FPL Draft Transfer Tactics: Streaming

Mr Robot, Making A Murderer and Richarlison; the 3 best things I have streamed recently.

Like watching a new TV series or listening to a new album “streaming” is also the only way to go for any draft team.

Streaming is the week by week “jump off jump on” policy of picking players after the waivers in the free agency period. Look for a free agent with a favourable fixture who will score big points for one week only. Then next week swop him for another free agent in a similar situation.

Supplementing the core members of your squad with players in form or with good fixtures is vital to pick up extra points every week. More importantly it makes the often rigid draft game even more fun (especially if playing the game on the Official Premier League website with its bizarre no trade rules).

The received wisdom with streaming is that it’s best used on your defence as there are obviously around 80 first choice defenders in the Premier League (20 teams X 4 starters each week) and only half of those would be drafted in an 8 manager league.

Whilst this is true streaming also applies with midfielders and forwards. Most 8 player leagues would be struggling to have even 1 elite forward in each team. After Kane, Lukaku, Jesus, Aguero, Morata, Firmino, Lacazette the forwards are much of a muchness. Don’t get stuck with a Jay Rodriguez for a 4 week spell when you can easily flick through 4 different forwards in better form or with better fixtures.

Streaming is also a great alternative to being lumbered with fringe players from the top sides. Whilst it seems a good idea on draft day to get Sané, Martial, Giroud etc to get cover for the top sides starters, what you actually end up with is players who may or may not play and a dilemma of which one to put in your starting XI. All this whilst guaranteed starters like Richarlison and Tadic play games and get big points.

Unless you get the top picks from a big team sometimes you need to bite the bullet and not feel the pressure of having Man City cover like Bernardo Silva in his Guardiola midfield tombola and instead pick an unheralded player from lower down the leagues. This is made easier if you stream an in form set of midfielders playing against a poor side like Crystal Palace each week. The grid below shows what picking on Sunderland’s porous defence could have done for your team last season.

Streaming the defenders Yoshida, Williams, Stones, Mee, Britos, Benalouane, Shaw against Sunderland between GW 25 and GW 31 last season would have brought an incredible run of 7 clean sheets in a row. Not bad for a 4th or 5th defender.

The last advantage to streaming is it can make the game more fun and interactive, especially if you’re used to the traditional fantasy game and making a change per week, picking a different captain etc. Streaming means instead of being stuck with the 15 you drafted you can try and get one over on your rivals with a mad pick that no one even thought of, and when it works bask in the glory of the WhatsApp group before dumping the player a week later!

I’ve done a table below of possible streaming runs up until the next international break; obviously each league and free agent pool is different so you might have to tweak it for your team. Hope this article has helped some of you with streaming and if not Mr Robot is on Amazon Prime and Making a Murderer is on Netflix now.