3 Types of Patience-Testing Players and How Long to Hold Them in EPL Draft (24/25)

In the EPL Draft fantasy game, it's much easier to preach patience than practice it. With limited roster spaces, promising talent on the waiver wire, and even potential new transfers incoming, how long should you hold on to the players you drafted? I think it depends on what type of player you're dealing with. Below, I'll break down the 3 types of patience testing players in the EPL Draft game and how long you should hold each type before dropping them. To read the full article, you'll need to pick up our 24/25 Draft Kit. Check out our Pricing Plans to get access today!

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3 Types of Patience-Testing Players in EPL Draft

Looking back on the 23/24 season, Joe is here to outline the three types of Fantrax EPL patience-testing players... and how long you should hold these frustrating Draft PL players in the 24/25 campaign.

Meager Minutes

• Overview: You drafted this player knowing the rotation risk was there, but so is the upside!

• Examples: Jeremy Doku, Julian Alvarez, Leandro Trossard, Diogo Jota

• How Long to Hold: All Season (or until you trade them)

This category of patience-testing players is unfortunately the most lucrative and the most frustrating. It is also a side-effect of the vast amounts of money we’ve seen pour into the Premier League. Perfectly demonstrated in teams like City and Arsenal, this category is the unfortunate home to players with heaps of proven talent who simply can’t find a consistent spot in the XI. These players will burn a hole in your bench as they fail to make the starting lineup week after week.

As painful as it may be to see teams pay 40-100m for “players” who simply don’t… play, it’s a reality we must face. The overview states it plainly: you drafted these players knowing that this was going to be your reality week in and week out. You did this to yourself. I wish someone had reminded me of that every time I was tempted to draft a City asset. I simply don't have the required patience to deal with this type of player. This leads us to our larger question: why does anyone hold these types of players all season when open roster spots are so valuable? Let's look at Jeremy Doku's end-of-season numbers from the 23/24 season.

That's right... 5 starts in the final 14 games. Naturally, your eye is drawn to the massive scores of 38.5, 23, and 21.5. This is exactly why it's impossible to drop a player like this. Plus, cast your inward eye back to the beginning of the season and I'll remind you that Doku looked like a league-winner, as he was undropped from the team in Grealish's absence. Then, as it always does, Pep Roulette returned with a vengeance. But what's undeniable is that this player has gameweek-winning potential. If you can't manage to wrap your head around the very frustrating fact that he'll be riding your bench for at least 1/3 of the season, this type of player just isn't for you.

Leandro Trossard is another stellar example of this type of player. You could be excused if you (as I did) dropped Trossard in the 23/24 season. He had started 7 matches through January and, if you can even fathom it now, Arsenal were having trouble putting the ball in the back of the net. Trossard was managing a lousy 6 fantasy points per game and showed no signs of breaking into the starting XI. Well, you know where this is headed. Do I need to finish this paragraph? As someone who dropped him in December, I certainly wish the story had ended there. Instead, he finished the season with almost 10 PPG on the way to completely usurping Gabriel Martinelli and starting 8 of the final 10 matches of the season... on another fantasy manager's team. These "Meager Minutes" players are incredibly frustrating and require a great deal of talent and roster flexibility. But if you want diamonds (or even a beef bourguignon for that matter), you're gonna have to wait.

In the Mud

• Overview: We've seen this player deliver fantasy returns in the past. Right now, they're just... not.

• Examples: Raheem Sterling, Marcus Rashford, Dominik Szoboszlai, Pablo Sarabia, Ben Chilwell

• How Long to Hold: Until the situation becomes clear.

This category is home to players who have demonstrated not only on-field real life talent, but also a knack for scoring fantasy points. They’ve also been an undeniably valuable asset to their club. Currently, however, they find themselves struggling to impress the manager or they’re playing in a system that doesn’t make use of their talents. More often than not, when teams fail to utilize their best players, it’s due to the naiveté of a new manager or a bad run of form on the player’s part. Eventually, whether said player plays himself back into form (and the manager’s good graces) or the manager in question gets sacked or changes up tactics, we see these types of players revert to the mean.

In other words, it's in your best interests to hold these players for as long as you can, because a return to form means that fantasy points will follow. This is precisely what happened with Crystal Palace assets. Below, you'll see a chart that also appeared in my Crystal Palace 23/24 Fantasy Flashback that illustrates exactly what we're referring to. Now, in the article I was using it to demonstrate just how poor most Palace assets were under Roy Hodgson, it also serves to demonstrate this point. Olise was performing incredibly well, but every other Palace asset felt as though Roy's antiquated, conservative system was holding them back.

As soon as Glasner took over, Eze, Andersen, and Mateta started performing more like we knew they could or should. Should you have dropped Mateta, Anderson, and almost every other Palace player in EPL Draft long before Roy got the sack? Absolutely. Should you have dropped Eze? Never. These types of patience -testing players require some introspection and level-headedness. Eze is a world-class talent on a lower-table team. He's the type who will outlast a bad manager, who will garner the support of fans over the manager himself, and who represents the future of the team much more than a losing manager does. These players... you hold.

Let's contrast this with the last movie in the Space Jam trilogy, which we saw unfold before our very eyes. You remember the premise, right? The best NBA stars in the league were humming along doing their thing when aliens from outer space arrived and zapped their basketball playing talent right out of them with mini ray guns. It seems like the only plausible explanation for what happened to Dominik Szoboszlai in 23/24, because otherwise we have to grapple with the fact that we've just witnessed one of the worst, strangest, and most-prolonged runs of absolutely miserable form that we've ever seen. He went from scoring 13.3 fantasy points per game on track to becoming one of the best-performing MIDs in the game to a horrendous 5.9 PPG from November to May. It's a ridiculous stat that hardly seems real.

Here's a player in a horrendous run of form whose fantasy scores fall off a cliff and who eventually gets dropped from the XI entirely. The difference between Szobo and Eze is... everything. Jurgen Klopp is possibly Liverpool's greatest ever manager in his last season in charge. Liverpool were winning. And they had other capable bodies who could fill the void that Szobo's drop-off left gaping. There was no new manager inbound, no sign of life in Dom's performances, and a lack of starts, which translated into a wasted roster spot on your fantasy team. It just wasn't going to be his year and that did become apparent. The questions is whether you, as a fantasy manager, were able to trade him out or even just drop him before it became glaringly obvious. This category of players is a tightrope. But if you look at the actual examples of these types of players above (Sterling, Rashford, Szobo, Chilwell, Sarabia), none of them actually turned it around. If there are no signs of a turnaround, no signs of a change in leadership or formation, and no change in player form, there comes a time when you need to part with these types of players. All that we can do is hope for a better next season, which is the exact spot we're in with Szoboszlai, Rashford, and Sterling this season.

The Unpolished Gem

• Overview: Players with undoubted potential, but several factors would have to go their way for it to be realized and unleashed.

• Examples: Duran, Diallo, Adingra, Madueke, Franca, Beto

• How Long to Hold: 4-6 gameweeks

The final category is the most hit-or-miss, boom-or-bust of all of them. These players could be coined as "the next big thing." If all of the moving parts were to fall perfectly into place, these players could have league-winning upside. The problem, of course, becomes evident when you look at the examples I've provided above. None of these players bar two (Adingra and Diallo) would have actually contributed to you winning your league in 23/24 had you drafted them. Importantly, though, Adingra would have been the only one that rewarded the draft capital you spent on him within a reasonable time frame. By September 16, he was starting every match for Brighton and was averaging over 10 PPS into December when he got injured. Diallo and Madueke both ended the season starting games for their clubs and contributing to your fantasy team, but no one in their right mind held them from draft day.

The point with Unpolished Gems, especially as it relates to drafting them, is that polishing them is a slow process. There's nothing wrong with taking a high-upside punt late in drafts, but don't let that deter you from dropping them just as quickly as you drafted them. The vast majority of players who fall into this category don't pan out. Just because the Draft Community is clamoring about certain names in the preseason and calling them "lottery tickets" does not mean that you should be coveting those types of players and prioritizing them over proven Premier League talent.

Allow yourself a few of these types during the draft, but don't get carried away. And if you're dipping into the pot of newly-promoted players, don't double-dip. In other words, don't take a number of Unpolished Gems and a number of promoted players. That is a recipe for a roster with a lot of untapped potential and not a lot of fantasy points.

Check out our 24/25 Draft Kit for all the pre-season information you could ever need. We've got a Live Draft Aide, Draft Rankings, Team Previews, Cheat Sheets, Strategy Articles, Draft 101, plus so much more. Dominate your draft!

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