One thing to keep in your consideration when assessing your trade in candidates, particularly towards the end of a season is what you think that player will average from hereon NOT what they've averaged up to this point. This is where weighing upcoming matchups and respective teams aspiration for the remainder of the season is of most importance.
It's a well known fact that player's ownership for the current high ranked teams are generally a combination of the 'best averages' to date, that's the reason why those teams are ahead of you. You now have 2 options; morphed your team to look like one of them to prevent losing any further ground but unlikely to make much progress OR try and 'hand pick' a couple of players who you feel will better their averages for the remaining 4 rounds with the hope of gaining some significant grounds if they come off but risk falling further behind.
At the end of the day, it boils down to each individual coach ultimate season's end goal: Are they just happy to finish as high as possible...? Are they willing to risk a Top 100 rank in order to try and get to Top 50...? Are they having their best season and wanting to preserve that achievement...? etc...
Personally, at this stage of the season, I tend to pay less attention to player's YTD averages and ignore their current price altogether. I look for players who I feel will average the most from hereon and if I can afford them...then great, if not, I'll just work down my list of options until I find one which fits the bill.
One final observation from me is that ALL players goes through 'hot & cold' streak during a season, even the Uber Premium ones! The reason behind this is vast and numerous, but it definitely does happen. Don't be 'put off' by a player you've identified as being in that hot streak or about to enter a hot streak due to fixture just because he's not in the Top YTD season's averages. Below are some names currently at the top for their positions based on the 5-Rd rolling averages. I'm sure we can all agree that some of the names below have us scratching our heads as the majority of them don't carry that 'brand name' tag which rolls better off our tongues and prevent others from looking at us as if we've completely lost the plot.
DEF: McDonald, Lukosius, Witherden, Blicavs, McGovern, BWilliams, Cerra
MID: Zerrett, Steele, Adams, Wines, Hunter, Guthrie, MCrouch, Mundy, Rockliff
RUC: Marshall, McEvoy
FWD: Hawkins, RGray, Ladhams, Darling, Big O, Bolton, Dawson
It's one thing to be reckless and throw all caution with 'risky' trading from now on, but it's a totally different thing if you're taking a calculated risk based on the information at hand. We have some of the best exponent of the latter on show for this season right here on our forums so watch & learn their craft.