PL Fantasy Auction Thoughts
I have to admit that I won't have my first (and maybe only) auction-style draft until the end of July. This means that I won't have any up-to-date first hand knowledge of how at least one league has reacted to the changes that have gone on over the summer. I won't be able to give you much guidance on how the success of Danny Ings and Charlie Austin last season has impacted the prices paid for Callum Wilson and Troy Deeney this summer in auctions (although I suspect that it will push those prices significantly upward). I don't know what the spread in price will be between Deeney and his younger and just-as-successful-in-the-Championship teammate Matej Vydra (although I suspect it will be shockingly large). What I can provide is some thoughts based on auctions from previous years in both Premier League games and other sports as I've been doing auction-style leagues since the early 1990s (baseball and basketball were my first ones back then) and it is a great format for fantasy leagues where people are really into doing their research and spending the better part of a day on their draft. Here are some hints from the very basic to the more advanced and specific.
Know The Rules
Unlike sports like baseball, basketball and football where the statistics are fairly well-defined and scoring systems have become fairly standard over the years, fantasy soccer is still in something of a formative period as regards what player actions should lead to fantasy points beyond the obvious goals, assists, clean sheets, and cards. Some formats are very basic while others are expansive and include everything from minutes played to passing accuracy to number of aerial duals won with many leagues falling in-between those two extremes. Not surprisingly, there are players that are good in almost all formats and there are others whose value depends heavily on what format you happen to be playing. The better you know what sort of players will be valuable, the better prepared you will be to put auction values on specific players.
Have Lists and Don't Rush In
The start of an auction tends to be a very exciting thing, sort of like early 2000s Chelsea or late 2000s Manchester City hitting the transfer market. Everyone is flush with cash and there is a tendency to over-spend a bit at the start of an auction. This is usually exacerbated by the fact that people will typically nominate the players they want the most early in the process. By creating lists or tiers of players by position and associating willingness to pay with those tiers or lists, you will get a better sense of roughly equivalent players that may be available for less later in the draft. I paid $18 for Per Mertesacker on a budget of $135 early in a draft last season only to see Laurent Koscielny (projected to be almost identical in the format in question) go for less than $5 far later in the draft. By jumping early I ended up way overpaying when I could have waited around for a very similar player after others had spent a big portion of their budget and couldn't bid the price up on me.
Your Tiers Should Be Value-based
When creating your lists, you should be thinking about players who are roughly equivalent. It's hard to give examples without a specific scoring system in mind but as an example, most fantasy systems saw Eden Hazard in a tier unto himself in midfield with no obvious equivalent. That is important because it dictates paying a premium for a somewhat unique commodity assuming that you feel good about his chances of starting regularly again and producing at a similar or better level this season (which you probably should). Once you got past Hazard, there were a group of fairly similar creative midfielders who scored about the same in many systems including Santi Cazorla, Christen Eriksen, David Silva, Cesc Fabregas, Gylfi Sigurdsson, and Raheem Sterling. Your mileage may vary depending on your scoring system but it is likely that in choosing between the players in this group there will be some randomness related to health, rotation, and team success that could push any of the group to the top of this next tier or the bottom. In other words, you probably shouldn't care too much which one you get and if you have a chance to let a few go by the boards to allow people to spend their money you might well get a bargain on one later in your draft.
Monitor Other People's Budgets and Rosters
Knowing who might be bidding against you for a coveted player later in the draft is paramount. If you are in a 12 person league and about halfway through your draft you may find that only three or four managers still have the money left to spend significantly on any player. If you look at those three or four managers and it appears that most of them are pretty well stocked on midfielders then you can probably have a pretty good idea that any remaining midfielder that you want is going to be yours at a pretty reasonable price. If it is clear that everyone with money left is still on the search for a forward and there are only a couple left then you may end up being forced to overpay or take a risk on a cheaper player coming good against the odds.
Don't Be A "Big Club" Snob
There are a reason that the big clubs are big, they have very good players and they win a lot. That usually leads to high prices in auction formats and being over-drafted in draft formats, especially outside of the few absolute superstars. Going back to my Mertesacker example from earlier, I ended up picking up as good and better defenders from less fashionable teams for $1 either in the auction or off of waivers during the season. Names like Joleon Lescott, Ryan Shawcross, and Craig Dawson were all excellent gets for the minimum price and could have saved me the trouble and cost of picking up Mertesacker and I could have put that money into actual difference makers (from big clubs or otherwise). I find that new players coming in to clubs outside of the top six are a particular source of value in auctions and drafts with guys like Mame Biram Diouf, Dusan Tadic, and Graziano Pelle having been great examples last season.
Potential Bargains
I don't want to pretend that I know the details of the scoring system that you might be playing and that system will help define where the bargains may lie. Here are a few potential bargains by position that I'm going to be looking at in my auction when it happens at the end of the month (hopefully, none of my competitors will be reading):
Goalkeeper
Boaz Myhill - the definition of a Premier League journeyman but he'll be playing behind a Tony Pulis defense until Ben Foster returns and there's no reason to think that Pulis is going to change.
Costel Pantilimon - He got a lot of saves at Sunderland last season which balanced out the losing and the goals conceded. If the Black Cats improve even a little there's upside aplenty for someone you can probably get cheap.
Defense
Craig Dawson - Joleon Lescott restored his reputation to some extent and will probably go for a reasonable amount of money in your auction. Dawson was just as good in most systems and doesn't have nearly the name recognition. You might even want to consider Jonas Olsson since his end-of-season cameo will have him an afterthought on most season-scoring lists from last season.
Patrick van Aanholt - Of the rising outside backs, Van Aanholt is the one least likely to register with Hector Bellerin and Danny Rose playing at bigger teams. I expect them to be roughly the same player in most formats that favor outside backs and you can probably get PvA 10-20% cheaper because he plays for Sunderland.
Midfielders
Dmitri Payet - The Stuart Downing role was a high scoring one at West Ham last season. With Downing and Big Sam on the way out, Payet seems like he's in a very good spot to be a high value fantasy addition from outside of the Champions League teams. While your fellow managers are blowing money on speculative players from bigger clubs whose roles aren't necessarily set in stone like Theo Walcott, Aaron Ramsey or Oscar you can probably get Payet for about half the cost because he is something of an unknown quantity and plays at West Ham.
Jordan Henderson - There's going to be a lot of hype for James Milner now that he's going to be playing and rightfully so and Roberto Firmino will have the "new guy at big(ish) club" boost factored into his price but Henderson, by virtue of not making a big fuss about his situation over the summer, could be something of a forgotten man which could lead to a solid bargain. Adam Lallana could also see more action on the right side of midfield with Sterling gone and could be a bit of a bargain.
Jordy Clasie/Harrison Reed - Morgan Schneiderlin got a ton of the credit for Southampton being good last season despite all the changes and rightly so but if the Saints have proven anything it is that they know how to reload at cheaper prices. Clasie will reportedly come in to replace Schneiderlin and there is every reason to expect that you'll get approximately the same fantasy production out of him that you will out of Schneiderlin at Manchester United but for a fraction of the auction price.
Forwards
Matej Vydra - As I suggested in my intro, last season's success from Danny Ings, Charlie Austin and, to a lesser extent, Leonardo Ulloa will likely drive prices higher for Callum Wilson and Troy Deeney who are typically the two players most talked about as "next Ings" or "next Austin". Vydra has an equally impressive Championship goal-scoring record to Deeney in two of the past three seasons. Deeney and Wilson benefit from no one knowing if he's going to be able to translate their performances in the Championship while we have some evidence that Vydra wasn't ready two seasons ago in his stint with West Brom. The problem with weighing that evidence too heavily against Vydra is that he was very young (21 and 22) and West Brom didn't have much to support him with. Despite that he scored 3 goals and 3 assists in seven starts and 16 substitute appearances that totaled just over two additional matches worth of minutes. I suspect that you can have Vydra for whatever the minimum bid is in your league and if he can maintain a pace of a goal and an assist for every 270 minutes of football played, you're going to be a happy manager (even conservatively at 2700 minutes that would be 10 and 10 which is pretty good stuff).
Ayoze Perez - He was pretty good at the end of last season and should get better as a young player with a full season of top flight football under his belt. I like the upside for a player who might be flying under the radar at some level.
If you have more specific questions about drafts or auctions, I'm happy to answer them on Twitter (link below).
