New to the Premier League? Start here.

Twenty clubs. Thirty-eight matches each. One league table.

The Premier League is the top level of English soccer, and while the game on the field will look familiar, the way the competition works is very different from most major American sports.

There are no conferences. There are no divisions. And there are no playoffs to decide the champion.

Here are the essentials.

The Premier League consists of 20 clubs competing in a single league.

Every club plays every other club twice during the season — once at home and once away.

That gives each team 38 Premier League matches.

You'll often hear people refer to a fixture. That's simply the British term for a scheduled game.

This is probably the biggest difference for anyone coming from American sports.

There are no playoffs.

Instead, teams collect points throughout the entire 38-game season:

Win — 3 points
Draw — 1 point
Loss — 0 points

At the end of the season, the club with the most points is the Premier League champion.

Every weekend matters because there isn't a postseason waiting at the end to reset everything.

Drop points against a team near the bottom in September and those points could ultimately be the difference between winning and losing the title in May.

This is where goal difference becomes important.

Goal difference is simply:

Goals scored minus goals conceded.

If a club scores 70 goals during the season and concedes 40, its goal difference is +30.

When teams finish level on points, goal difference is one of the key tiebreakers used to separate them.

That's why you'll see something like +18 or -12 in the GD column of a Premier League table.

One of the reasons the Premier League table stays interesting is that finishing position matters for much more than deciding the champion.

Teams near the top are fighting to qualify for European competitions, including the UEFA Champions League.

Teams in the middle are fighting to finish as high as possible.

And at the bottom, clubs are fighting to stay in the Premier League.

Which brings us to one of the biggest differences between English soccer and American professional sports.

There is no guaranteed place in the Premier League.

Finish in the bottom three, and your club is relegated to the Championship — the second level of English soccer — for the following season.

Three clubs from the Championship then earn promotion to take their places.

So every year, three teams leave the Premier League and three new ones arrive.

There is no draft reward for finishing last.

There is a fight for survival.

And when a club's Premier League future can come down to the final few minutes of the final game of the season, the bottom of the table can be every bit as dramatic as the top.

We'll go much deeper into promotion and relegation later in Premier League 101.

This is another part of English soccer that can initially look strange.

A Premier League club can compete in several competitions during the same season.

Alongside their 38 Premier League matches, clubs can also play in competitions such as the FA Cup, League Cup and — if they've qualified — European competitions such as the Champions League.

Those aren't part of the Premier League standings.

They're separate competitions running alongside the league season.

We'll explain each of those separately because once you understand them, the soccer calendar starts making a lot more sense.

This is another part of English soccer that can initially look strange.

A Premier League club can compete in several competitions during the same season.