The method

Is the minus-4 worth it? A simple way to decide

Every week, the same argument: take the hit or hold. Most of the debate is vibes. The actual question has three numbers in it — what the new player is expected to score, what the old one is, and four — and two of the three are knowable before you press confirm.

The arithmetic

A transfer beyond your free ones costs four points, paid immediately and with certainty. The return is the differencebetween the incoming player’s expected points and the outgoing player’s — not the incoming player’s total. Swapping a 5-point expectation for a 6-point expectation buys you one expected point and costs four. That is the whole calculation, and it is why most hits lose.

net = E[pts in] − E[pts out] − 4

Where do the expectations come from? The same place the rest of this site gets them: this weekend’s match prices, de-vigged and fitted to a goal model, joined to each player’s share of his team’s output. Forward-looking, matchup-specific, team news priced in.

What a one-week gain of four actually takes

For the swap alone to pay this gameweek, the incoming player must out-project the outgoing one by more than four points — roughly the gap between a mid-table midfielder at home and a premium captain-candidate in a plum fixture. Gaps like that exist, but they are rare between players you would plausibly swap. The common realistic gap is one to two points. This is why the calculator says “no” a lot: honesty, not caution.

The exception that genuinely clears the bar: your player is flagged, suspended or benched — his expected points collapse toward zero, and the gap to any healthy replacement widens to hit-paying size. Forced transfers are where the minus-4 most often makes sense.

The multi-week part, kept honest

You keep the incoming player after Saturday, so a hit that loses half a point this week can still be right if he out-scores the old player for a month. True. But be careful which direction that cuts: it is the argument everyone reaches for after the one-week maths says no. The engine here deliberately sees a single gameweek — that is where match prices are sharp — so the tool prices the immediate part exactly and says so, and leaves the multi-week judgement with you rather than dressing a guess up as a number.

A sensible discipline: if the one-week net is close to zero, upcoming fixtures can tip it. If the one-week net is minus three, the next month has to be doing a lot of work — and you are usually better banking the free transfer and going again.

Weigh this week’s hit