As mentioned above, ExpertFlyer does not show 'Z' bucket (F award and upgrades) at all, so that's a dead end.

My understanding of seats.aero is limited, but all searches I have done have shown me awards and upgrades to 'A' (or 'O' for business class) as I have deducted from the miles required. So that is a completely different picture from the upgrades the Emirates website shows. Iff someone can enlighten me on how I can 'force' seats.aero to show what EK calls 'classic updates', I would be very grateful.

I agree with the remark above that it is very unlikely that you will find 3 F upgrades / awards for 'next year'. Premium cabins are relatively full and award seats are only made available when the algorithm thinks they will not be sold for cash. The timing for that depends on route and season but unlikely to be more than a week out. And sometimes only at check in or not at all. If you really want to fly F with 3 people, your credit card is your friend (or probably your enemy... ).