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.
Four Major Free Agents Takeaways for Fantrax Managers
The Importance of The Early Draft Picks
While I would consider myself a good Fantrax manager, the lack of superstars on a team really hurts your week to week ceiling. You would need to truly hit every free agent pickup that week and have at least a few outperform their potential to be able to consistently challenge for the title throughout the season. Although FAFC was quite close, and a few different decisions might have landed us among the top 3, the roster still lacked out and out firepower.
Getting your first few rounds of draft picks down is pretty crucial. If you have 2-3 superstars you know can get 25 or more on their day you are already in good shape. Starting out the draft you need to think purely firepower. That doesn't always mean getting in the best available forward. As we have seen in recent years the likes of Trent, Trippier, Robertson, and Reece/Chilwell when fit all compete with the top players on a PPS basis. The key in these early rounds is not going for any "safe floor" players, instead you are going for players with the highest ceiling you can think of, but also durability is key. The likes of Trippier, Kane, Bruno, Salah, Trent, and Saka all showed their durability playing at least 37 or 38 games this season. If you can get a first round star to even play similar to their potential but start 35+ games you are in great shape.
The same has to be said about rounds 2-3. Here you can go for a gamble on say a City or Liverpool type asset one of those you are unsure about their starts, but know when they play they can win you a week...think along the likes of: Foden, Grealish, Diaz, Nunez, Jota, Mahrez. If you do that then your other top 3 round pick must be a more sure starter that can produce week in week out. To summarize two safe starters with high ceilings, and one risky starter with a very high ceiling will easily put you in a position to win the league. This experiment has proved that along said just a few superstars, if you are active enough on the wire you can compete week in week out.
The Waiver Wire with Little to No FAB
This is always a tough one, as you can pretty much write off getting any big new signings, or will need ton hope the signing you are eyeing really slips under the radar. The major key here is thinking outside the box, and staying 1 step ahead of the rest of your league. By this I mean picking up a player a week or two early. For example - say Crystal Palace are about to enter a stretch of 7 games vs. teams in the bottom half of the table but first have to go against Arsenal and Manchester United. The strategy here would be to pickup and hold the Palace asset you are eyeing before the Arsenal game to beat the managers with FAB, and who aren't thinking that far to that player. A little detail like this can really help maximize your waiver wire strategy with no FAB. A domino effect takes place here...after the United game everyone may be submitting claims for Palace defenders, their keeper, maybe even a midfielder, but since you already roster one of their assets you can look elsewhere on the wire, maybe a dropped Brighton defender will go under the radar, or maybe Garner had back to back solid performances and you can sneakily get him as your #1 claim. This example here is exactly why you have to think outside the box when you have little to no FAB, the domino effect is one managers tend to ignore.
One more piece of advice for the wire with little to no FAB, is to not be afraid to make "big drops". A lot of managers will fear they may not get back the player they drop due to their lack of FAB. Maybe you need to drop Casemiro because he's out for the next 6 games with an injury. Obviously holding an 8ish PPM player on your bench isn't really worth it, but unless you pick him back up earlier than planned you may miss out. In my opinion this is okay, navigating the wire, looking for upside assets, in form players, and those with solid schedules can allow you to easily replace those kinds of points without having to waste a roster spot, especially when we head into rotation and blank gameweek season. It gets a bit trickier when you get into the "superstar" range, but I think we can leave that topic for another article.
How Long to Stick with a FA Pickup
These were usually the toughest decisions I had this season. When you pickup a free agent, they end up getting you a solid outing that week whether it be 7+ ghost points, an attacking return or a 15+ score with a clean sheet you obviously want to keep them and see how they play out. The tough decision comes when they end up putting up less than 5 points in 2/3 of the next gameweeks. You know the potential is there, but your belief in them could be costing your gameweeks. From this experiment I learned a big thing to look for is why are they not delivering points in certain weeks vs. others. It could be factors such as - a blowout loss by their team, they were hooked early in the game, or got a lot of "negative" stats (cards, dispossessions, or GAO).
When it comes to free agents it's important to dive a little deeper. For example if a midfielder got you 16 with an assist the first week you picked them up, then ended up getting 3.5 (but got a yellow, and 6 dispossessions), 7.5 the next week, and then 4 with a yellow the following week, they might be worth holding. The way I started to look at it was This player got me: 8, 8.5,7.5, and 6 ghost points across the four gameweeks. While that isn't incredible they have shown they can get a return, but also have shown they are susceptible to yellows and dispossessions. Usually I would tend to hold said player for a few more weeks unless they end up losing their spot in the XI, or are entering a horrible run of fixtures. It would usually take back to back ghost point outings of less than 5.5 for me to drop a player, unless they faced a bottom three team the next week. I found that line worked rather well with my chopping and churning of assets. There is always the chance they end up getting 15 the week you drop them, but their downward performances in back to back weeks gave me a lack of confidence when I knew I could now take a gamble on another free agent who may be slowly trending the other way. Ghost points are key when it comes to judging FA pickups, look beyond the goals, assists, yellows, dispossessions, and GAO when analyzing your FA assets.
Stacking Can be Detrimental
Yes, I said it.....stacking isn't always the way to go, but it can lead to some major upside. When you have a team of players that lack form, consistency, or that have simply just flopped stacking becomes a lot more risky. Usually stacking is best done when surrounded by a few superstars who can "bail you out" when things go wrong...especially with defensive stacks. This can happen to any and all Fantrax managers whose early draft picks end up flopping, by choosing the way of stacking your hopes of the gameweek basically live and die with the stack. I like to think of stacking as an upside play especially with regards to defensive stack. If you have the likes of Almiron, Willian, and Mbeumo as your top three assets, and decide to stack 3-4 Chelsea defenders and they end up conceding 1 or maybe more then you will have a very tough time cracking 60 that week unless those three assets all hit. It is very different when you roster three big names such as Kane, Grealish, and Martinelli, with potentially the likes of Shaw and Iwobi complimenting them. At that point I can only see stacking defensively as an upside, if a clean sheet hits with the odd return you should not only win your gameweek but rack up the extra fantasy points to help you in the standings. If it ends up failing, then you know you have a solid core of 5-7 players that can bail you out and give you a fighting chance to win said gameweek. I have truly seen the highs and lows of stacking over the years I have played Fantrax, and I think managing Free Agents FC allowed me to figure out how to truly take advantage of that strategy, making it a pure upside play.
If you plan to be one of those stackers next season week in week out, then you have to make sure whether it be through the draft or early season trades you have a solid core of 5-7 near set and forget assets to compliment the "stack" if it ends up failing miserably. Using the strategy this way can only lead to pure upside and a very high overall fpts total. I would recommend rotating a defensive stack once you establish this core - use the draft and trades early on to build your midfield and forward line and then look to use the waiver wire or lower grade trades to stack based on form and fixtures for a set amount of weeks.
Next Season's Experiment
After the somewhat success of this season, I have decided to go again another year with a few more stipulations to make it even more difficult, and see if FAFC can end up getting into the top 3.
2023-2024 Experiment Rules:
12 team league (Active managers only - selected via Twitter)
No draft picks for Free Agents FC
Free Agents FC will pick up it's first set of players AFTER the first waiver run (No entering waivers the first run after the draft)
NO TRADES for Free Agents FC - trades allowed for other teams
0 FAB for Free Agents FC, all other teams will start with 100 FAB - Each team will also be given another 100 FAB on January 1, 2024 (Free Agents FC excluded)
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