Learn · 6 min read
How waivers work
One player three managers all want, and the same week resolved three different ways.
The problem it solves
Your draft is done, so every player nobody picked is unowned. Someone will want them the moment a striker goes on a hot streak or a defender gets injured.
If adding a player were simply first come first served, the manager who happens to be awake at 11pm on a Saturday wins every time, and a race like that is not fairness. Waivers replace it with a scheduled, ordered process instead: claims go in privately during the week, then all resolve at once in a fairness order.
Every player is in one of three states
Owned
On someone's squad. Not available to anyone else.
On the wire
Just dropped by someone. Locked until the next run: you cannot grab them instantly, you have to put in a claim.
Free agent
Unowned and already cleared the wire. Anyone can add them right now, first come first served.
Why dropped players sit on the wire first: without that holding period, you could drop a player and instantly re-add them, or a manager watching at the right second could scoop up somebody good the moment they were let go. The wire makes every fresh drop go through the queue first, closing that loophole.
Every move is a same-position swap
Your squad is 2 goalkeepers, 5 defenders, 5 midfielders and 3 forwards. That is 15 players, and your squad size is also 15, so every position is permanently full. There is no spare slot to drop someone into.
So adding a midfielder always means dropping one of your own midfielders. The app filters the drop list to the right position for you, and tells you plainly if you have nobody eligible instead of showing an empty list.
A week, step by step
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Tuesday
Ferguson picks up a free agent forward and drops Erling Haaland to make room. Haaland goes on the wire, not straight back into the pool.
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Tuesday to the last kickoff
Klopp, Ancelotti and Guardiola all want him. Each submits a claim: the player to add, one of their own forwards to drop, and in FAAB a bid. Nobody can see anyone else's claim.
-
An hour before the last kickoff
The window goes quiet. Claims are still accepted, but they are queued for NEXT week's run instead, and the Waivers panel says so in as many words. Nothing you submit is ever left ambiguous about which run it is in.
-
A few hours after the gameweek ends
The run fires automatically. Every claim that made the window resolves at once, in the league's priority order.
-
Immediately after
The winner's squad updates, the losers are told exactly why they missed out, and the winner's dropped forward goes on the wire for next week.
The three claims
Pending claims for Erling Haaland
| Manager | Drops | Bid | Budget | Queue | Table |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Klopp | Ollie Watkins | 30 | 64 | 3rd | 4th (bottom) |
| Ancelotti | Yoane Wissa | 35 | 100 | 2nd | 2nd |
| Guardiola | Hugo Ekitike | 25 | 90 | 1st | 3rd |
Queue is the rolling waiver order. Table is the current league position. Klopp is bottom of the table but only 3rd in the queue: those two orders are separate things, and which one your league uses is the whole game.
Same week, three different winners
This is the part worth understanding: your commissioner picks one of these modes, and it changes who actually gets Haaland. Switch between them to see the same claims resolve three different ways.
| Manager | Drops | Bid | Budget | Queue | Table |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Klopp | Ollie Watkins | 30 | 64 | 3rd | 4th (bottom) |
| Ancelotti | Yoane Wissa | 35 | 100 | 2nd | 2nd |
| Guardiola | Hugo Ekitike | 25 | 90 | 1st | 3rd |
FAAB bidding
Highest bid wins, full stop. Bids are blind, so nobody knows what the others offered. If two managers bid exactly the same, the tie goes to whoever is lower in the league table, so a struggling squad gets the benefit.
| Manager | Outcome | Reason shown in the app |
|---|---|---|
| Ancelotti | Won | Highest bid at 35, no tie to break |
| Klopp | Rejected | Outbid |
| Guardiola | Rejected | Outbid |
- What changes afterwards
- Ancelotti pays 35, his budget drops from 100 to 65 for the rest of the season, and Wissa goes on the wire. Klopp and Guardiola spend nothing, so they carry their full budgets into next week. Queue positions are irrelevant in FAAB and do not move. Had Klopp also bid 35, he would have won it for being bottom of the table.
Rolling order
Bids are ignored entirely. Whoever is highest in the queue gets first call on any player they claimed. Win one, and you go to the back of the queue.
| Manager | Outcome | Reason shown in the app |
|---|---|---|
| Guardiola | Won | 1st in the queue, so he gets first call |
| Ancelotti | Rejected | Player already claimed |
| Klopp | Rejected | Player already claimed |
- What changes afterwards
- Guardiola wins Haaland despite the lowest bid of the three, because bids do not exist in this mode. He then moves to the back of the queue, so the order becomes Ancelotti, Klopp, Guardiola. Ekitike, the forward Guardiola dropped, goes on the wire.
Reverse standings
The order is simply your league table upside down, recalculated every week. Bottom of the table gets first call, top gets last.
| Manager | Outcome | Reason shown in the app |
|---|---|---|
| Klopp | Won | Bottom of the table, so first call this week |
| Guardiola | Rejected | Player already claimed |
| Ancelotti | Rejected | Player already claimed |
- What changes afterwards
- Klopp gets Haaland for being last. Nothing about his priority changes: next week the order is recalculated from the table again, so if he is still bottom he gets first call again. Watkins, the forward he dropped, goes on the wire.
When does the window close?
There is one window and it is the same in all three modes. It opens the moment a player is dropped onto the wire, and closes an hour before the last kickoff of the gameweek. The run itself does not fire at that moment: it waits until a few hours after that last kickoff, by which time the gameweek is long settled. Timing never varies by mode: the mode only decides who wins, not when.
That gap is deliberate. A claim landing in the same instant a run reads the claim set would be genuinely ambiguous, so instead there are hours between the last claim a run can contain and the moment it looks.
You are never left guessing which run your claim is in. Submit after the window has gone quiet and the claim is still accepted, just queued for next week's run instead, and the Waivers panel tells you that before and after you submit. Nothing is silently included, and nothing is silently thrown away for being a minute late.
A free agent add still goes through instantly, but every player is individually locked the moment his own club's match kicks off that gameweek, not by a single league-wide cutoff. You cannot add a player whose club has already played, and you cannot drop one either, so neither side of the swap can be picked with the benefit of hindsight on a match that has already been decided.
That lock only applies to the instant add. A queued waiver claim does not need it: claims stop counting towards a run before the gameweek's last kickoff, and the run happens once every match in it is over for everybody, so there is no hindsight left to guard against by the time it is actually processed.
Which mode should you pick?
FAAB is the default and the most skill-expressive. Your credits have to last the whole season, so overpaying early genuinely hurts you later. It rewards judgement about how badly you actually need someone.
Rolling order is the simplest to explain and self-balancing: everyone gets a turn, because winning sends you to the back of the queue. Good for a casual league where nobody wants to think about budgets.
Reverse standings is the strongest catch-up mechanic, since the bottom team always gets first call. The tradeoff is that a struggling manager can keep taking the best player available every single week.
A free agent you can add instantly. A player on the wire you cannot, no matter how fast you are. Those are two different buttons doing two different things, and the difference is only ever how recently that player was dropped.