Timing of transfers

 

It's one of the perennial controversies in FPL-land: should you make transfers early, to dodge possible price changes, or make them late, to avoid risk of a new signing immediately getting injured before he plays a game for you?

I veer very decidedly towards the former view. Price changes are indeed worth avoiding; but unlike injuries, they're fairly readily predictable (and also rather more common).

If the risk of an imminent price-rise on the player you covet (and/or of a fall on the one you're looking to offload) is not an issue, then, yes, of course you wait until shortly before the deadline, to be on the safe side. But the danger is not that the player you bring in will immediately get injured in training before he even plays for you (yes, that has happened to me; but not often - and I'm extremely unlucky; that kind of misfortune is super-rare); it's that another member of your squad may get injured, whose replacement becomes a higher priority. (But hey, that's what 'hits' are for.)

If, however, your desired change is price-sensitive, and a price change seems likely, then you should move fast to secure the deal.

Similarly, you have to avoid losing squad value on injured players. (Although FPL allegedly tweaks its algorithm to slow down the rate of price decrease on injured players, they do still drop value - often quite fast.) When I see a player of mine get badly injured in a game, I usually transfer him out immediately (before I forget!); I mean, really, while the match is still in progress.

The risk of injury during a single week - such that it could impact on a new transfer - is greatly overrated by most people. Curiously, even the European competitions (where you'd think that the additional stresses of air travel, and unfamiliar playing times, and often drastic changes of climate might add significantly to the injury risk) seem to produce a far lower rate of injuries than our own Premier League. And in international matches (which, even when 'competitive', are often against relatively weak opposition, and always far less intense than domestic league games; moreover, the training for them is also far less intense, and top players tend to get limited minutes), it's fairly negligible. 

Actually, in my experience, injuries in domestic training are far more common than in any matches outside the Premier League programme. So, I never have major worries about transferring in a player ahead of an international or a European game. (I'll avoid it if I can, but it's nothing to get your knickers in a knot over.)

Just as I said about the Wildcard last week, the mantra should be: Make your transfers as late as you can, but as early as you need to.