Agree entirely on the 400k. You're effectively sacrificing trades to try and catch up on early points sacrificed.
Magic number is 4389 this year. So you're sacrificing 74.2 points per round until you deploy that money, most will use ~3 trades in rounds 2/3, so you probably can only really deploy those trades in round 4 or 5, and have to have done it by round 6 or you're no longer making back ground. If you don't use it until round 4 you'd be basically 300 points down, I just can't see a situation where 4 rounds extra information is going to get you that much better knowledge, the amount of guys you'd target at round 4 that end up reverting to the mean as opposed to sustaining is very high, think a Rowell last year as a classic example.
To me the starting team and maximising points from it is way too important to leave that many points on the board, especially when everyone is effectively getting their worst score wiped out each round on top of loopholes. You've got to be in it to win it and this feels like a strategy that handicaps you significantly with minimal advantage.
To me, a few weeks information isn't enough. Just looking at 4 guys I remember who had cracking starts to last year in Serong, Rowell, Heeney and Tom Green, you'd have got a 111.25, 98.74, 111.53 and 101.5 average from round 4 onwards if you jumped on them, now Heeney probably still a win price wise but given he was a round 0 flyer, you had a pretty good shot at getting him anyway. You'd probably have been dumping a Nic Martin, LDU, Brayshaw, Treloar or Dunkley type that started poorly to grab them and you'd have cost yourself significant points by doing it. It's just a really small sample size to be willingly sacrificing 75 points a week to gamble on.
Just think you're way better gambling on your starting team and using a boost to fix it, especially this year where the flex position makes the correction far easier. This year you can gamble on a 350k MID but you can bail out into any other position through the FLEX, you don't need to have DPP setup to try and create the contingency plan. It's definitely going to make midprice options more juicy.
Absolutely could be a good pick. I worry that more midfield time means more hack kicks. A lot of his better games in 2023 were where he actually played more forward and was kicking goals, for a bad kick he's surprisingly good at goal and at least points are only ineffective rather than clangers.
He can definitely brute force a score though and you're spot on with the midfield, they're paper thin there. Definitely on the watch list to see if he looks fit.
Injury history is more concerning then you're letting on though. Shoulders, concussions and back issues are all potentially recurring problems and when you've had multiple collision injuries, it does become a worrying trend in and of itself. The odd/even year injury pattern sure is something though. Missed 0 games across the last 3 "odd" years and 25 games across the last 3 even years, the DT/SC correlation to "being healthy" is also startling with 110/102 in odd and 88/87.5 in even.
The byes are a genuine nightmare this year.
Round 13 with Freo and Saints is great but they severely overlap in defense where there is genuinely 4 of the best options and then two rucks. Even mids with Steele and the three Freo boys. Saints also loaded in forward bargain bin. Even this bye is dangerous though because there are almost too many great options and it could become a problem, albeit the best round to have the problem.
Round 14 has only Richmond with genuine starting options, I guess also Mills from Sydney. Round 2 and 3 byes do open up the trade options but even then you're left with basically Daicos, Flanders and Heeney as top options across all positions. Maybe some of Anderson, Rowell, Blakey and similar can also put their hands up. Still can see this being a pretty light bye.
Round 15 has some options with Adelaide, WCE and Melbourne but basically there's Gawn, Rankine and Flynn and then you've just got a bunch of midfielders, all of whom have genuine questions on them. Hawthorn are similarly basically a forward and a horde of midfield questions and Sicily down back, who may well be cheap enough to start despite the bye but has a gazillion questions around role and how much a new backline impacts him.
Round 16 has maybe Stewart, Ashcroft and Coleman as starting options. I might be missing someone else but it's incredibly thin. The round 3/4 bye will open them up in upgrade season but it's pretty risky to be planning on getting guys from that bye, the bye issue leads to sub-optimal trade targets being used for bye balance or completely tilting the bye balance out of whack. This bye at least is highly avoidable, so targeting this bye has that bonus.
Then there is round 12... the unavoidable bye is the one with all 4 teams live at round 1, basically the best value and super premium option at every line and even some good rookies. It's the one bye that's dreadful to overload and yet it's by far the bye that makes sense to overload purely on players.
