If 50-40% of our portfolio is made up of the above core full season fit selections, we should branch out a bit with the rest of it to pursue other opportunities. 

I view a good selection of Core / Full Season Fit players as essential but too many of them can make a portfolio a bit too safe.

You will notice some cross over between the below categories. 

Note that I provide lots of examples for each category but these are only examples – many more will be covered in scouting etc! There are lots of options out there at the moment and this is meant to get people thinking about what sorts of players to buy rather than push people towards specific players.

Elite Veterans

Examples: Thiago, Kroos, Lewandowski, Pjanic, Mahrez, Parejo, Immobile, Kramaric, Willian (contract depending), Reus, Messi (high risk but possibly worth it see scouting), 

Once we have spent any money we want to ahead of the dividend increase as per  Objective 1, Elite Veterans will be the first place I will go when it comes time to spending the smart money.

Note: There is a particularly blurry line between Elite Veterans and Core performance and you will recognise some of the same names in both lists. That’s fine – the categories are there as a guide we do not need to spend too long making sure all of our players exactly fit the “target” portfolio. Close enough is good enough.

Early season is the time to exploit these elite players and the current aversion to age makes them great value. The mood is highly likely to shift on these players especially after a dividend increase. But they need to be elite quality so that consistent big scores drive attention in their direction.

When you find these elite veterans at value they should be bought greedily and to benefit you must be willing to do it first without needing social media reassurance to do so.

For all the constant talk of youth, in July > October last year it was the veterans who outstripped the youth for raw profit and it wasn’t even close. 

Whilst lazily repeating “what worked last year” is dangerous in this case the circumstances are such that the same is likely to happen again.

However, bear in mind that if the player does not have exceptional performance ability, an uncertain future, or are 32+ then the fear of age can start to look very justified.

We should take on the current incorrect belief that 28-31 year olds are undesirable, just as we did in early season last year with great results. But not push it too far because some older players are an unacceptable risk.

There is little point in signing older players who are just good or average. Older players will have to do a lot to convince. We only want the real elite veterans at + certainly as we head over 30+. 

High Potential Young Players

Examples: Curtis Jones, Stengs, Locatelli, Amiri, Esposito, Gouiri, Aouchiche, Paulinho, Trincao, Barrenetxea, Kulusevski, Szoboszlai, Brewster, Leao, David Brooks. 

This is what I look for in this category:

• 21 and under, maybe up to 23 for a special case
• Genuine performance potential at least
• A credible prospect of at least regular sub appearances next season at a big club, or if at a smaller club, regular first team football.
• Reasonable price with room to grow that hasn’t been pumped up recently. 
  

The above criteria rules out a lot of the dross that is routinely pumped at the youth end.

You can go for bad players that are likely to get bought but how often do most people find a young player cheap and then sell them when they get pumped? Not often. Most people buy as they are being pumped and get themselves into difficulty by holding them too long.

That exploitative approach is not for me but it can be effective provided you get them early and know when to sell. But I would flat out advise against chasing poor quality youth players who are rising rapidly.

What we really want is the real cream of the crop. In any given season we may see up to 10 genuinely fantastic young prospects on FI. We want to sign them up greedily early on – using our detailed scouting to give us an edge.

I have much, much better success with this targetted approach than by scatter gunning into a ton of random youth. 

You could, for example, just go and buy the entire Spain U21 side. But you will be left with maybe one good player and 10 poor ones. It’s not particularly good selection criteria. You aren’t using information that most other people do not have.

But if you know how to find a genuinely FI suitable young player and can match him to a good career path you may just be onto a winner. 

That is how through Scouting we discovered the likes of Havertz, Felix, Curtis Jones, Stengs, Foden, Aouchiche, Nkunku, Ruiz, Trincao, Chiesa, Esposito… It’s a long list. All pretty much household names now but they were not back then.

These high potential youth players generally don’t have to do much to rise. And because they are high quality they can put up a big score and impress.

Traders don’t need much convincing to buy them and there is no point making things harder than they need to be.

But crucially, because we have vetted their real FI potential through proper scouting, these young players are more reliable as long term assets than the overhyped garbage. 

Note: Despite repeated losses at the youth end lots of traders still think youth is low risk because they have so many years ahead – this is flat out wrong. Most “wonderkids” will not become a big club star and will drift into obscurity. Every football fan knows this.

1-3 Premium Proven Dividend Returners up to 15% portfolio value

Examples: Neymar, Bruno Fernandes, Kane, Pogba (if you believe he is staying – high risk!), Foden. 

Edit on 13 July – In light of the dividend announcement I would reduce the target for % portfolio value in premiums to 10%. 

A few premiums can be a good idea at most times, though they are not essential.

But I think the coming months will be a particularly good time to be holding some premiums (especially in the short term ahead of the dividend increase). 

High quality premiums are natural beneficiaries of the dividend increase. Emphasis on high quality, mind. Bear in mind that the majority of the top 10-15 players are there on speculation and hype rather than proven ability. 

And when you are paying premium prices you want Gucci. Not a knock off posing as the real thing.

I recommend the proven dividend returners like Neymar, Fernandes. They are proven returners and should naturally benefit as they keep stacking up dividends, especially if the payouts are greater. 

Something like Sancho at £14 is high risk and whilst you can get away with this to a point there might be a day when you can’t. It’s a big price to justify but in the favour of holders the dividend increase should help the cause. 

He’s not the worst offender by a long way because he has potential. But. You really want more than potential for this money. In Matching Engine world a £14 player can become a £7 player overnight. Say if he moved to Manchester United but struggled. Or almost worse, plays well for Manchester United but makes a limited impact on FI scoring. 

In my opinion “should I buy Sancho?” is the wrong question. It’s “why would I take such a risk for the prospect of the relatively limited reward that is left on the table?” It is beyond doubt that better profits are available elsewhere that do not carry this level of risk.

This is a classic example of paying too much for a good player.

So not everyone will agree but to me this doesn’t feel like smart trading. It did in January as per scouting when he was £7 but I cashed this out months ago.

Pogba has been a much worse offender and this could have been an absolute car crash for holders. They have ridden their luck here and possibly due to coronavirus they may just win this long odds bet. That doesn’t make it good trading – that means you made a bad decision but got away with it. 

It still may go badly if he leaves but he does look set to stay. So he could look fair value for media these days but performance credentials without penalties and in a deep role are questionable.

I’ve picked on these examples just to highlight the thought process I’d go through when picking a premium player and why I favour Bruno/Neymar above the rest.

You could also include Foden as readers will know he is a player I have liked for  a long while. But damn did he just get expensive and that rapid price rise would put me off. At least he has real potential though which makes him better than most.

A common mistake to avoid with premiums is having your portfolio swamped by them. 

If you go with the common approach of having the same number of shares in each player, it tends to skew your portfolio towards the most expensive players. This results in sub-optimal profits even if you are picking good players.

This kind of “accidental passive trading” maybe good for passive traders or bad traders but it is not good for traders seeking optimal results.

Note: If you want advice on how to structure a portfolio I have a guide available here. This is probably the most important Guide I have ever written and structure is overlooked so often when building a portfolio. The structure is almost as important as which players are in it.

I recommend 1-3 premiums comprising 15-20% of total portfolio value (up from 10% in the last strategy). But no more than that. 

No matter how good – any player can have a misfortune and nobody is bullet proof. Especially in the world of the Matching Engine risk management like this is crucial.

Unlikely though it may be, if something really bad happens that makes everyone want to sell site darling Bruno quickly all holders are screwed and there is little we can do about it after the event.

All we can do is make sure that if that happens the hit we take is bad but not devastating.

Transfer Prospects with Performance Strength

Examples: Demiral, Moussa Dembelé, Belotti, Fabian Ruiz, Coutinho, Milinkovic-Savic, Tolisso, 

In Key Strategy I’ve consistently advised picking up “hybrid” transfer prospects that also have performance suitability and that’s especially important now.

We want to avoid “punt” picks that are significantly overvalued outside of the transfer hype at this point. 

The criterion are:

– A high quality player, with real performance strength for the longer term at their expected destination club and ideally at their existing club too.

– Short term media potential is desirable but not essential if the player is a desirable hold at their destination club

– A reasonable value price, ideally dropping recently. 

A good general test is this: if we look at a player and think “I’d like him to get this transfer but if not I’d be content to hold him where he is” we’re generally going to be on safe ground.

That flexibility of having players who cover both the media and performance angles is great for an uncertain transfer window that is going to be volatile.

We can’t rely on a Summer of media focused on gossip like normal this year either. Match days cut down the media days available significantly. And journalists will be discussing football more than low key transfer gossip.

Value Performance

Examples: Demirbay, Plea, André Silva, Zielinski, Naby Keita, Palacios, Demiral, Pasalic, Petagna, Olmo. 

These are capable performance players who aren’t quite “core player” level but they can challenge for performance and could offer strong value. Basically, if the price is right, we might want them anyway even if they don’t tick every box like a core player does.

These are not a current priority though and signing up the big hitters whilst they are cheap would be my first port of call.

Ineligible League Players

Examples: Pedrinho, Gakpo, Ekkelenkamp, de Beek, Gravenberch, Almada, Tsygankov, Abdulkadir Omur.

These are fairly low priority right now, currently people have bigger distractions and I don’t expect one of those seemingly random surges for any Dutch kid who once kicked a ball at Ajax anytime in the coming weeks.

However, those surges will happen. Probably at least one before September/October. And the really good ones could start getting serious interest when they perform well next season, particularly in the Dutch/Portuguese leagues.

So it is worth having a collection of them at some point, probably by late August at the latest.

Many people may hold some now, I know I do. The difficulty is the bid price is usually insultingly low at the moment so if holding a good quality ineligible league player dropping them now for a 40%+ hit to free up funds only to want them back later seems like a bad move.

As long as they have a chance of scoring goals, playing well and getting transfer interest later I’d stick with.