European soccer’s twin transfer windows are like seasons in themselves and the one that takes place just over halfway through the season always has big ramifications for daily fantasy soccer players. The English Premier League sees the most transfer action of any league on the planet and the effect it has on players can crop up at almost any time of the season. Let’s have a look at some of the different ways that players are affected by the transfer market.
Player Performance
The easiest way to work out whether a player is going to be involved in some good old fashioned transfer gossip is by watching performances and thinking outside the box. Any striker that hits a run of form will invariably be linked with a move elsewhere and no one is safe. I’ve lost count of the amount of times players like Lionel Messi and Cristiano Ronaldo have been linked with moves to the Premier League, even though it’s very unlikely they will ever make it over.
Take Jamie Vardy’s Premier League record scoring run. The striker wasn’t linked to any teams until the run started and ever since then every team with a stadium and some money has been reportedly interested in Vardy. This hasn’t affected Vardy, however, there have been plenty of situations when continual gossip has had a detrimental effect.
Paper talk
British tabloids are the fiercest in the world and when it comes to transfers, they hold no prisoners. No player is safe from being linked to a team and the effect it can have is disastrous. There are even sometimes suggestions that the relationship between certain managers and publications is used to unsettle other teams ahead of important games.
Transfer sagas can often be protracted and the effect on a player can is very noticeable, especially if the player involved is openly agitating for a move. It’s important to keep up with all the rumours using the various ‘Gossip’ pages compiled by sport websites. Taking rumours as the gospel truth is not recommended but using these in conjunction with player performance information can be a good way to pick up on problems before they affect your lineup.
Settling in
Players that move midway through the season don’t have pre-season to settle into their new surroundings and are prone to drops in form whilst trying to adapt to a new team. Unless a player was in the form of their life at a previous team, it’s sensible to wait and see how the first couple of games pan out. There will obviously be some occasions when a player hits the ground running but the daily fantasy soccer price of the players combined with the risk means that looking elsewhere is often the best way to go.
Playing for a Contract
Anyone signed on a short term deal or looking to secure a new deal are a daily fantasy soccer player’s best friend. It has been shown in the past that certain players, when in the final 18 months of a contract, will play better in the hope that a new contract is forthcoming. The problem is that when the contract is signed, the same players go from hot to warm and then cold. The same goes for players on a short-term deals.
For daily fantasy soccer managers this creates a great deal of value due to the fact that players on a six-month deal will be at the lower end of the market. The same goes for players entering the final 18 months of a contract, just so long as what preceded it was a bad patch.