Playing the turn: wildcarding ahead of matchday three
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...