Once the draft is over, you can change your team by making trades and transferring players. Any player can have any one of five statuses:
- Squad
- Owned
- Free Agent
- On Waivers
- Blocked
Squad players are the players on your squad. These players can be traded to other managers in exchange for their players, or they can be dropped when you pick up a Free Agent.
Owned players are owned by somebody in the league. If you want to bring in owned players from another team, you have to offer players in return.
You can offer multiple players in a trade, but each side of the trade must have the same number of players in each position. You also cannot offer a trade if it means you will have more than 3 players from a single club in your team if the trade were to be accepted. It doesn’t matter if the person you are trading with will have an invalid team. However, the trade can only be accepted if both teams remain valid when accepted.
Sometimes a trade will be offered and it will no longer be valid at a later date due to teams changing. If this happens, the person you’ve offered the trade to will not be able to be accept the trade.
Free Agents are players that are not owned by anyone in the league and are neither on on Waivers or Blocked. Free agents can be picked up at any time by anyone in the league as the person’s squad remains valid. The rules for free agents are first come, first serve. Whoever picks up a Free Agent first gets him.
On Waivers and Blocked players are explained in greater depth in the next section about waivers. Blocked players cannot be picked up. On Waivers players can only be picked up with a successful waiver request.
The Waiver System
Each season, players that weren’t expected to do well surprise us and become hot commodities that everyone wants to bring in to their team. Additionally, the same is true for new players joining the Premier League during the season. The Waiver System gives everyone a fair chance of transferring players like this into your squad.
When a player is on Waivers, nobody can pick him up. Managers in the league can only make a waiver request to pick up players on waivers. When waivers are processed, the league manager highest in the waiver queue that made a waiver request for the player will pick him up. After a manager makes a successful waiver request, he drops to the bottom of the waiver queue.
Players are placed on waivers in the following situations:
- At the start of each gameweek.
- When added to the game (for at least 24 hours).
- If dropped by a team in the league (for at least 12 hours).
- When his club plays a match (for at least 12 hours).
Waiver requests are processed every Tuesday and Friday at 10am GMT (11am BST).
If there is less than the specified amount of time between the time the player is supposed to go on waivers until the the next waiver request processing time, the player will be blocked until the processing time at which point the player’s status will be changed from Blocked to On Waivers. When a player is blocked, nobody in the league can pick him up or make an offer for him.
As an example, if a player is dropped at 11pm on a Monday night, since there are only a few hours until waivers are processed on Tuesday morning, the player be blocked and no one will be able to pick him up. On Tuesday morning at 10am, the player will go on waivers. On Friday the waiver requests for the player will be processed and if he is unclaimed he will become a free agent.
League waiver settings
The waiver order determines which team has the first chance to claim a player off waivers. Below are the two options available in leagues:
- Reset Each Week to Inverse Order Of Standings: If selected, the team in last place will be reset to first in the waiver order (and so on for each team’s league rank) at the start of each gameweek during the season.
- Move to Last After Claim, Never Reset Order: If selected the waiver order does not reset on a weekly basis.
Regardless of which option is selected, after a team makes a successful waiver claim that team is shifted to the last position in the waiver queue.
The initial waiver order for both types of league is the reverse draft order. Whoever picked last in the draft will be first in the waiver order for the first gameweek.
If two teams have the same number of points, the relative draft order for these two teams will not be changed when moving gameweeks.
The waiver queue is not reset during the first gameweek, since all teams in the league have 0 points.
Multiple waiver requests
If you make multiple waiver requests, the one you make first will be processed first. Note that after each successful waiver claim, you’ll drop to the bottom of your league’s waiver queue. Multiple waiver requests cannot be made in the same trade because only one player on waivers can be processed at a time, which also means that Free players will not be able to be processed with players on waivers.
Waivers Example
It’s Saturday and Arsenal are playing Chelsea at 5pm. Before 5pm all unowned Arsenal and Chelsea players are free agents that anyone can pick up. At 5pm, all players for both clubs go on waivers until Tuesday morning. This means that you can’t pick them up anymore. You can only make a waiver request for them.
Ozil goes and scores a hat-trick and nobody in the league owns him. 5 teams in your league put in a waiver request for him. On Tuesday morning, the waiver requests are processed and whoever is highest in the waiver queue that made a waiver request for Ozil will pick him up and drop to the bottom of the waiver queue.
When the new gameweek starts, if the Reset Each Week to Inverse Order Of Standings option was selected, the waiver queue is reset to the reverse order of the standings giving teams with fewer points more of a chance to catch up.