Fantasy Secrets: Making the most of transfers

Transfers are one of those areas where you need not neccessarily spend a lot of time, but with a little bit of focus and strategy, you can make a big difference to the outcome of your season.

In our fantasy game, you get five releases each game week; note that this is game week and not calendar week. Your first transfer carries no penalty, but the remaning four come with a deduction of 20 points each from your game week score. This is then processed as part of your score during the live game week. You can transfer in as many players as you wish though, provided you have the budget available.

If you choose your squad well at the beginning of the season, you shouldn't have to start losing points for transfers, but don't be put off from using them. There are a number of reasons why.

Firstly, you need to balance risk against reward. A loss of 20 points for a transfer can be offset by choosing a player who is expected to perform well at the weekend, especially if you might not otherwise have anyone on the field. While we would perhaps not advocate using all of your transfers all of the time, one week where you lose 100 points could be the turning point of your season.

That said, if you plan correctly now, you can seamlessly move through the diffrerent phases of the season. Invariably, the top players open the season with a bang, but then disappear for international duty. Those moving away offer opportunities to those left behind, and there are often some top performers who move into their places from under the radar. Once the autumn internationals are finished, the league presses on in earnest over Christmas, and then again players are lost to the Six Natons. 

Choosing international players is a sure fire way to get yourself off to a good start, but don't hold onto them for too long; note when the international period starts and try to offload a few of them over the preceeding weeks to ensure you have the budget and transfer space to bring in some replacements. Equally the same stands the other way round as the internationals are played - try and create some space for those returning.

There is another reason for using all of your transfers too; making money! Player prices tend to fluctuate more as the impending game week moves closer. You can utilise this by using your transfers as part of a stack market; remove players you know are injured or not available in the next fixture, while their price is high, and then bring them back into your squad once their price has dropped.

The key to this is remembering that point deductions are applied to your game week score, and not at the time of the transfer. So, if you release 5 players and then resign 4 of them, the transfers will be reversed and you will not receive any penalty for doing so, but you will still retain the money you made in the change of player value. Be aware though, you need to choose the players whose value will go down! This strategy puts you in a great position for the final push at the end of the season by expanding your budget and allowing you to pick up the top performing players.

Finally, you don't have to release anyone if you don't want to, but getting into the habit of making at least one release a week allows you to remove any dead wood from your squad and keep it fresh for upcoming game weeks.

Filed under: Gallagher Premiership, The Scout
Written by: Edward Kerr
Follow: @edwardrkerr · @therugbymag