Set a deadline before the first kick-off of the round. Arguments in a Last Man Standing competition are almost never about bad luck - they are about a pick that arrived after somebody already knew a score.

3. 3

   What happens if everyone goes out at once

   It happens more often than people expect, usually in a round where the favourites all draw. Either share the prize between everyone knocked out in that round, or replay it with the same players. Pick one now, not then.

Where a spreadsheet gives up

Honestly, for the first few rounds it is fine. The sheet above will see you through a small competition without much trouble, and plenty of people never need anything else.

What gets heavy is everything around it. Chasing fifteen people for a pick on a Friday afternoon. Checking every row against the weekend's results on a Sunday night. Re-typing the standings and hoping nobody spots a mistake, because once they do they stop trusting the table. That is usually round five, and it is usually when an office competition quietly stops.

Questions

Is the template free?

Yes, and there is no email address to hand over. Download it, change it, share it with whoever you like - we are not asking for anything in return.

Does it work in Google Sheets?

Yes. Upload the file to Google Drive and open it with Google Sheets. The dropdowns, the teams-used count and the duplicate-pick check all survive the conversion.

Does it work out who is eliminated?

No, and nothing that runs in a spreadsheet really can - it would need a live results feed. You mark players out yourself using the status column, and the sheet fades the row when you do. Counting teams used and catching duplicate picks are automatic, because those are the parts a spreadsheet is genuinely good at.

Which teams are in it?

The 2026-27 Premier League clubs, taken from the same list our own competitions use. The Teams sheet is editable, so you can swap in any league, a World Cup group stage, or whatever you are actually running.