After several flat weeks in a row, we finally started to see the green shoots of recovery on the Index this week. If you follow the accounts of other traders on Twitter, it’s usually pretty easy to spot when the tide is turning. Doom and gloom posts are suddenly replaced by rocket emojis and money gifs – a clear indication that the general sentiment is changing.

My port is slowly moving the right way too but the week as a whole has been a total bust thanks to the man with the floppy knees, Kingsley Coman. I clocked he was crashing on Wednesday night and checked social media for news. I saw the video of him injuring himself while running, with his knee bending back in an unnatural way, and immediately understood the drop. After giving it some thought and coming to the conclusion that he was bound to be out for months, I did something I rarely do and instant sold him, racking up a painful loss of £131. The next morning his price bounced back on the news he might only be out for a few weeks.

So what did I learn? I could say that the lesson is ‘don’t panic sell’ but in this case, that wasn’t what happened really. I sold because of his injury history and because I’d heard stories about him saying that another serious injury could force him into early retirement. I instant sold because I was concerned about the liquidity on the platform at the moment – it’s not been unusual to wait weeks to sell to market and I knew I’d be near the back of the queue for this as many other traders had listed him before me.

So the lesson for me is that I can’t hold injury prone players in the future. For me, it’s too risky as I can’t monitor them all the time and the fear that they might trip over their own feet and be out for weeks is too much to bear.

Aside from all of that, the Performance fund did the best out of the three funds this week, making a £53 profit which was largely driven by Milik’s exceptional performance on Tuesday night. I think he’s a good example of why holding forwards makes a lot of sense – they have less competition for dividends than other places and always have the potential to compete for PB if they hit a hot streak. Depay and Oyarzabal also had good weeks, with transfer rumours starting to bubble up for both of them.

Transfer links also drove some increases in the Premium fund. We know there is going to be some sort of push-and-pull over Neymar in the summer, if not before, and now it looks almost certain that Sancho is facing a similar situation. I think the answer to ‘who will be the next £10 player on the Index’ will be one of them, probably the one who ends up with the most MB during January.

The Potential fund had an almost static week. Alena had the biggest rise of the week (5.3%) with a loan move to Real Betis in January now looking highly likely, which will hopefully give him the chance to show what he can do on the pitch.

Another youngster looking likely to move is Haaland. He left my portfolio this week as I started to feel a little nervous about holding him past the £4 mark when we don’t yet know if he’ll be going to the Bundesliga or the EPL. The two things that concern me are how much of the £4 value is based on the assumption he goes to United and whether he’s likely to be a PB-friendly player in a more difficult league. I may buy back in when things are clearer but, for the moment, I’m happy to be out of that one.

Added to the fund in his place is another transfer target – Exequiel Palacios. It’s hardly the best kept secret that he looks likely to head to Bayer Leverkusen in January (possibly as a replacement for Kai Havertz). He’s an energetic box-to-box midfielder who could do well under the PB matrix and he previously had links to Real Madrid and Arsenal so should be a name that traders recognise. At £1.35, I like the look of this trade.

I’m still sitting on some cash to invest in new players or top ups but I simply haven’t had any time over the last couple of weeks to do the research to back these decisions up. The current trend for Championship youngsters completely passed me by but we now seem to be into the transfer season and I’m happy that I’m well enough covered for that while I look ahead to the next trend (which I guess will be PB-friendly players heading into the latter stages of the European competitions).

The full breakdown of my funds can be found on the separate fund pages as always. Comments and feedback are always welcome. Happy trading!