Ah, the draft. The best day on the football calendar. Which type of day did you have? Whatever it was, it’s now over, and it’s time for a quick bit of reflection before the serious stuff begins. For the last few weeks, you guys have been using the hashtag #ratemydraft to get some thoughts, opinions, and advice on your teams and picks. Here at Fantrax we decided to go one better. We offered you the opportunity to have your draft analysed by our impartial writer, the Inner Geek. @NathanCorlett23 was the lucky winner, and here is that draft analysis…
Complete Draft Analysis
12th – Fight Milk FC
Rating: 2 out of 10
Receiving the wooden spoon is Fight Milk FC, who had the 5th spot in the draft but will be lucky if they ever see close to 5th spot in the league this season. If Drafts were like movies, this was The Titanic. Aubameyang, Traore, Greenwood, Antonio…everything was going so well. Then boom, an Aurier shaped iceberg hits and scrapes Dubravka sized holes down the side of the ship. Not to worry though, there are 20 lifeboats to save everyone – which ironically is about as many points as Thiago Silva (7th round), Ruben Neves (8th round), and Toby Alderweireld (9th round) are going to get this season. I’ve seen better players in the Celebs team at Soccer Aid. Anyway, we’ll end on a positive note: Fleck in the 11th is a good bit of business.
Best pick: Michail Antonio at 44. Worst pick: hmmm…(*closes eyes, spins around, points his finger at any player in the squad*)…Martin Dubravka at 68.
11th – Man Sh***y
Rating: 3 out of 10
Full disclosure: I’ve censored the team name here because it’s a little naughty. It’s also a little ironic because Man was this draft sh***y. Yes, Sterling in the 8 spot is an absolute steal. And Westwood in the 13th is very nice. Likewise Kebano in the 15th. But other than that, this draft is a lot of reaches. Case in point: Felipe Anderson. I think I might start more games for West Ham than he will this year. And there’s no questioning Laporte’s real life ability, but if he’s a 3rd rounder then that makes Robertson a 1st rounder (oh wait, that did actually happen…more on that later). Nathan has informed me that this league locks their lineups an hour before the first kickoff of the gameweek…this does not bode well for a team with so much rotation risk. I think this one might have had a few too many pre-draft beers.
Best pick: Raheem Sterling at 8. Worst pick: Rob Holding at 89.
10th – Team DHaile12
Rating: 3.5 out of 10
Love the nonchalant attitude towards a team name. Unfortunately, it seems that nonchalance translated over to the draft preparation. And who can blame DHaile? I mean, Googling Jonny’s injury status would’ve taken a good amount of time. Why waste that 20 seconds when you can just draft him in the 5th round and figure it all out later? This team is scary. And not in a good way. The 4 forwards – Aguero, Yarmolenko, Ashley Barnes, and Origi – played a grand total of 403 minutes post-restart. Yikes. Someone needs to find a way of grabbing Watkins or Wilson. At least the midfield has a nice balance of guaranteed minutes (Zaha/Kante) and upside (Foden/Moura).
(Side note: this is the team who took Robertson in the first. To be fair, they were the 12th pick and took Aguero immediately after, so it might as well have been the 2nd round, but still).
Best pick: Phil Foden at 61. Worst pick: Jonny at 60.
9th – Werner Schnitzel
Rating: 5 out of 10
You would think that taking three top-20 players in the first three rounds would set you up for a really nice draft. Think again. Schnitzel followed up the formidable picks of Werner, Pulisic, and Maddison with the dubious selections of Reece James and Ederson. In fact, it was a bit of a rollercoaster of a draft, with the middle rounds – Soyuncu, Bergwijn, and Pereira – reigniting some hope before the later rounds – Bamford, Bellerin, and El Ghazi – extinguished it again. I forecast a fair few weeks when Schnitzel will be playing 1 up-top…you realise Benteke and Jay-Rod went undrafted right? Credit where credit is due, this team has the potential to explode if the stars align, but it worries me that Soyuncu and Maddison are the only safe bets in the whole squad.
Best pick: Matheur Pereira at 94. Worst pick: Ederson at 51/Patrick Bamford at 118.
8th – Bottle Job FC
Rating: 5.5 out of 10
We’re starting to get into “I-don’t-want-to-gauge-my-eyes-out-when-looking-at-this-team” territory with Bottle Job, who had a decent draft except for the Pope pick in the 5th round. As a reminder, a good rule of thumb to use when deciding the best round to draft a goalkeeper: think of a number, add 15. That’s the round. Keita in the 14th round is a helluva grab for a guy that could perform big time this season – I’m guessing there’s no (real) Liverpool fans in this league because they would never let him fall this low. The defence should score nicely, even if van Dijk and Chilwell were reached for. Lundstram is a remnant of the game that shall not be named – he doesn’t do the business in proper fantasy football.
Best pick: Naby Keita at 160. Worst pick: Nick Pope at 57.
7th – Allison Burgers
Rating: 5.5 out of 10
Okay, let’s talk about the elephant in the room: two goalkeepers were drafted here, one of which was in the 2nd round. Genuine question, was this a forfeit? Did Allison cheat last year and this was their punishment? Taking this potential limitation into consideration, this isn’t a bad draft at all. They may have fumbled a snap and started on their 1-yard line, but most of these picks have now got them to field goal range (or for the non-NFL fans: the team has posted a decent target after losing two wickets in the first over). There’s a lot of solid, safe picks here: Son, Moutinho, Shelvey, Redmond, Saiss, McGinn…I can’t see the Burgers getting blown out in many games this season. We’ll ignore the Hal Robson-Kanu pick.
Best pick: John McGinn at 114. Worst pick: Alisson at 18 (or Saliba at 138 if the GK’s were a forfeit).
6th – Rottenham Hoopspur
Rating: 6 out of 10
6th spot for Rottenham, but they do have the most consensus 1:1 pick of all-time in KDB. Last season’s Player of the Year (I’m refusing to acknowledge that Henderson bulls**t – I encourage you to do the same for your own sanity) will win some matchups on his own, which is just as well because some of the other picks will contribute nothing. Ake and Patricio in rounds 6 and 7 makes me think someone got distracted for 10 minutes and missed their turns, whilst the Fernandinho pick was good, if this were 2018. The first 5 picks are solid, and getting Lo Celso at 97, Maupay (he’s the starting forward of what could be a good Brighton side!) at 144, and KWP (the full-back for the most under-the-radar team in the league) at 192 was anything but rotten.
Best pick: Kyle Walker-Peters at 192. Worst pick: Nathan Ake at 72.
5th – Baggers FC
Rating: 6.5 out of 10
Nice little handcuff strategy by Baggers, picking up Jota and Podence. It’s a shame Wolves then spent £36m on another forward. Not to mention that Neto is still there, and a certain Raul Jimenez. It’s more crowded than Foden and Greenwood’s hotel room. Can’t fault the first three picks – that’s minimum 30 points per week, with a potential 90 pointer from time to time. Game over when that happens. Martinelli with the 50th pick is a strange one – I don’t even think Momma Martinelli would have drafted him there. Likewise Riccy P in the 8th round. He may be a points machine but that machine won’t be up and running until 2021, and bench spots are valuable. Zouma aside, the late-round picks are excellent.
Best pick: Pablo Hernandez at 146. Worst pick: Gabriel Martinelli at 50.
4th – Asterisk FC
Rating: 7.5 out of 10
Okay now we’re talking. Asterisk has come to play ball. Solid pick after solid pick; this team is going to be up there. Rashford, Digne, and JWP have all been taken at a great value (JWP, in particular, should be up in the 30s, not taken at pick 45). Trossard and Baldock in rounds 10 and 11 are also steals. So why only 4th then, you ask? Well, Minamino was taken with the 100th pick, which is about as many minutes as he’ll play. And when you remove him, there are only two forwards in the squad. There are also not enough explosive options – when you already have JWP and Henderson, you could spend the 14th and 16th rounds on greater risks, rather than the safe bets of Rodri and Milivojevic. High floor, but too low a ceiling to be crowned champions.
Best pick: George Baldock at 124. Worst pick: Takumi Minamino at 100.
3rd – Allison 2nd pick LOL
Rating: 8 out of 10
For a league that drafted 6 defenders in the first 32 picks, it’s quite unbelievable that Trent was left as late as the 11th pick. That won’t bother A2PLOL, who has a premium defender with an ADP of 6.5 that they can just set and forget for the whole season. Vardy and Mitrovic should also play most minutes and it’s a nice tandem of goal reliant with ghost points. Throw in possibly the biggest sleeper forward this season in round 11 (Che Adams) and you’ve got yourself a decent front 3. A midfield of Pogba, Barnes, Soucek, and Eze has the potential to do some serious damage too. The negatives? Well for starters, the team name. We were all beginners once upon a time. Yes, they f***ed up, but we should be praising them for effort, not chastising their ineptitude. Burning bridges now can hurt you later on when it’s time to trade. Oh, and Gomez and Schmeichel were taken way too high.
Best pick: Eberechi Eze at 86. Worst pick: Joseph Gomez at 62.
2nd – Team Eddy2201
Rating: 8.5 out of 10
In the words of Montell Jordan: this is how we doooooo it. Great draft by Eddy. Unfortunately, post-draft transfers have not been kind, and have turned Sigurdsson and Ritchie from decent late round punts to somewhat wasted picks. Even without these two, this midfield is fire. Bruno, Ziyech, Hojbjerg, Norwood, and Harrison? I’ll take that every day of the week. Abraham and Alonso in the 12th and 13th could be terrible selections…but they’re also one injury away from being legitimate top 20 in their position players. Worth the risk. Not overly convinced by the forward options (Firmino, Pepe, and Haller) but the defence of Tarkowski, Azpi, and Egan can’t help but score points. Oh, and talking of Azpilicueta: 9th round. 102nd pick. That’s the steal of the whole draft right there.
Best pick: Cesar Azpilicueta at 102. Worst pick: David de Gea at 78.
1st – Frankie’s Showtime Blues
Rating: 9.5 out of 10
This here, people, is a DRAFT. There is literally not a single pick I don’t like. And there’s a fair few that I love (see: Willian at 39, ASM at 34, and McNeil at 63). Frankie’s Showtime is clearly the Juventus of this league: so far ahead of their competition that it’s actually a little suspicious. I mean, McBurnie in the 14th round, Armstrong in the 13th, and Mee in the 12th? On what uncoerced planet is that happening? Crazily, the biggest issue here is that the draft might be too good. Hear me out: come gameweek 1, if some of these don’t play (and the 4 United and Burnley picks are guaranteed not to), and you’re struggling to field a full 11, who do you drop? To copy a horribly overused cliché when discussing selection dilemmas, “it’s a nice headache to have”. The only thing stopping this team from walking away with the title is if the manager’s trading ability is as good as Fight Milk’s drafting ability.
Best pick: Willian at 39. Worst pick: Luke Thomas at 178.
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