This is my intro to Big Hype Little Substance – if you read this yesterday, head straight to the players!

In the previous five articles in this series I’ve focused on players who in my opinion have a strong mix of quality and value. 

But it would be remiss if we didn’t also consider the opposite – players who are currently popular but will find it very difficult to live up to their price tags due to high expectations and limited ability. 

This is a toxic combination. And it’s very common. 

If someone asked me what is the one difference between an average trader and a good one – this is it. Good traders do not hold overhyped players too long and achieve consistent progress rather than taking two steps forward one step back.

This doesn’t mean a good trader gets everything right. But there are good losses and bad losses. A strong player at value player who just doesn’t win because of bad luck or a bad patch of form? 

That’s going to happen and it’s acceptable, especially if we can cut it off early. You can make good bets that don’t come off. It’s ok.

But continuing to hold a poor quality, overpriced player who never really had much chance of winning or carried as much risk of collapse as a hype related price rise? Unforgivable.

As we saw from the analysis of the pre-season scouting last season that I mentioned yesterday, knowing the real ability of players is crucial. 

It not only saves you whatever you’d lose holding an overhyped player too long but it gives you the opportunity to use that money on something with a higher chance of success.

The average loss from a player I was cautious on last pre-season was -5.6% which sounds modest. That could range from a 102% profit in the best case all the way down to -34.7% in the worst. If you adjust that considering the market increased by 57% though the best case would be a 45% profit and the worst a 91% loss. That shows you how much the rise in the market papers over some of these losses.

97% of players I was cautious on did not outperform the market over pre-season to December. That’s just 2 out of the 58. Who were they? Chilwell and Sabitzer and both of them succumbed eventually – dipping sharply in January. No player can exist on hype forever – they will always get found out in the end if they do not have the dividend potential to back up their price tag.

Some players are exceptionally resilient. Sancho was not a brilliant trade from early season to December, he significantly underperformed the market before picking up in January. But with someone like him or Mbappé the hype is so big and the belief so strong that they can survive a lot. But eventually they too will have to justify the price tag.

Now if we contrast that with the players I was positive on – we can see it is not a perfect record as we can’t get everything right – but the overall result is vastly superior to chasing popular but expensive and weak players.

Here our top result is a 219.8% profit and the worst possible result a 4.44% profit. Adjusting for the rise in the market our best possible result is a 162.8% profit and our worst possible result is a 53% loss.

So, on average, we dodged a -5% loss in weak and popular players in favour of an average gain of 81%. An 86% swing in our end results. That’s huge. The key lesson here is that by chasing that popular but weak player we have not just cost ourselves 5% – we cost ourselves 86% because we made poor use of our limited funds.

And, this analysis assumed that we are locked into our trades from whenever we bought them in pre-season all the way through to December. As if I’d gone on holiday and not done anything at all. That’s a harsh measure of these results but it had to be that way so that we can compare like with like, otherwise you could cherry pick and say “yeah I dropped that player before his price fall”. I might well have, but I couldn’t have always proven it so I left that bit out of this analysis.

But it’s fair to say that with active trading we would likely have cut off some of the weakest earlier and brought our average trade profit up markedly from 81%.

I’m highlighting this analysis again now because I think it’s so important to hammer this home as we enter a new season.

There are times of year where chasing a bit of the hype is a good thing to do. Early season is not one of them.

Yet, it’s really hard for many to see that. It is genuinely difficult to ignore the hype and the social media pumping and avoid being influenced by it. So my hope is that some cold hard numbers will help with that.

On social media in particular lots of people loathe realistic assessments of players because it bursts the bubble. But realistic assessments of players are absolutely crucial and if I focused only on the players who were good value I’d only be doing half my job.

I don’t pull any punches on the site when it comes to assessing players fairly. And if last season’s results are anything to go by – my cautious predictions were justified 97% of the time.

So that’s an intro into the next part of pre-season preview – the overhyped players. Primarily these are going to be weak performance players at high prices due to either deliberate pumping from rats or well meaning but equally dangerous ignorance about the players real ability. Usually, people are seduced by a good trend fit – but a good trend fit is only one ingredient for longer term success.

Occasionally in this category there will be a strong performance player at too high a price. These are probably not quite so toxic to profits because at least they have something to back them up. But they aren’t all that great either and if we want the best results we need all our money in the most optimal places.

I would add that it can work out to hold overhyped players in pre-season and even into the early games provided you know the real quality of the player and are simply exploiting the foolishness of others. But you do have to know what you are doing. And get the timing right – you really don’t want to hold too long. 

We will see occasional big scores from poor players but they will be rare. When someone like Martinelli or Pulisic puts up a big score it’s almost certainly not going to be because holders were right after all it’s because of the natural variance in statistics and games of chance. 

The weakness of bad players will be exposed over time – so hold too long into the season at your peril. It’s much better to be shot of them before they have a chance to show how average or worse they really are because most of them absolutely will. 

With that uplifting introduction out of the way, let’s get to it.