This week has been all about change. Football Index HQ hit us with a new season announcement on Tuesday night, bringing a bit of extra spice to proceedings. The main news on the night was the PB matrix changes (which I’ve covered in more detail in a separate post) and the outcome of this was to focus traders minds back onto proven PB performers ahead of the return of competitive football.

This sudden shift in trend has had a major impact on the profitability of my three funds. The young Potentials have fallen through the floor this week with 70% of the fund ending the week lower than the week before, including some sizable drops on the likes of Cuisance, Ismaila Sarr and Gouiri. All in all, this led to a drop of around 1% on the overall yield. Bad times.

But some players did buck the trend, including 20 year old Metz forward, Ibrahima Niane, with a 10% rise up to 73p. If he can show the sort of form that he demonstrated in Ligue 2 last year, where he averaged a goal every 136 minutes, he should have plenty more room for growth.

As I’ve said before, forwards have a higher price ceiling than other positions, due to their likelihood of winning IPDs and because they have less competition for PB than midfielders and defenders. I’m trying to add more forwards to my port for this reason, and this week I added Augsburg’s Marco Richter to the fold. The 21 year old put in a fantastic performance at the U21 Euros over the summer, which means his name will still be fresh in traders minds as we go into the new season. If he starts well, this is likely to mean a rise will follow.

With the trend switching to PB suited players, my Performance fund saw some nice growth over the week. Nearly all players ended the week in profit, but particularly those that traders felt would perform well under the new matrix, like Suso and Kimmich. It was just shy of a 3% rise on this fund during the week – not too shabby at all.

Ahead of the changes, I added some new faces to the fund who I thought might also be prominent in traders minds: Depay, Trippier and Tait. All three look likely to pull in additional points under the new matrix and they all saw their prices rise after the announcement. I also sold and re-bought Lala and Mendes, in the hope that some IPDs might outweigh the commission paid… only time will tell!

Premium players are premium for a reason and there is little doubt that they will be the main beneficiaries from the matrix changes, and so it was no surprise that they also saw price increases. Overall, this fund increased by around 5% during the week – quite a result.

Sancho was the standout performer with traders seeing huge potential for him to hit some even higher PB scores now that dribbles are in the mix and assists have been boosted.

Messi also had a nice bump from the matrix changes. Given his age, he perhaps looks the most risky at his current price but I still think he’s got a bit more rise left in him if he can hit 300+ scores early on in the season.

Taking all of that into account, things have had a complete switch-around and the Performance Fund is now leading the way for overall yield on 12.5%, with Premium on 10.4% and Potential bringing up the rear on 9.8%. This has all been updated in full on the individual fund pages so take a look there if you want to know the finer detail.