Hi Guys,
there is no doubt, there are many ways to assess a player, and manage how you set your expectations for the season, and adjust them if necessary during the season.
I showed during my Share Trading series in the pre-season how dangerous it is to adjust your preseason expectation on a player too much, or too early. It can only lead to problems, or cause more problems than it fixes. To change your opinion so much, particularly on a player that has an established scoring pattern/level requires some solid eveidence that firstly, his circumstances have changed, and secondly, those new circumstances are now pretty much permanent.
I don't set as wide parameters on my predictions as Klo30 does, but that doesn't mean his method is wrong. I tend to narrow it down to a 2 or 3 point range. Now the things you have to keep in mind are, it is a season prediction, and you aren't expecting that player to score at, or very close to that level every game. You are, or should be expecting players to have highs and lows, hot streaks and cold streaks. Those variances can occur at anytime in the season. The biggest trading mistakes people make is jumping on a player with an early hot streak, that goes cold. They pay too much for the player, jumping on after 2 or 3 price rises, then trade them out again 5 or 6 weeks later when their prices have dropped $100-150k. Wasted trades, money lost, points down the drain! The best way to avoid the flavour of the month types, is to not adjust your opinions too much when a player has a hot streak early on, and not to jump on players after they've had 2 or 3 good scores. Unless they are a true Premium, those score are gone! You are paying for those scores, as the players price has risen, but you are not getting them. If you are a regular reader of my posts, you would have read me say many times "Well done to those that got on him early, but it is too late now". That will be right over 90% of the time, because very few "unsuspected" players continue a hot streak.
So what is my recommendaton when a Zorko type player, who I had pegged at around 90-92 in the pre-season, scores a big score or two early, or conversely gets an injury/sub affected really low score? Within his season expectation, I was expecting there might be say a 135 and a 130 in the mix. He hit a 161 in round 2, which is 26 higher than I might have expected his season high score to be. I will adjust his expectation up by (161-135)/22=1.18, That's all. People that might have had him pegged at around 90, that saw those 2 good early scores, and jumped him to 100-105, and worst still a "must have" are failing to recognise there will be ups and downs in every season, and they can occur at any time. Surely with an expectation of 90 they expected him to score some 120+'s and even 1 or 2 130+'s. Why go dramatic after the evidence of 2 games, and change him from a fringe F6 candidate, to a must have F1-2 player? The less evidence you base a change of opinion on, the less chances of it coming true. I keep referring to 2 players situation from last seasons of examples of this. Cloke and Dimma's decision to trade him out, right at the time so many of the "flavour of the month" type Coaches were trading him in. He was never going to be a 105+ player, even though he was averaging over 114 after round 6. He was never a realistic chance of returning the points he'd need to justify his buy in price, yet Coaches were doing everything to get him in. Crazy, and it happened because they adjusted their opinion too much, too early on too little information. J Selwood was the other example, when he hit a cold streak coming into the byes (Deja Vu anyone?). Most people would have come into the season the opinion that Selwood would average around 115-116 to match his existing level. Between round 5 and 10 he only managed 539 points in 6 matches, dropping his season average to 104. Do you declare him gone, and now say he will be lucky to reach 110, and given his current form, he might only average 100? Or do you study the situation, and find there is no underlying cause to make you believe that this current low scoring streak will continue, so you back him in to fight back, and even possibly still reach 115, even though he now needs to score at 124 to manage it? He's a quality player, with a well established scoring level, you'd be crazy when there is no known underlying factor to not back him to bounce back. As we now know, he bounced back so hard, he got his season to 118! Cloke too was well established in his scoring patterns. Why, oh why, did people think he had turned into some sort of re-invented scoring machine? In the last 16 rounds his output fell to around 88/game, and people paid a price that suggested he should return over 110/game!
So how does this apply to "new" players? Players with less than established scoring levels and patterns. To my mind, they need to have shown the ability to score at the higher level in previous seasons, preferably over a 4 or 5 game period, AND have a pattern in their pts/100%TOG, disposals/100%TOG and/or the TOG itself to justify the growth might be a new level, and not just a flash in the pan. It's why I recommended against people getting Jaensch after his price rose to around $450k. It was too late then. The bird had flown, and there was nothing in his history or numbers that suggested he could sustain his current scoring level. He might bounce back from his 56 and 38, but can you imagine how sick those coaches feel after trading him in for $450k, only to get a 56 and 38? He had never managed more than 13 games in a season, and never scored at 75 or higher in a season. There was no evidence to say this was anything other than a hot streak. A definite candidate for "well done to those that found him early, but it's too late to jump on now!". As I say, he could fight back and prove me wrong, just keep in mind, for those Coaches that traded him in, in round 6, it's only his 94 in 2 games that count towards his average now, not the early 100+ scores.
In summary, yes, I think you are looking at it incorrectly. Look for eveidence, not scores. Accept there will be both hot and cold streaks early in a season, and there is more reward in backing quality players to come back from a cold streak, than there is in backing an unproven player to continue a hot streak. Setting realistic expectations is the key to it all, and adjusting a player dramatically after a couple of early high (or low) scores is only inviting disappointment. Usually sooner rather than later.
Good trading all.