Fantrax EPL Draft: Round-by-Round Strategies to Win Your Draft

The draft may be one of the best parts of the EPL season, especially if you come out of it thinking your team is set up nicely to challenge for the title. The draft could also leave you stressing out about your first few games of the season, or more. This article will give you all the tips and tricks you will need to successfully plan your draft. The more prep that you do, the better off you'll be. One of the best draft tactics is to come up with a round by round strategy. This article will help walk you through the rounds or group of rounds so you can better plan out what players to target based on position, upside, team, floor, and other factors. Don't forget to also take a look at our 25/26 Draft Kit and Pricing Plans.

Check out our 25/26 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. Dominate your draft!

How to Approach the Rounds

Each round of the draft will bring with it some tough decisions, but the hope is that this will help you break down the best move during each round. While it may vary based on your pick number, some of the rounds will include similar advice. The early few rounds should set you up to have little stress in the last 5+ rounds, where you can punt freely.

Round 1

Round 1 picks will largely come down to where you are in the draft. Ryan and I put together a first round rundown, where we discussed which players we think will go in each slot, and why you should take them or maybe look elsewhere. When it comes to round 1 the best way to go about it is to take a player that offers as much upside as possible, but also as much safety as possible. You don't want to punt on an asset that may be a rotation risk, or one with a long list of injuries. If you have one of the first 5 picks, you will simply take one of: Salah, Bruno, Saka, Palmer, or Haaland. Don't overcomplicate it, these are elite assets that can win you the matchup any given gameweek.

In12 team leagues. picks 6-12 get a bit more complicated. You are looking at assets moving to new teams (Cunha), assets on teams that may finish in the bottom half of the table (Eze/Semenyo/Bowen), and even a new signing (Wirtz). If you have a pick in the latter half of the first round, you should pick the asset that you think can provide that strong balance of safety + upside. Looking at the player pool, I am strongly recommending going for a forward in this round. While I don't believe in Semenyo as a first rounder, if you can get yourself Mbeumo, Cunha, or Bowen I would consider this a strong start to the draft despite not having a top 5 overall pick. Where you make up for this is in the next 2 rounds with whom you pair up your first rounder.

Round 2

Round 2 is where more question marks arise. They could easily be elite players who contend for a top 7 overall spot, but also could only start 20 games, or finish with a PPS of just 9 or 10. I am still in the camp that you should avoid taking a defender in the first 2 rounds, so you will be looking at a forward or midfielder here. I would not recommend going MID-MID in these first two rounds. FWD-FWD, or grabbing one forward and one mid from the first two rounds is the route to take.

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