Tuesday 16 July 2019 15:57, UK
A new Sky Sports Fantasy Football season is looming but what's the best way to manage your transfers?
Players are allocated 40 transfers at the start of the season but it can be tricky to know when to make your move. Here, former Sky Sports Fantasy Football champion Dan Cox gives his top transfer tips...
The biggest part of Sky Sports Fantasy Football for me is the 40 transfers you get allocated, when to use them, and how to use them efficiently.
We all have that friend who has a great start and goes miles ahead of everyone else. You may even become a bit disillusioned and wonder how they have such a big lead.
Around Christmas, though, you might just realise they have used all their transfers and start to drop down the leaderboard. With careful management, you will eventually catch up and overtake them.
It is a marathon not a sprint and not many have the stamina to last the season.
You will also see this with the overall leaderboard. The year I captured the prestigious title, I was 200 points away from the top team in October.
On the one hand, I had been careful with transfers, whereas I can only assume the leaders had used a lot of their replacements early on to get a big lead, only for it to be cut down over the long haul. It is almost worth keeping away from the leaderboard until November, when things start to even out.
Even if you have managed to make it to the last two or three weeks before using all your transfers, all it takes is for your top-priced striker to get injured and you are essentially playing with 10 men and may be even without a captain, thus letting Sky Sports Fantasy Football league rivals take advantage.
You get 40 transfers, but you have to budget them - there are 40 game weeks, so one a week is the obvious pacesetter.
Naturally, you may feel like using three in one week on occasions but if you do that then I would try and have a couple of quiet weeks on the transfer count afterwards, which would allow them to even out.
I like to split the season into three parts. I start with game week one up until the first Overhaul, the first Overhaul to the second Overhaul and then the second Overhaul until the end of the season.
I will take a look at how many game weeks are in each segment and allocate myself a transfer budget for each period. There is no right and wrong way to do this and it is what works best for you. Each season is a learning curve and no two seasons are the same.
Just remember that at the start of the season, when you have 40 transfers burning a hole in your pocket, refrain from making silly moves. Every transfer is vitally important and whilst it may seem like you have an endless supply, they will soon start to dwindle.
