Champions League Fantasy Football

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)...

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...

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...

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...

Rather than grouping players purely by position, I decided that arranging by "tiers" might make more sense. The rationale is that when deciding whether we want Romelu Lukaku (11.0m) , the alternative probably isn't Patson Daka (7.5m) but is actually someone like Raheem Sterling (10.5m) . Yes, they play a different position, and Daka may literally  take Lukaku's place in your side, but with five midfield and three forward slots, the most precious resource is money and balancing out your elite options will likely take preference over the structure of your squad. The opporuntity cost of Luakaku is thus more likely to be Sterling than Daka. As we work through the premium options (who I am defining as 9.5m or higher), I am working on the assumption that we can probably afford three, or maybe  four of them, and thus we really want to have at least one playing on each "side" of the draw i.e. one on Tuesday and one on Wednesday. These are labelled as " S1 ...

We touched on the elite defensive options in part one , along with some background info on how to think about defender value in the UCL game. For ease of viewing I am going to re-post the two viz's here, namely the balls recovered data, and the team goals conceded projections from 538. If you read part one, these will be familiar. Budget (4.0m-4.5m) There seems to be an unequivocal winner here in Jules Kounde (4.0m) , who looks like a lock in a very good Sevilla defense (ranked third above) and even posted solid balls recovered numbers last season which have improved further in the first handful of games this season. Unfortunately 30% of managers have also unearthed this gem which really dampens the appeal, but it's probably too cute to not pick him just because he's popular given how solid this pick is. The only other potentially viable 4.0m defender I can see is Jerome Onguene (4.0m) at Salzburg, though he doesn't appear to be completely locke...

[Part 2 focusing on low cost defenders can be found here ] As we discussed in the defender value post, I would guess the majority of managers reading this are aware of the UCL scoring wrinkle around "balls recovered" and how it can be the great equalizer in this game. However, while many of us know the names likely to contribute in the attacking third, we don't necessarily have an instinctive feel for who might do well in this relatively new category, so we'll first dig into some of that data, before getting into specific picks below. First, a caveat. While the UCL site does show last season's balls recovered numbers, I cannot see a definition nor source for this data. Thiago Silva, for example, is shown to have recovered 69 balls in the Champions League last season but per FBRef he notched 99 "loose balls recovered". Similarly, Leipzig's Klosterman shows 116 at FBRef but only 79 at the UCL Fantasy site. Now the good news is that the two stats appe...