When making your strategic mid-season moves, here’s some tips on what to look for.

Upgrading:

A very important choice. Just like Jimmy Bartel and Jordan Lewis exploded out of the box with some huge scores early in the season, a similar burst may see someone available at $350k be the next massive scorer.

You may also want to look at the cheaper guns who’ve fallen away in price, like Adam Goodes or Shaun Burgoyne, who are both well below the $300k mark. This frees up more cash for other upgrades, since these players have probably bottomed out in price.

But this tactic is fraught with risk; even if Goodes recovers to score around 80-odd, rising up to around $310k, it’s still not the output you need to really start blitzing it. I would only go down this road if you’ve got the trades in reserve for further upgrades, in case the performance doesn’t return to absolute elite levels.

Downgrading:

You might be tempted to chuck any old bargain-priced unknown in your team, freeing up some cash to buy a gun. But if you pick your rookies very slyly, it gives you some handy benefits:

They play regularly, and are a reliable back-up. The right rookies, (let’s face it, they’re usually top-20 draft picks), will slot straight into their side’s 22. This means they play most games, providing you with a ready-made inclusion to cover one- or two-week injuries.

They rise in price. Duh, I hear you say. Well, yeah, but if they rise enough and you’ve got the trades, you can do another upgrade in the last few weeks of the year. Converting a Travis Cloke to a Scott Lucas could be the difference between you winning and losing an all-important final.

Leave something for injuries:

Another no-brainer, but don’t use all your trades for upgrades! It’ll all go down the toilet if a couple of wrong turns hit your team and you end up playing three or four ‘donut’ players (= score 0) every week.