Trade Targets - Round 6

Rippin and Tearin wrote:

This is the flaw with the Celeb team though. There are about 4 active people thinking about more than just 'this weeks' moves, but a tonne of people who come into vote on a week by week basis - its nearly impossible to plan more than 1 week out. I've tried and failed miserably. We can talk about it, but when it comes to the vote, there's very little thought beyond 1 week.

So, Im not sure what we do to be honest. I agree with you, its just that its gonna be very tough for this team.

I'd add to what you are saying by suggesting to won't be long before we also have to start planning how we put the war chest together to get guys like Farrah, Smith, Twal, RTS, Harris, Matterson, etc after 12 - all these guns who will play 16. A lot of these will require cash to upgrade from the lies of Mahoney, Rein, CNK, etc.

How do you know people's intentions for voting long/short term? Only a few of us post detailed trade reasons, but that doesn't mean that others who vote don't have valid reasons for planning the way we do.

We have been max trading, but we would have saved at least 1 trade if not for Peats injury announcement and a mid-round play for Rein.
We've also had trade plans disrupted due to Brown/Keighran/Burns all getting injured/dropped in the same week - just bad luck and nothing to do with poor planning.

Collectively we have been a little hasty to drop players after 1 bad performance, but I think our trade ins are generally solid

I think barring injury, we don't need to make a trade to our starting CTRs and WFBs now until origin.

Maybe if there is a tempting gun who gets a low score or 2 and sees his price drop we might want to make a move, but otherwise I think we can sit on Bateman, Nikora, Teddy, Ponga, CNK until round 12.
Maybe TTrbo might be worth making a play at depending on when/how he returns from injury but that is still weeks away at least.

Its is definitely worth thinking about what guns we want to bring in.

Cook a good target but he's not cheap so we need a plan of getting money for him.

In the halves i think its better value going for Cleary over DCE. As the season progresses their averages are likely to converge from where they are right now, so the $200k discount for Cleary makes him very tempting.
Some may think DCE will maintain his current high scoring and want to make a play for him (which may mean forgoing Cook for a time)

Personally, I'd like to bring Twal in over Sutton. I think he is more likely to maintain good scoring long term and be a genuine keeper. I would have liked to have traded him inalready but losing our halves and backline players made him less of a priority.
Sutton IMO will be good, but not quite sure if he'll be good enough to justify a trade in and out again.

This is the sort of vote that will help us plan future trades - whether we go for guys who have started poorly and hope they bounce back, or guys who have started well and hope they continue.

Here is my effort to categorize players to spark some thinking of timing for trades and positioning ahead of byes. Note that I am trying to be representative of the thoughts of most here, my personal strategy is quite different to this (I am happy to trade keepers out personally, to bring in value lower cost keepers). Feel free to contribute where you may have different ideas, or I am missing opportunities:

Hold long term - keepers
Fifita - Plays 2nd bye, season keeper
Taupau - Plays 1st bye, was in original team as a season keeper
Murray - May play first bye. Potential to end up as 80 minute player. Will get a better understanding the next few rounds if he is really keeper material or not - could end up as a hold medium term
Arrow - Plays origin. If playing injured can be inconsistent, on his day is a gun. Personally happy to trade him to get cut priced Lolo if needed, but not everyone will want to do this.
Bateman/Nikora - best center combo ever, no need to touch them this season short of long term injury.
Ponga/Teddy - Both top 4 WFBs, Ponga also provides HLF cover. Will keep even though both play origin
Haas - Could easily be a keeper if he plays big minutes each week, will know soon enough. Will take a long time to max out regardless

Hold medium term to at least round 12
Rein/Mahoney - Going to average 50ish - hold until round 12, will be high 700ks by then, then very tradeable
CNK - Plays 1st bye, will gain value to be likely mid 600k value, then tradeable asset
Carty - As long as getting 80 minutes @ 2RF and decent scores should stay in team to max out maybe in 600k range. Keep till round 12 if these conditions hold.
Burns - If he lasts in the team long enough to start playing again, would be a hold to round 12 and max out his value, likely in 700k range. May be too many trigger happy voters for him to last this long though.

Hold to max value then trade to players that play the 1st Bye
1. Garner - Max out value then trade out ahead of 1st Bye. Don't assume he wont get minutes when Lawrence is back. Could become even better if he gets lock based on work rate when playing in the middle in small sample size. Likely hits $750k before trading out.
2. Morgan - Likely plays origin again. Should be maxed out for value and some great non-origin playing halves may have dropped enough in price to be a straight swap around 11/12. Max value maybe $650k?
3. CHT - trade when maxed out by round 12 - $500k? really hard to know.
4. Lawrie - As long as he keeps getting named at lock, keep milking him. If he gets long enough should max out at maybe 750k then trade ahead of 12
5. Burr - Same as Lawrie, lower max value though, maybe 650k range
6. Ravalawa - Likely first trade out of those in this category. Lowest max value, lowest potential. Very tradeable when Burns is playing again. May max at $400k if lucky.

Ok, so lets assume we have 6 trade out targets by round 12, potentially 7 if Burns is going to be traded also.

The question becomes based on the timing of these players being maxed out, their value when they are ready to be traded and likely trade in targets, who are we best to get in with a pool of $3.7M for 6 players or $4.2M for 7 players (including Burns). Amusingly, I think if we have the 7 player option available, Burns makes the short-list of players to trade back in.
1. Taumalolo (great pick up, discounted keeper when back)
2. Turbo (unlikely to play Origin, may play 11 and 12 and be discounted. Looked amazing scoring 3 tries in 120 minutes on the park so far this season)
3. James (Discounted due to 2RF, may / may not play origin)
4. Egan (New starting hooker role, could eventually be 80 min hooker for Penrith potentially)
5. Kikau (Could be anything this season based on the try we saw last week)
6. Pearce (undervalued, needs to show form again)
7. Cleary (undervalued, needs to show form again, could miss origin)
8. Burns (Still lots of value to come, only if rushed out of the team)
9. Other opportunistic trade ins due to injury/form/team composition such as:
Fainu - If he becomes starting hooker with Koro in the halves. Eventually Des will see the light.

Feel free to add any others you can think of. If we can rank these round 12 opportunities and see how they measure up within budget, we can become much more strategic going forward with our planning.

Other curve balls would be things like Moga getting a starting spot, doesn't play 12 but could be irresistable cash cow if available. Don't think there are many others that are likely to qualify as must have cash cows that don't play 12, other than maybe Harper if he gets a shot. But even though things like this may happen, we are much better off having a prioritized list of trade ins/outs and likely timing, than just working tactically week by week.

Rippin and Tearin wrote:All sorts of ways you can get both Sutton and Twal next week. I'll wait and see how things play out though before I start chucking ideas around.

Who else can we get in our team though that likely makes $200k, is solid enough to not only put in our 17 but boost the scoring projections, and plays 12. If there is someone else out there that can do that let me know and they are in my team!!

Haas is a better option than Sutton in most respects. Long term Sutton could well average more, but for money making and value Haas is the go - that's why Haas is already in our team.

I think $200k is the upper end of what Sutton will make, rather than the likely outcome (especially given we won't be getting him this week so there's another price rise we miss out on)
Maybe he can push on and get up towards a 50 average, but not confident on that happening at the moment.

Milchy wrote:

Haas is a better option than Sutton in most respects. Long term Sutton could well average more, but for money making and value Haas is the go - that's why Haas is already in our team.

I think $200k is the upper end of what Sutton will make, rather than the likely outcome (especially given we won't be getting him this week so there's another price rise we miss out on)
Maybe he can push on and get up towards a 50 average, but not confident on that happening at the moment.

In 3 games as starting lock, Sutton has scored 34, 45, 47. A 45 average is optimistic if anything, 50 is a number he still hasn't reached in any game yet. Would prefer a target like Ogden for the value available, saving around $120k to spend elsewhere and likely faster cash generation.

Rippin and Tearin wrote:

100% agree but Im talking about someone that we dont already have....

Who is a trade out to get Sutton in though? See my analysis above. Rava is the only cow close to being ready for milking and we need him as a back up center for now. If Burns is where the cash comes from, would prefer Egan instead, or no trade.

Good summary of potential trade inouts mattnz

Few comments.

Arrow is certainly not an urgent trade out, but I'd be happy to ditch him before origin if it looks like he won't be quite good enough for our final 17 (on the condition the tarde in is a final 17 player)

I would be very surprised if we got close to $750k for Lawrie.
Would mean he'd need a significant bump to his average. Also (and this applies to all trade outs) the last $30k or so come very slowly in price rises - so unless he manages a one off big score of 65+, we won't be trading him out at max value.

Ravalava is going to bust out a big score at some point. It may or may not be worth waiting for, but ideally he scores a 70 like Sivo did and we can ditch him a couple weeks later.


For trade-ins, Crichton should be monitored.
I don't think Egan will be worth the punt. We'd want to see a couple of weeks from him to see what his role is going to be like (even then I foresee the potential for swapping and changing between him and Katoa) so by the time its clear if he is going to be good value, then we'll have missed most of his price rises.

Milchy wrote:
Good summary of potential trade inouts mattnz

Few comments.

Arrow is certainly not an urgent trade out, but I'd be happy to ditch him before origin if it looks like he won't be quite good enough for our final 17 (on the condition the tarde in is a final 17 player)

I would be very surprised if we got close to $750k for Lawrie.
Would mean he'd need a significant bump to his average. Also (and this applies to all trade outs) the last $30k or so come very slowly in price rises - so unless he manages a one off big score of 65+, we won't be trading him out at max value.

Ravalava is going to bust out a big score at some point. It may or may not be worth waiting for, but ideally he scores a 70 like Sivo did and we can ditch him a couple weeks later.


For trade-ins, Crichton should be monitored.
I don't think Egan will be worth the punt. We'd want to see a couple of weeks from him to see what his role is going to be like (even then I foresee the potential for swapping and changing between him and Katoa) so by the time its clear if he is going to be good value, then we'll have missed most of his price rises.

I wouldn't be surprised to see Egan get a couple of weeks at 60 minutes and if performing well and his fitness is up to it, he gets 80 minutes. Katoa not being named and him already having a low BE, a few weeks out from the first bye would make him a must have trade in at that point.