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Who's in and out in Matchday Six?

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Group A Bayern have locked up Group A, and after a hard fought battle with RB Leipzig at the weekend, are expected to rotate essentially the whole side again, as they did in MD5's tie with Atletico. With a handful of players sidelined (including Kimmich, Martinez, Tolisso, Davies, Hernandez, and possibly Boateng), there will likely be a need for a couple of starters to play here, which will mean Bayern remain a source of solid fantasy value. Despite playing at the weekend, Sane looks like a good bet here, having only notched four starts this season. Gnabry was benched at the weekend so could feature here, though as a regular starter this could be considered a good opportunity to give him some rest. With Hernandez and probably Boateng missing, both Alaba and Sule could end up playing here without too many rotation options available. Lomomotiv will presumably field as strong of a side as they can, in a quest for the Europa League spot, although they do have some personnel issues wit
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Lineup Lessons: Matchday Three

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With three weeks in the books, the lessons from team's lineups are mainly that anything can happen and few, if any, players can really be totally relied upon to start. COVID-19 continues to cause havoc in the footballing world, with Ajax looking like they would be reduced to a youth team , but then fielding a pretty strong side after senior players were able to be added late in the day, while Lazio's rollercoaster situation continues to play out. Putting aside the obvious real world issues here, for our purposes I think the lesson is that your bench becomes even more important than usual (and it's already more important in UCL due to the ability to sub players in).  In this week's lineup lessons then I am therefore going to focus on mid-range options who have emerged as reliable starters with a reasonable amount of upside. I am also focusing on midfielders and forwards as there seems to be an abundance of options in each of the price brackets at the back, and the key
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Playing the turn: wildcarding ahead of matchday three

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In FPL, generally the optimum strategy for deploying your wildcard is to exercise patience, not get drawn into a panic-move in GW3 and play the card when you can most value because of a depleted squad or to take advantage of a double gameweek. In UCL though, the opportunities to deploy the chip are obviously fewer in number, particularly when you consider that you also  essentially get a wildcard between the group and knockout stages. With so many free transfers available during the knockout phase, combined with the reduced number of teams and lower risk of rotation (teams are typically going all out in knock out games), there's also perhaps a diminished value in using the wildcard in those weeks too, assuming you have structured your team strategically. This has led me in past seasons to conclude that the best use of the wildcard is during the group phase. With that in mind, I think we're left with two obvious choices: Save the wildcard for MD6 when a number of teams will have
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Lineup Lessons: Matchday Two

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The games are coming thick and fast without the typical two-week cadence, which is probably a good thing for identifying who is in and out of the team (and who doesn't have COVID-19) but makes it really tough to find room to actually analyze what is happening. The below is a hybrid summary between who is playing and also who looked impressive.  I must also note that one of my potential strategies coming into the season was to wildcard after MD2 to take advantage of the back-to-back fixtures in MD3 and MD4, which allows you to really tailor your lineup to take advantage of 33% of all the group games. Without committing to that move just yet, it is a factor when highlighting the players below. Ajax With two games coming up against Midtjylland, this is a side worth looking closer at. They went with a much more attacking lineup against Atalanta, which will presumably be the template against the Danes too. That might therefore mean a spot for Lassina Traore (5.0m)
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Lineup Lessons: Matchday One

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Trying to take away too  much information from one week of data is clearly risky, yet with only six matchdays to work with, it's essential in the Champions League game to adjust quickly.  If you take Timo Werner this season at Chelsea as an example, it is fairly clear to everyone he's a good player yet after four games he had done very little in terms of outcome, and even his underlying numbers were underwhelming. Yet, those who were patient in FPL were then rewarded with a huge game in his fifth league appearance.  In the Champions League though, there is no time for such patience and you need to move quickly to maximize your squad. With the ability to sub-in players during the week, having at least a couple of viable subs is essential and carrying dead weight just isn't as feasible as it is in FPL. On the positive side though, there are 32 teams worth of talent to choose from, and all but a handful offer a number of viable options to choose from.  This isn't to say we
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Position Review: Mid-priced and budget midfielders and forwards

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So we're on the eve of kick off day and still haven't looked at the deepest field of players, so we're going to have to keep each player blurb brief. As a general note, with a number of very promising elite midfielder and forwards and a defensive setup which also suggests getting at least one or two premium defensive options , you are going to need to find three or four mid-level players and one or two budget picks to round out your squad. Until we know who's in, who's out, who's hot, and frankly, who has COVID-19 , having a deeper bench makes a lot of sense, so I am personally likely to err towards holding several ~6.5m players rather than an 8.5m player but then a 4.5m sub. There's value either way though, so let's jump in. [As a reminder, to help you allocate your teams between each "side of the draw" we've included an S1 or S2 tag below - neither is better than the other, with balance being the goal] Mid-range Two Barcelona options fi
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Position Review: Goalkeepers

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This preview is going to be brief as, in short, I don't believe there are many 'keepers that warrant our attention. If we look at last year's points accumulation we see that with relatively few exceptions, the greatest predicator of points is simply playing games. Unless something goes seriously wrong, you should at least enjoy 6 starts between the sticks, which gives you somewhere around 18-20 points if you pick even an average player and don't rotate based on fixtures. Even with Navas' five clean sheets, the PSG man still lost 2 points for conceding twice to Real Madrid, and only picked up four save points which equates to 32 points in the group stage (ignoring the penalty save which isn't really a repeatable skill, especially for better defenses). A 10 or 12 point difference isn't nothing but (a) that assumes you pick the right elite 'keeper, and (b) that one of the cheaper options doesn't become a top performer themselves (as Gulasci did last sea
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