Champions League Fantasy Football

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...

It goes without saying that the ability to find defenders who can contribute at both ends of the pitch is a worthy goal of any fantasy manager. The likes of Alexander-Arnold and Robertson have in the past become close to essential players to own in FPL thanks to their countless goals and assists at Liverpool ( sometimes even to each other ) while the two highest owned defenders at the time of writing in UCL are Alphonso Davies (42%) and Sergio Ramos (39%). Consider that no other Real Madrid defender has over 6% ownership and only the equally attacking Kimmich can top that mark at Bayern. This theory is typically sound, but there are a couple of things to consider before investing too heavily in your defense solely to chase goals or assists.  First, even the best defenders don't have that many attacking returns and there are obviously comparatively few Champions League games, which makes variance more impactful. For example, per Opta data, the aforementioned Alexander-Arnold had an ...

One of the key differences between Champions League fantasy football and other formats (with FPL being the most prominent) is the importance of when a team plays in a given week (or "matchday" as the folks at UEFA have somewhat confusingly titled each two days of action). In FPL, for example, you might have a personal preference to not have your captain in the lunch time kick off, as a bad score can lower your feelings about the week, but there isn't any actual advantage either way. In UCL though, the ability to substitute players who offered little or no returns on Tuesday with someone playing on Wednesday is a huge advantage that needs to be carefully considered. Maximizing this strategy allows you to achieve a number of important advantages: If your captain options play on different days then you essentially get two shots at a big haul every week. You still won't always pick your actual top scorer (if your first option scores 8 points you will likely keep the armb...