There are about 16 players I want to trade in this week and maybe 4 that I only kinda want to trade out.
JHF: I really should have looked at his preseason work as I'd just written him off out of hand due to his 2022. Will watch the replay tonight to get a better idea of whether he's worth the trade
Rachelle: Surprised he hasn't drawn more interest around here. Looked really good on the weekend, has a good size already and appears to have a good role and is under 300k. Won a couple of centre clearances but no idea of how to get his CBA numbers. Points per dollar, he has to be close to the best value of the mid-pricers after Callaghan . Has 5 of his next 6 games at Adelaide Oval and a trip away against Hawthorn
Ziegull: Role sounds good. Will have to watch the replay to see how the old man's getting around. Needs to be getting 100s in order to beat out some of the other value on offer and that makes him not so important to me. same with Setterfield for that matter. Maybe for JHF too, but it sounds like he could maybe hit that and then some. Will have to check the replay
Chandler: 123k mature aged rookie. Shaky JS maybe or a gift horse rookie for a few weeks.
Liam Henry: Did not look out of place at all and ran out the game well. Has North, West Coast, Adelaide and GCS to come and if he can continue with his 83 average, then at 202k he's gonna make bank in a real hurry. He kinda needs to because after that soft run he has Bulldogs, Lions, Sydney Geelong and Melbourne, with Hawthorn being the only easy beat team amongst all that. Massively on my radar though.
Then there's the rookies, Phillips, The Poo, Bytel.... Neither of them are screaming "must have" at the moment and can wait a week
The 500k defenders showed up this week. I'm missing Naicos, Rioli, Redman and Ridley. I already have Doc, Young and Richards though so there's no room at the inn, even if I did have the cash. Considering that Dawson, Sicily and Stewart all still look good to bring in at some stage, I'm going to have to make a choice pretty soon on which of those 500k players to grab.
I could generate cash by downgrading Macrae to either of De Goey or Rowell. I was really disappointed in Macrae's game on the weekend. Just didn't look to be in it. But then neither did the Bont, who was invisible for the entirety of I think it was the 3rd quarter IIRC. Those guys have teh Saints under the roof this week though so I'll give them a chance at bettering their performance against a rampant Melbourne. The D's would have made a lot of midfields look pedestrian on the weekend and I need these guys' ceilings for captain/vc purposes. Maybe I can jettison one of them.
I do like JDG as a pick. He looks in fantastic nick and was running around hardly gassed at the end of a big, pulsating game. Still had the energy to land that big roost from outside 50 with a few minutes to go. He has almost a pure midfield role now and there is very little room for him in our forward line so I can see those midfield minutes staying high. Not only that but he now has Titch getting first hands on it 10 times a game and passing it out to our runners. Tay is still good for a half dozen or more handouts too. Rowell I also like but he has the same knock on him as De Goey: durability. I also still haven't gotten around to watching his replay yet for reasons I alluded to in the gameday thread. Both are at crazy good prices at the moment though. Sub 500k. Dudes it's tempting......
And after all that, I still need to get into position to take advantage of Laird and Oliver's bad games. These two don't give you big windows to acquire their services and you have to be ready when the opportunity arises. Neale and Touk will have to wait. LDU.... too many decisions...
So who to ditch? Really, there's nobody that truly looked awful on the weekend. Hopper would be first in line but even he was just average. Bruhn didn't get the job done in the end and it wasn't just role. He just got to where the ball wasn't too much. Still did some nice things but looked to run out of tank in what was admittedly a high octane game. There's Chesser, Baker (see Bont and Macrae), Goater (not scoring enough for his premium), Cowan, Greene and Stoopid Sexy Flanders (who has a softish kind of draw over the next 5 games for a 250k mid/fwd). Darcy and Marshall were underwhelming but I think hold their spot as heading to Gawn/Witts feels wrong atm. Which probably makes it the right thing to do.
So there's a stack of opportunity there to improve on what looked a good opening score (2176) only because so many other people got torched by some remarkable premo carnage. I'm in a good spot right now but I don't think it is due to having that good an good opening squad. I'm usually dead against trading rookies in or out after 1 game and have traditionally believed in trusting my premos to bounce back, especially since you know... they did tonne up.
But this game needs you to finish your squad quickly. It's the only way to beat the cookie cutter that comes in late in the season. I need to generate cash in a hurry and think I'll need to burn 6 trades in the next 2 weeks
2 games in a row....... surely.