Last night was the FFGeek draft night for draft fantasy football at DraftFantasyFootball.co.uk. Here, I’m going to review the experience and what I’m planning now
draft fantasy football – a review after the FFGeek draft night
So for the avoidance of doubt we played www.draftfantasyfootball.co.uk as opposed to the Official FPL version
Preparation for the draft
I had my draft order separated into the different positions handwritten with the results ready to be put into larger boxes. This caused great merriment on twitter.
Our league consisted of 7 managers with a couple represented by the draft fantasy football auto pick. It was a snake draft ie people pick in turn with no budget. This seemed simpler than the auction draft for a first time. Most were from the UK so I set it up to be 8pm on Thursday night to give everyone adequate preparation time and to be at home. One thing to remember is that the draft order is generated randomly and not the order that you see when you go into the draft room. The order is then reversed. In the draft you had 30 seconds to pick and then it auto picks for you in the order set up by the site.
In the draft were:
Rob Reid (the FPL Vet), Simon Rowley (Sun Pundit), Joseph Crilley (regular contributor and Spurs fan), David Brown (our Man City season ticket holder on the ground) Paul Michael Jones and Shayne Ellis (regular site visitors)
The Draft itself
I ended up 2nd in the draft order. Rob was first and surprisingly for me picked Lukaku so of course I went for Kane.
You soon realise that 30 seconds isn’t along time so in the draft I ended up with 4 auto picks as I prevaricated too long. Some managers aren’t present but are getting their team via auto picks. With them it’s hard to keep track of the picks taken as they immediately take the next pick without any delay. In the end my nicely handwritten sheet was substituted for scrolling up and down those players left on the website.
7 managers is quite a good number because you end up with a fairly acceptable squad plus a decent pool of free agents to work with. I think I calculated that my squad in FPL terms would have cost £107m or so. There’s only 3 picks outside last seasons top 6 and 1 of those was an auto pick.
In theory with 15 players for each team and and 7 managers in the room that’s 105 players. If you assume it is 30 seconds per player that’s 52 minutes that the draft should take. However with the auto picks and alot of decisiveness it ended up being no more than half that
One thing I would say is that it doesn’t take long to run out of strikers so make sure you get on them asap and definitely as your first pick.
At least 1 maybe 2 wing backs are a good idea as well as they went quickly.
My team
Here’s the team I went with. I’m ashamed to say that Mane, Mahrez, Fabregas and Mustafi are prevarication resulting auto picks when I ran out of time.
So can’t complain too much. 3 of the auto picks I wouldn’t have picked in Mahrez, Fabregas and Mustafi. Unfortunately there’s not much attaking potential in defence. Walker, Trippier, Kolasinac, Valencia all went fairly quickly.
Here’s Joseph Crilleys team which I like. His was an actual pick team. As he said on twitter he needs the Spurs medical team to get to work.
Here’s Simon Rowley’s auto pick team as he couldn’t make it.
Slimani, Karious, Danilo and an injured Coleman aren’t ideal but could be alot worse.
So what now?
Firstly, I’ve already put in a trade request offering Mustafi for Vertonghen as I have a Spurs defensive gap. I know Joseph won’t be giving up Alderweireld and no person in their right mind will trade Trippier so Vertonghen seems the right place to start. You can trade in this format as opposed to the official one.
I’ve had a scan around the free agents this morning and seen that Ben Davies is available as a free agent but he doesn’t seem worth taking someone else for. I did think about getting him and seeing if I could tempt Joseph into a trade to cover Rose while he’s injured but it seems a little convoluted. Ince is also available as a free agent as are Sandro Ramirez, Llorente and not surprisingly Diego Costa.
2 players are on waivers in Yaya Toure and Ward Prowse. There is a waiver request being processed at 10am today and next Tuesday but neither excite me.
So I’ll be checking the waivers and free agents and trades regularly and new transfers to see if there is anything to be done to improve the team over the next week
Good luck to anyone playing
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