During the 22/23 EPL season, I took on the seemingly impossible task of trying to win a 12 team league with NO draft picks. Only free agents. The whole purpose of this exercise was to try and show the importance of Waiver Wire and Free Agent pickups, staying active all season, and thinking "outside" of the box. In this three part segment, I will break down how I went about this experiment, the end results, and of course all the relevant advice that could help you in the upcoming Fantrax season. Click here for details on how you can access our 23/24 Draft Kit.
Free Agents FC Part 1 Recap
Mid-Season Management and Results
The mid-season is tough for managers in all leagues. Sometimes you get the classic "Fantrax fatigue." There are constant injuries, rotation concerns, mid-week games, players in poor form, navigating the waiver wire with little FAB, or just straight up bad luck in your head-t0-head matchups.
By Gameweek 18, Free Agents FC sat in 2nd place with 11 wins, 6 losses and just 1 win off the top spot. Early season pickups and going for upside were the key to a very good start, but this is where things started to get tricky. The waiver wire was starting to dwindle in quality, and I knew one injury to a star such as Almiron could derail my whole season. Between Gameweeks 19-30, Free Agents FC had a 6-6 record and dropped to 4th in the table but was still just 1 win off the top spot. I started realizing during this stretch that the biggest issue was the FPts difference between my team and the other managers in the top 4. I was about 200 FPts behind the other managers, which is a lot more than it may seem. I knew the way to try and make this up was through the upcoming double and blank gameweeks.
Throughout this midseason stretch I tried adopting different strategies. I think the biggest one was playing week to week trying to win each matchup one week at a time. I tried matching clean sheets, with defender/goalie pickups, as well as stacking players that had good matchups week to week. Over this stretch, the likes of Shaw and Wan-Bissaka were huge for FAFC, as well as Hamed Traore, who was an under the radar signing. With 4 starts in February and scores ranging from 9.5-17, he added the extra spark the midfield was missing. Unfortunately, he suffered an injury, and Miguel Almiron followed suit in mid-March. Two key players gone within the same month due to injury. Casemiro decided to pile on the misery by getting suspended for a month with a red card. What had once seemed like a set-and-forget midfield trio were now all back on the waiver wire or taking up spots on the bench. During this stretch of March - April, I looked to capitalize on the double gameweek that occurred, and also decided to change up the way I structured my starting XI. With 3 midfielders gone who had offered great upside and a very solid floor, I decided that the way forward was upside. Each week I was hoping to start three forwards with Willian and Mbeumo being near set-and-forget and the likes of Martial, Vardy, Tete, and Jimenez all getting the odd runout.
Fighting for a Top 3 Finish
The main goal that started to come to mind after the midseason was to finish in the top 3 of the league. At the end of Gameweek 32, FAFC were 3rd place and just 1 win off 1st place still, but it was a tough end to the season. Four losses in a row then saw FAFC down to 6th place at the end of Gameweek 36, but in such a close league there were only 2 wins separating 1st place from 6th. The four losses on the bounce unfortunately ended any realistic title hopes, but I think it is important to take a deeper dive into these 4 gameweeks to see if it was just bad luck, or poor strategies that backfired.
Gameweek 33 - 110.75 - 54.25 Loss
This matchup was vs. the league leader at the time and, well, as you can see, stacking Chelsea defenders was not the way to go. I think this one has to come down to bad luck -- the 34 points on the bench wouldn't have changed anything, and there is very little you can do when Tavernier and Haaland combine for more points than your entire XI. Given the decent form of Mbeumo and Rice's consistency, it probably would have been better to have started them over inconsistent pickups of Elyounoussi and Kovacic. Kepa was an easy set-and-forget due to his high volume of saves, but with Chelsea's horrible form, I should have looked elsewhere for a streamable defender.
Gameweek 34 - 151.5 - 92.5 Loss
The double gameweek in Gameweek 34 was a bit tough to navigate. All the good Brighton, City, United, and Liverpool assets were rostered. So, at this point I knew I had to go for upside. Going up against a team with in-form players such as Trippier, Diaz, and literally any Brighton asset was always going to be a tough match. I went for upside in players that could easily boom-or-bust, with the likes of Christie, Aurier, and Schade all proving to do the latter. I was blinded by the return of Kante who had back-to-back double digit outings only to disappoint with 4 points here. The big takeaway here for me was that I should have traded out players without any double gameweeks. I'm looking specifically at the likes of Kulusevski, who could have potentially garnered a decent DGW asset from Newcastle or Brighton.
Gameweek 35 - 85.75 - 104.25 Loss
Willian and Kante vs. the world. FAFC was really struggling to field players who could make the difference in high scoring matchups. Again, I went with double Chelsea defence who disappointed again. There were some decent ghost point performances from Rice, Ward, and Armstrong, but it's tough to win matchups on just ghost points. Heading into the final matchup, I made a call that dropping Keane wasn't worth it given the form of Brighton, and the fact no real good players were available. The obvious lesson here is no matter how sure you are a player will start, ALWAYS have a decent backup or bench that player for the week. It ended up being a close matchup that could have been swayed, or at least made significantly closer, by going with an upside defender in an earlier matchup such as Toti or Vina.
Gameweek 36 - 110.5 - 109.25 Loss
A 1.25 point loss vs. the rest of the TDS writers was heartbreaking to say the least. It was a back and forth contest, but the blame is fully on me and my confidence in Chelsea. Mendy was a surprise starter over Kepa, but given his lack of playtime and Forest's desperation to get points, the writing was on the wall for Chelsea to concede here with little to no counting stats for their defenders/keeper. Streaming another defender would have gotten the job done. A major disadvantage here was also going against 3 Brighton double gameweekers, who all scored at least 11 points. That was part of the thinking in stacking Chelsea defenders in what (on paper) seemed like an easy game, but in reality wasn't. The logic behind the stacking of United and Chelsea defenders made sense given the double gameweek disadvantage, but a big lesson from these 4 weeks is to go form over name recognition. Literally any other goalie (Johnstone was 2nd choice to Mendy here for me) would have secured the W.
Gameweeks 37 and 38
Two wins in the last 2 gameweeks would have secured 4th place for Free Agents FC. A win in gameweek 37 got us off to a good start, largely thanks to the double gameweek. Gameweek 38 is, in my opinion, just straight luck. No one has any idea who is going to start, which teams will show up, and how the clubs with literally nothing to play for will do. Even the clubs with something to play for are unpredictable, as factors such as nerves and potential player fatigue start setting in. For gameweek 38, you need to be actively looking for lineup leaks, and ready exactly at lineup announcement to make pickups. Unfortunately, my schedule didn't allow for that, and despite some upside plays that panned out such as Faes and Sanchez, the season ended off with a loss.
The final standings can be seen below. FAFC finished in 6th place with a 19-18 record, and 3510.25 FPts for. An average of nearly 95 points per gameweek is very respectable when you consider the experiment, the quality of the league, and the players that were considered "stars" on this squad. Having more wins than losses is also a huge success. While the goal was top 3, a top 5 finish is more than respectable with a few better decisions potentially leading to a title charge.
Second Half of the Season Trades
Between Gameweeks 18-38, I made a total of 5 trades, and I will look at the one that I feel was season-defining and truly cost us any hope of a title.
Trade - Gameweek 21:
Free Agents FC Receives:
Dejan Kulusevski (M, TOT)
Dominic Calvert-Lewin (F, EVE)
Free Agents FC Trades Away:
Karou Mitoma (M, BHA)
Morgan Gibbs-White (M, NOT)
Samuel Edozie (F, SOU)
Trade Analysis:
In hindsight, this trade is truly highway robbery against Free Agents FC. The thinking here was trading away two players who had decent runs of form in Mitoma and Gibbs-White for one Round1/2 level upside player in Kulusevski and a (supposedly) almost fully fit DCL. I personally didn't believe the Mitoma hype was there to stay, and Gibbs-White had tough end-of-season fixtures. I thought he would struggle to produce any meaningful gameweeks. Edozie was a non-factor here. After this trade, Kulusevski only had 5 double-digit outings across the final 17 gameweeks, and Calvert-Lewin was dropped two gameweeks later after an injury and zero double digit outings. Gibbs-White had 8 double digit outings and Mitoma produced 12 double digit outings. No further stat dives needed here to see how badly this trade affected the rest of the season.
Looking back, I think the smarter take would have been throwing name value out of the window and sticking with 2 upside midfielders in a team with little upside, and where the waiver wire was really only good for defensive midfielders, the odd streamer, and defenders. Trades like this (despite the significant value hit) may be okay when you roster other superstars, such as teams with Bruno and Martinelli. But on a team like FAFC, upside is clearly the way to go. Even if Mitoma and Gibbs-White flopped as I predicted and produced 5 double-digit outings each, they each proved to have a floor and ceiling similar to Kulusevski. So, I shouldn't have thrown my eggs all into one basket. Team form was key here too with Brighton clearly superior to Spurs.
That's it for PART 2 of the FAFC story; stay tuned for PART 3!
Check out our 23/24 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!
For all the latest from The Draft Society , follow @Draft_Society on Twitter!
And for more in-depth and exclusive resources, become a member of The Inner Circle.
Have you heard about our revolutionary new Draft Fantasy Football app? We call it The Fantasy ToolKit. Expand to read more!
Each gameweek, The Fantasy Toolkit will bring you:
Recommended waiver adds & drops
Optimal lineup suggestions
Matchup projections
Trade calculator
All in one customized and personalised package
It's included in our Ultimate Pass and Season Pass plans and will give you a massive leg up on your league-mates. Check out a full demonstration video HERE for more info!
For all the latest from The Draft Society, follow @Draft_Society on Twitter!
And for more in-depth and exclusive resources, become a member of The Inner Circle.
Comments