With just days to go until the 2021/22 Fantasy Bundesliga season kicks off, our series of preview articles continues with a strategy guide for Matchdays 1 to 3.

If you’re new to the game or just need a reminder of the rules, check out our ‘how to play’ guide here.

And we’ve also now got a Season Ticker to help with your planning and Set-Piece Takers tab, to boot.

SIGN UP TO FANTASY BUNDESLIGA AND PICK A TEAM HERE

The Bundesliga announced that there will be five unlimited transfer periods (also known as ‘Wild Card Weeks’) in its Fantasy game in the 21/22 season. The first takes place on 30 August – 11 September. This means that we only need to set up our initial teams with Matchdays 1-3 in mind. In this article we will discuss the strategies that will help you make the most of this brief window of the season.

A UNIQUE OPPORTUNITY

By now you probably have familiarized yourself with some basic Bundesliga Fantasy strategy. However, setting up a team for only three matchdays changes everything. It offers us a unique opportunity to go against the grain of traditional strategy and adopt a more maverick style. The risk is low and the potential reward is high. If it works, you will see yourself at the top of the standings with a healthy team value to spend during the Wild Card Week. If it doesn’t, you still have an entire season to make up for it.

But before we begin, a tip for newbies to the game: Don’t worry too much about this strategy or your team. Instead, use these three Matchdays to learn the rules of the game, the basic strategies (e.g. mid-Matchday substitutions, star player selection, etc.), and the player pool. Play conservative and choose reliable players who you are already familiar with. You can apply all that you learned during these three Matchdays during the Wild Card Week.

RE-THINK YOUR SQUAD DEPTH

During normal periods of the season, you want 15 regular starters for their clubs on your squad. But in this smaller window, you can afford to have a couple 1.0M players on your bench. These players are often called “enablers” because they enable you to upgrade other positions on your squad.

For example, let’s pretend that your squad is currently without Erling Haaland (16.0M). You want him, but you are 4.0M short. It is more beneficial to your team to downgrade a 5.0M defender to a non-playing 1.0M defender to enable you to afford Haaland. Over three Matchdays, that upgrade is more likely to produce the big points than having a “balanced” team with 15 regular starters.

Goalkeepers and defenders are usually the lowest scoring positions in your squad, so this is where you want to downgrade. Having a total of two enablers in your team should free up the funds for you to afford most of the players you want at your other positions.

DITCH YOUR SECOND GOALKEEPER

The easiest way to free up some transfer budget is by downgrading your second goalkeeper. The goalkeeper position offers only one opportunity for a substitution to pay off, and it is rarely worth a significant amount of points. The cheapest starting goalkeepers in the game are priced at 5.0M, which means that you would save at least 4.0M by downgrading to a 1.0M enabler. If you do so, I suggest transferring in Philip Pentke (1.0M), as there is a small chance he gets one start during the first three Matchdays.

COMMIT TO NINE PLAYERS

We are allowed three transfers per week, or a total of six transfers between now and Matchday 3. This means that you must commit to at least nine of the players who you start with in Matchday 1. Make sure these players are regular starters for their club and that you are comfortable with them in your squad each Matchday.

However, I advise that you mentally prepare yourself to keep more than nine players during this stretch. Injuries and rotation are always a risk and you may need to use your transfers to fix problems you did not anticipate having to fix.

TARGET THE EASY FIXTURES

Another advantage of this period is that we can afford to choose a few players who we normally would not if they have two or three favorable matchups during Matchdays 1-3. We most certainly will fill most of our squad with players from the best clubs, but there are some lower-table clubs that have relatively easy fixtures too. Bielefeld is a good example. They have one of the league’s best defenses and play Freiburg, Furth, and a struggling Frankfurt side in their first three matches.