Fantasy Football Transfers and Team Value explained and debated.

Fantasy Football Transfers and Team Value explained and debated – Fantasy Premier League tips 2014/15

Due to popular demand as it’s been a huge topic of debate on the forum’s we welcome you to our article on Transfers and Team Value (TV) – one a massive part of FPL while the latter’s importance and relevance continues to split opinion amongst managers. We will start by walking you through the very basic rules on transfers, how they work, how you can make cash for your team and then finish by talking with two experienced FPL managers about Team Value, one of whom is a big fan of TV and one who thinks it is not all it’s cracked up to be!
If the below is all very obvious, then bear with me – it is very important information for new players to learn and understand to maximise their chances of succeeding at FPL.

Transfers
You are allowed to make one free transfer a week for your FPL team – any transfers in addition to your free one will cost your team 4pts per extra transfers. So, for example, if you make 3 transfers one week, your team will be deducted -8pts. If you do NOT use your free transfer in a gameweek, you may then carry it over to the following gameweek, thus giving you two free transfers that week. However, you cannot carry a saved transfer over more than one week – so if you don’t use it by the second week, you lose it. Thus, you can only ever have a maximum of two free transfers per gameweek. Unless you play your Wildcard, of course. And that’s a debate for another day!

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Player prices can rise or fall by 0.1mln at a time. The most reliable sites to view estimated price changes are –

www.fplstatistics

www.totalFPL

The player’s price changes in the early hours of the morning (UK time). It is very important to remember that you only receive 50% of the real profit made on a player. For example if you bought Gylfi Sigurdsson preseason at 6mln and you wanted to sell him when his price was 6.2mln, you would receive 0.1mln into your team value. If, for example, Sigurdsson was sold at 6.3mln, you would still receive 0.1mln as profits are rounded down to the nearest 0.1mln – therefore he would need to be sold at 6.4mln for you to receive 0.2mln. Price movements are dictated by the popularity (or lack of) in a player. The formula for a price change is worked out by that players NTI – which is the difference between transfers in and transfers out. This season’s formula for multiple changes per week appears to have changed and made the huge number of multiple changes per players per week that we saw last season less likely to occur this season. Important point here – the price shown on your team page under “Transfers” is his selling price – the price shown on the full list of players on the right hamd side of the screen is his buying price.

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Team Value
We touched on Team Value above, but we’ll now go into it in more detail. We are fortunate to call upon Kop and Calvin Clyne to help us investigate Team Value further. This debate has raged for seasons now and while I think it’s safe to say, there is no right or wrong answer, it’s a subject that continues to divide opinion, with valid reasons given for both sides of the argument. Don’t forget team value is exactly that – the value of your team and will be found on your “Points” page in the “Transfers & Finance” section towards the bottom on the right.
We touched on the Sigurdsson example above, but to clarify one point that is often overlooked. Your team value is unrealised until you actually sell a player. So for those that bought Siggy preseason their team value at the end of last week would have shown 100.2mln (let’s just assume that Siggy was the only player to have changed price by then) – however, if you kept Siggy until the end of the season and his price rose to, say, 9mln and you still own him in GW38, you would not benefit from his price change as you didn’t sell him.
It may sound confusing, but you’ll soon get used to it!
Ok, let’s talk to Kop and Calvin Clyne.

Calvin, why do you consider transfer value so important?
Calvin: The overall team value is important as having a higher one than your rivals will allow you to have a roster of players that should be of a higher quality overall. Just think back a couple of weeks and how we were all scrabbling to get in all of the players we wanted; I lost track of the amount of times people (myself included!) would say ‘if only I could have an extra 0.5 or 1.0 to spend’. So I don’t see why that mentality would suddenly disappear once the season starts. If you play your cards and transfers right then you could end up having an extra 5.0 to spend over your rivals! That is the difference (currently) between Bojan and Costa, or Albrighton and Ramsey (with change in the bank).

Kop, you’re not a keen follower of transfer value – please explain why.
Kop: I suppose I should clarify my position on transfer value, just so as that people don’t think I’m a grumpy old man – actually I am quite grumpy, but I’m not that old!
I do actually understand the whole idea of having a high team value / transfer value, call it what you will. However, where I possibly differ from others is that I never go out with the intention of building up that value. The way I look at it is that if your team is doing well the chances are you’ll have a decent transfer value. Granted you may not have the highest transfer value, but I will categorically guarantee you that the winner of each seasons FPL has not had the highest transfer value. As I’ve said time and time again this game is about points not pounds, so if you chase the points the value will look after itself.
Take for example the current Juan Mata & Cesc Fabregas situation…..Mata had a poor game vs Swansea, while Fabregas had a cracking game at Burnley. So, after one game many are selling Mata and buying Fabregas, some folk are simply doing this because Fabregas is rising in price. I suppose it all boils down to the fact that I try not to make any rash decisions…Mata could quite easily hit double figures on Sunday!
I’ll give you I saw on the site – there was somebody suggesting selling Mata while he was still at 9mln and buying Cesc while he was still at 9mln, next week he was then going to sell Fabregas if he had reached 9.2mln and buy Mata back at 8.9mln. All this just to raise a few pounds….personally I think this is madness and it’s just burning up precious transfers.
The only time I will consciously try to build my team value is when I’m playing my wildcard.

Calvin, by taking hits to chase the value, aren’t you immediately putting yourself at a disadvantage from the outset?
Calvin: Let me be clear – I do not advocate hits taken solely for the purpose of chasing value. There is a small percentage of players that clearly play this game just to try and make it onto the team value top 5 on the FPL homepage, and fair play to them. They will never come close to winning overall though, even with their much higher team value, as they often take over a dozen hits a week to build it. In terms of points, this is clearly unsustainable, even if it leads to you being able to field your dream 11. However, if you know you are going to want to transfer in a player at the beginning of a GW and you can see that his value will rise 0.1 or more before the GW deadline then I think the benefit of saving money significantly outweighs the slight risk of him being injured during the week.

That last point in the previous paragraph is when I consider hits appropriate in terms of preserving/building team value (there are also other circumstances where hits are appropriate of course). If you have already made your free transfer but really want another player too then if he is set to rise in price I would be very tempted to bring him in for the hit as well, especially if the player you would be transferring out is set to drop in price. So now I have explained when I would take a hit to build value, I can finally answer the question! I don’t think taking the aforementioned hits here and there will compromise your team too much to be honest, as long as they are done sensibly – you shouldn’t be taking them in the first place if you don’t see the potential to be outscoring the original players by four or more each. Last year was a perfect showcase for the advantages of taking hits, where many managers took hits on a regular basis and were still able to do very well. So if this can be done whilst also keeping an eye on your FPL finances then all the better.

Regarding the question, if you are unfortunate enough for your hits to not pay off points-wise and therefore leave you at a disadvantage, then you will at least have the extra value to put to good use for the second half of the season. Last season for me was a perfect example of this, whereby I had a horrible start, moving up and down between around 150,000-650,000th, and was languishing in around 500,000th place at Christmas. I had built up a few million more than most of my main rivals though, and after the Jan wildcard went on a run of 13 green arrows in 15 GWs and finished inside the top 30,000, and I can’t help but attribute this to the more complete team I was able to field due to my extra funds. I can see how that may put off some fence-sitters straight away, but stay with me and do not be deterred! My initial low rank was in large part due to my stubborn refusal to bring in Yaya I believe, and not due to the hits I took. And I’m not suggesting 30,000th is what you should be satisfied with – I won’t be this year, but it was a solid recovery from a bad position. By hopefully making better choices in the run up until Christmas this season I will have less of a deficit to close in my hopefully more successful second half of the season and can finish in a higher position.

Kop, do you see the argument that a high transfer value later on in the season can help you build a better or more expensive squad? For example, it could enable you to buy a Yaya Toure instead of Samir Nasri.
Kop: I certainly do see the argument and I accept the argument, but and here’s the crux of transfer value, it only becomes relevant when you sell a player, if you don’t sell a player you can’t realise his value. Let’s assume that the likes of Fabregas, Sterling & Siggy continue to do well over the course of the season, this in turn means their prices will continue to rise. Now let’s say you’re lucky enough to have them in your team since the beginning, this means that they will allow you to increase your transfer value but if you don’t sell then you may not be able to raise the cash to get Yaya instead of Nasri.

Calvin. By the New Year you should have a greater transfer value than those who haven’t chased it. But if you’re more expensive players don’t come up with the goods surely it’s all been a waste of time?
Calvin: You raise a valid point my blue friend. There will doubtless be a few more expensive options that fail to live up to their top billing. And conversely a few cheaper options that get good points always make themselves known too. However, exceptions aside, the cream tends to always rise to the top, and I would expect two or three of the more expensive players for each position to be right up there on the points leaderboards by New Year. And if I have opted for some expensive players that aren’t performing too well then I can simply just transfer them out for others expensive players that will be doing well, though bear in mind of course that players that don’t do well do not tend to rise too much in value anyway so it’s unlikely someone that keeps an eye on their team value will have a team awash with failures. It will only have all been a waste of time if almost all of the expensive players fail to produce, which is a long-shot. Also, selecting expensive players that flop can apply to those not interested in team value as well of course, but the difference being they will not have as much scope for changes as those with a higher team value as they may be simply unable to afford the team they want.

Kop, do you not think that with prices so tough for the popular midfielders, having a strong strike force of three main strikers and a top quality midfield can only be achieved with just a small injection of cash – another 3-4mln could mean RvP or Aguero instead of Giroud or Dzeko?
Kop: I do, but as I’ve said above if you’re doing well the chances are you’ll be able to afford the majority of these players.

Calvin: Changes This Season
I must also reluctantly add that the powers that be have decided to change the system used for the price rises this season (possibly because of how much of an advantage it was having good team value last season?!), and, so far at least, this seems to severely be putting a dampener on price rises, but seemingly not price drops of course.. No one seems to be aware of exactly how it is working yet, with one prevalent theory being that it would take 100% NTI for a 0.1 rise, 200% for a 0.2 rise and 300% for a 0.3 rise. However at the time of writing Fabregas has failed to rise 0.1 this GW, and that was with him being at over 200% NTI last night, so it is all up in the air for the time being at least. The fact that Siggy has gone from roughly 250,000 to 750,000 owners though and has risen just 0.3 is a joke to be honest. We are yet to see the overall effect this will have on the community at large, but if it remains like this then I expect it to at least lessen, if not negate, the advantage of a team value builder. There will also be considerably less rises to exploit for those hoping to build a little value whilst wildcarding, so that could also influence a few folk that had earmarked the international break after GW3 for just this reason to hold onto their wild cards for longer.

Thanks for reading Fantasy Football Transfers and Team Value explained and debated – Fantasy Premier League tips 2014/15. This article was written by CookieFollow @SteveCook9