Last week we talked about how you can spread out your draft fantasy football picks across the different positions to establish a core of players. Now let’s make your draft out of sight. Continuing our draft preparations, I’d like to talk about the importance of flexibility and the benefits of rostering two players per EPL team instead of the maximum allowed of three.

At the risk of stating the obvious, you want as many undroppable superstars on your team as you can muster. But it’s just not possible to have 15 of these in your squad, so make the fringe players one-hit wonders, injury replacements, and the player with the most set pieces on the worst possible team. These third Forwards, fourth and fifth Midfielders and Defenders can combine to outscore a premium draft pick if you play your cards right.

I’m all about investing in the Big Six (plus Everton and Southampton), but I’ve observed over the past few seasons that owning only two each of the top teams’ players in the early gameweeks has given me the flexibility to draft in a Marcus Rashford when it was his time to shine, or David Luiz after he rejoined the Blues. Or when Ben Davies replaced an injured Danny Rose last year, it was nice to have the space to pick him up even when it wasn’t clear how long Rose would be out. Leroy Sané was a gem after he made his way into the City starting XI, and he made his into mine because I booted Nicolas Otamendi and could take on the young German starlet.

A few tips to make this happen:

1. Don’t box yourself in during the draft itself. You might be lucky enough to pick up Juan Mata, Henrihk Mkhitaryan, and Anthony Martial in your draft, but you’ll be kicking yourself if Antonio Valencia slips into the later rounds and you wish you could pick him up. It would be even worse if you wanted to pick up United’s in-season signing but needed to drop someone to do it. Another scenario I could see happening is that you select Ross Barkley, Kevin Mirallas, and Leighton Baines in your draft and then miss out on the much-hyped Jordan Pickford and have to settle for someone with much less potential.

2. You don’t need both goalkeepers to be from the Big Six. In fact it can be a detriment because you can only play one of them at a time, and having an underutilized player here can hinder your ability to pick up someone like Alex Oxlade-Chamberlain during last season’s double gameweeks, or Cesc Fabregas when he started playing more regularly and was dropped by those who lost faith early on. If the player you acquire ends up sticking, great! And if not, you still have a rotating door position to pit against the weakest opposition.

3. Red card and suspension replacements are great in draft. This mostly applies to Defenders top defenses can be hard to buy-into if you missed out in the draft. As long as you can be reasonably sure whoever you pick up will get minutes, you should be really active on the waiver wire because you get as many moves as you want. I’m not advocating dropping your star if they’re out a week, but if your fifth defender is lowly owned anyway and you haven’t limited yourself by keeping three players, replacements can be easy value.

Feel free to follow @Cjacksondraft for links and any draft fantasy football advice I can give you.

@Cjacksondraft is an avid fantasy football (soccer) fan who currently lives in the San Francisco Bay Area and loves his day job. Peaked during the 2003 Kentucky All “A” Regional tournament. I still like waking up early on Saturdays and Sundays to watch EPL live on the West Coast.