So with no Ablett or Swan, i’ll just need to back the cattle i’ve got and hope they can improve from here on in i guess. Barlow isn’t a bad Captain choice, though i haven’t had the coconuts to give him the ‘C’ yet. :)
Might start looking outside of the midfield a bit and start considering blokes like Hodge or Didak that have been pretty consistent thus far, and are capable of whopping scores.

If you’re worried about a captain option, don’t trade Barlow out. Make him captain. I reckon there’s crazier things you could try, if you’re not happy with what you’ve got and can’t afford those premium captain choices.

Barlow won’t score in the top six mids, but trading him out because not having him would be unique makes no sense to me. It’s always good when you nail an uncommon selection, and I’m prone to those in my starting squad, but I can never get me head around unique for the sake of unique. You can gain 1000 points by chipping away less than 85 points per week on any team, so I don’t see why you’d need to be unique for the sake of unique. That’s completely achievable with a team full of common selections, because by sheer force of mathematics there isn’t a huge chance your team will be the same as those you’re chasing.

My mids are, as you asked: Bartel, Boyd, Pendles, Murphy, Gibbs, Barlow.
I picked Bartel and Boyd for their mandatory 100-110 points every week and started Pendles and Murphy with the premise that they could lift their averages to around that mark, also. Gibbs was the final addition to my midfield.
In hindsight, i would’ve much preferred to have started say, Ablett/Swan instead of Bartel and picked a mid-pricer for improvement instead of Murphy, leaving myself potentially 2 or 3 midfield upgrades throughout the year, instead of 1. (Baring in mind Barlow was never picked as a keeper, obviously)

Like you said though, there are 21 other players in my side and i think i will now sensibly shift my attention to upgrading one of Ziebell, Waters or Maguire to a premium this week.

Once again, thanks for your input guys!

“Sandilands had 36 hit-outs and kicked a goal in Sunday’s clash, but the ruckman had minimal impact around the ground, finishing with 10 possessions.

Harvey said he was aiming to decrease the star big man’s workload. “We’ve been doing that, sort of getting his game time to around 90 per cent. It was up around 98 per cent,” he said. “We’re slowly getting that down. Ideally we’d get that down to 80-85.

“(But) we’ve got a young team that needs a guy like him out there as much as we can.”

I really hope he starts killing the possessions then if he is going to see less game time.

My second suggestion, if you are still very keen to get rid of him, is perhaps waiting a few weeks. If you look likely of getting into your league finals (and having Barlow certainly won’t work against you here!), this may be the time to consider a different option. Around this time you will know how many injuries you have and how many trades are remaining – this is where you can be a bit more creative and adventurous to get that edge over your opposition. This is where you look at the other 7 teams in your top eight and establish who they have and what premiums they are missing. There may be a chance only 3 of them have Ablett, perhaps Montagna is in only one. Here is where you can then choose the best fit for your team (if trading Barlow is still an option) and using it much more to your advantage. Getting rid of him now won’t change much in the short-term (possibly the difference of 10-20 points a game, which isn’t much!), but perhaps trading him when all the cards are on the table could be a much more calculated move with much better results! Plus, who’s to say that one of your other midfielders doesn’t go down in the next couple of weeks? These things happen!

Hope this helps!!

The “popular vs. unique” argument will go on forever i think. I guess i tend to swing on the unique side a bit more when picking my team but by the same token i can see why popular players are popular. If you at your field of players and take away the names on the screen, for example (Ablett, Swan etc.) and you’re still getting 120-140 from them, regardless of who it is and regardless of the fact that 160,000 other people might have that player, too.

Greg, to give you a brief idea, i have 10 trades left and envisage 1 more forward upgrade and 1 potentially 2 more defender upgrades. So calculating that i would have to double-trade along the way, i would really only be leaving myself 4-5 trades for injuries, which is a little worrying.

The Barlow trade would definitely be a luxury trade, and not entirely necessary. More like a frustration trade, if you like! ;)
So if i can get my team into a good position come finals and can spare a trade or 2, i don’t see the Barlow trade as a bad thing either.