Champions League 2015/16 Hints and Tips

Champions League 2015/16 Hints and Tips

If there were awards for the good and bad of the Fantasy Football world, our beloved FPL would come in first place by a long margin, season after season. On the other end of the spectrum we would most certainly have the UCL game! Every. Bloody. Season… They manage to mess something up! Be it the site shutting down for an hour before the deadline, the game not allowing us to make some transfers for no apparent reason, telling you you’ve made the transfer only for there to be no trace of it when you log in knowing your new signing has scored a brace or just the general mess that it always seems to be in and we end up cursing. Now of course we are sure they are aware of all of these issues and so will have spent the summer months ironing it all out to ensure a seamless user experience this time… Not a chance! They’ve actually outdone themselves this time round and managed to conspire to have no game, yep, no game at all ready for GW1 for us to fist pump in anger at. Hilarious, in a way. In the end, they’ve managed to get their finger out and be up and running for GW2, minus a GW of course. You may be asking yourself by this point: Why even bother? And you would be correct to ask. Why do we even bother? The likely answer to this is that we just cant help ourselves! The opportunity to select from clubs around Europe is a tantalizing one, after all. Stars from Barcelona, Bayern, the Madrid clubs, Juventus, PSG and of course, the Premier League’s finest get mingled with never heard of before names from BATE Borisov, FC Astana, Malmo and M. Tel Aviv to make for some interesting squads. Difficult to pick, too. So, with this in mind lets take a look at some aspects of the game that are noteworthy and some pointers to get us started, albeit a GW late, for this years UCL Fantasy ‘fun’..

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UCL Brief

Scoring
The scoring system is largely the same as FPL. Our players get two points for playing, four for a clean sheet, three for an assist, five for a goal from a midfielder etc etc. The slight difference is the points for penalties. There’s not a lot to it, it’s just a point off for whichever player concedes the penalty and point on for the winner of said penalty. Handy stuff. The major difference is bonus points – there are none. Usually, this doesn’t come into effect with forward players as they are more often than not the likes of Ronaldo, Muller and Messi, meaning big hauls all round for the group stages and big Fantasy scores to boot. Where the lack of bonus points comes in is in defenders, mainly. Goal scoring defenders like Sergio Ramos, Jerome Boateng and Gerard Pique can be gold when they get attacking returns and are worth their price. But spending big money on defenders with no attacking potential is a disaster as they cant even squeeze some bonus points from tight games or great performances, leaving them to get the same six points for a cleanie as you would get from a Shaktar defender, or someone from Porto, for example. We regularly see cut price defences in this game, and there is good reason for it.

Manual-Subs & Captain Switch
Exactly what it says on the tin. We can swap in/out players during the split-GW in an effort to maximize our point hauls (or to recover from a woeful decision or two!) in each and every GW. Even players who have played on Matchday 1 can be subbed off if they fail to produce, so there is no real excuse for having an awful bench with an 11 packed with stars. To make the most of this it is recommended that we choose our squad carefully, making sure to have a selection of players who play on each day so we can attack both days and not just the few teams we would have in a “Big 11” type team. Goalkeepers are not to be overlooked here either, a couple of cheap options who play on alternating days can work a treat if selected well.

The Captain Switch is fairly self explanatory as well really but it’s worth mentioning for anyone who is new to the game. Each GW presents the opportunity for two cracks of the whip, essentially. If your Captain fails to deliver on Matchday 1 then we simply switch it over once the game reopens for mid-round changes. Ronaldo to Messi, Messi to Ronaldo. You’d think it’s impossible to get wrong, eh? Think again. It can be very painful when switching from someone who has done okay, but not good enough and we reckon it can be bettered, only to see your switch fail miserably resulting in a big fat red arrow. Proceed with extreme caution in these scenarios.

Taking Point Hits
The dreaded point hit. Pondering whether they are worth it can be a tedious affair at the best of times, but luckily it’s a lot easier for us in UCL. The hit is halved for us to two points per trade, which really opens things up nicely. Our usual -8 hit is the result of three FPL transfers, but five in UCL. This is where it gets interesting as it affords us the opportunity to attack the weaker teams in the competition where there are an abundance of points to be had.

Deadlines
It’s probably worth making yourselves acquainted with the deadlines as they can be inconsistent, in more than one way. If the first game of a matchday is in Russia then it often means an earlier kick-off time and so the week’s deadline is moved forward accordingly. There is a deadline countdown timer on the site itself but as we speak it all looks a bit typical UEFA as the deadline timer itself is out of sync with both the kick-off times and the actual deadlines as stated within their rules section. This may be corrected but don’t hold your breathe! Basically we would go on as early as possible and set your team up. Don’t trust anything they say. Treat the site as you would say Mr Blatter if he knocked on your door right now.

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Prey on the weak
A quick look at the next three games for the weaker sides in the Champions League (includes a double header for each) can give us an idea of where a lot of points can be gained outside of the obvious picks like Ronaldo or Messi. The following teams are all well below the standard of most of the opposition they will face, making them prime targets for us Fantasy Managers and providing an opportunity for tasty hauls from their opponents.

FC BATE Borisov
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[/three_fourth]BATE got off to a poor and predictable start by being thrashed 4-1 away to Leverkusen in the opening round. Last season also saw them lose in catastrophic fashion, 12-0 over two games, to Shaktar Donetsk, a team who are considered to be fairly average at this level. It makes for interesting times ahead when looking at BATE’s fixtures with Roma next up, followed by a double header against European Champions, Barcelona. The writing is on the wall for them in these games and there could very easily be silly scores all round. What a nasty group they’ve found themselves in, eh? Fantastic for us! Given the level of opposition, BATE are probably the most favorable team to attack from the off.

Key Opposition: Edin Dzeko, Miralem Pjanic — Lionel Messi (if fit), Neymar, Luis Suarez, Ivan Rakitic.

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GNK Dinamo Zagreb
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[/three_fourth]As expected, Dinamo too got off to a terrible start to this years campaign by… hang on a minute, they what? Crazy, the Croatian minnows actually defeated Arsenal in their Group F opener in a game that must have pained Arsene Wenger immensely. It’s a shame their next three fixtures aren’t the other way around though as first is an away game at the Allianz Arena to face the mighty Bayern. The permanent German Champions regularly stroll through the group stages and it’s expected that this will be the case again with Dinamo proving to be no sort of competition for them whatsoever. The Dinamo double header is against an unspectacular Olympiacos team, but the Greek’s do boast some very cheap options for us to look at with a view to saving money whilst racking up some good points too.

Key Opposition: Mario Gotze, Robert Lewandowski, Thomas Muller — Arthur Masuaka, Pajtim Kasami, Ideye Brown.

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Malmo FF
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[/three_fourth]Much like BATE, Malmo have been handed the dirty end of the stick with their group draw. PSG were the opposition in Round 1, a game they lost 2-0 away from home, which isn’t actually the worst result, all things considered. The Swede’s must be shaking in their boots at the thought of the next game, though. A Ronaldo lead Real Madrid rock into town for a game that has spanking written all over it. The Portugueser started in typical fashion by notching a hat-trick against Shaktar and we really wouldn’t be surprised to see him do it again in this game. Would you?!? As for the double header, it’s a little tastier than Dinamo’s as Malmo face Shaktar Donetsk. The Ukrainian outfit can be a handful for anyone on their day and more often than not they go out to attack, especially on their own patch where a lot of teams have come undone. Teams much better than Malmo, too.

Key Opposition: Cristiano Ronaldo, Karim Benzema, Isco — Yaroslav Rakitskiy, Alex Teixeira, Eduardo.

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KAA Gent
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[/three_fourth]What’s with the minnow teams getting results in the openers? Champions League new boys KAA Gent got off to a good start by holding out for a draw at home to Lyon. The Belgian Champions more than held their own in that game and looked like they might be one of the more capable teams from this section. Still, they aren’t expected to do well in each round and soon enough the losses will begin to mount. An ever difficult trip to Russia is what gets us started as Gent face the tricky FC Zenit. The Russian Champs will strongly fancy themselves in this game and a win is there for the taking. Spanish yo-yo team Valencia CF are presented with the gift that is Gent back-to-back. The Spanish outfit have been slowly rebuilding from near financial disaster and have mustered a decent team for themselves. Long gone are stars like David Villa, David Silva and Juan Mata but they have bought well and boast some exciting talents.

Key Opposition: Domenico Criscito, Danny, Hulk — Jaume Domenech, Rodrigo, Sofiane Feghouli, Paco Alcacer.

Note: Be sure to keep an eye on the Valencia lineups before confirming any transfers as they do tend to change their team a lot!

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Maccabi Tel-Aviv FC
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[/three_fourth]Israeli participation in this season’s Champions League comes in the shape of Maccabi Tel-Aviv. A Rare Chelsea win in Round 1 means Maccabi are where they are expected to be, bottom of the group. Must admit, their next game doesn’t really look like one to attack all that hard as they entertain Dynamo Kyiv. Kyiv aren’t any great shakes themselves and we may actually see small bit of value, however thin, in a Maccabi player. Their star player is midfielder Eran Zahavi who comes in at a budget friendly €4m making him a potential enabler while still being a focal point of the Maccabi attack. It’s the double header we’re after here though, with FC Porto being the opposition. The Portuguese giants are stalwarts in the Champions League and always provide tough opposition for even the better teams, and sometimes even those who aspire to win it all.

Key Opposition: Andriy Yarmolenko, Nico Krancjar — Maicon, Hector Herrera, Yacine Brahimi, Vincent Aboubakar.

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FC Astana
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[/three_fourth]Rounding off this section is a team nobody ever expected to see in the Champions League. Not only is it their debut season in Europe’s elite competition, it’s also the first ever participation of a Kazakh club and is a feat of monumental proportion. A 2-1 aggregate defeat of Cypriots APOEL in the final qualifying round sees FC Astana, who are incredibly only six years old as a club, swan in to rub shoulders with the giants of Europe. It’s a shame they couldn’t win their first game, what a story that would have been! Instead, they fell 2-0 away at former Champions Benfica in what is still a very respectable result, all things considered. A home game with Galatasaray doesn’t whet the appetite all that much but the double header is a delight really. Recent winners of La Liga and Champions League finalists Atletico Madrid provide daunting opposition for Astana and it will take one heck of an effort for them to come out of these games with even one point.

Key Opposition: Wesley Sneijder, Burak Yilmaz — Diego Godin, Koke (if fit), Antoine Greizmann, Jackson Martinez, Gabi.

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UCL Legends
Cristiano Ronaldo
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[/three_fourth]As well as all the players who provide opportunity for points for us Fantasy Managers against weaker teams, there are a select few who rarely, if ever, fail to produce. The nature of the competition means the group stages are relative mismatches a lot of the time and a player like Real Madrid’s Ronaldo will so often have a field day at this stage. Boasting truly staggering stats, the Portuguese Legend has destroyed all who have come before him leading to an incredible 80 Champions League goals, while still only 30 years old. Amazing numbers. Can we really afford to be without him for even a single round? Maybe the very odd one, but in general, no, absolutely not. It’s hat-trick-mania as we seen last time out and with 27 goals in his last 23 UCL appearances, it will take a brave manager to shy away form Ronaldo.

Neymar & Luis Suarez
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[/three_fourth]If reports are to be believed, we will unfortunately be denied the greatness that is Lionel Messi for at least the first couple of Champions League games. The Argentine maestro will be missed by all (except Barca’s opponents). He does however have a pair of tasty team mates in Luis Suarez and Brazilian bullet Neymar. Neither of these two have a wealth of experience in this competition so their numbers are minuscule compared to Messi and Ronaldo but Barca have been scoring for fun as a team in most games they’ve played. Combined with the aforementioned great schedule, Suarez and Neymar look well set to rack up more than enough goals and assists to see the Champions through their period without “The Chosen One”. Having one of these at least is highly recommended and they are similar to Ronaldo in that it may not even be worthwhile to sell them at any point, other than when Messi returns.

Thomas Muller
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[/three_fourth]The ever reliable German forward has been a consistent performer down the years for UCL Managers. Having burst onto the scene at the 2010 World Cup, Muller has gone from strength to strength, fast becoming one of the most coveted players in the sport. His numbers have never really been noticeably high by any stretch of the imagination but this season he has come out firing, scoring eight times in nine appearances for Bayern so far, including a brace in their UCL opener against Olympiacos. Bayern have a crazy strong squad with top talents everywhere we look but Muller is rarely one to be left out. Or to have a bad game, to be fair. A home tie against Dinamo looks a banker game for him to score big again and you’d have to fancy him, and Bayern in general, against Arsenal for their double header. With so much opportunity around, it might be an idea to give Muller a shot against Dinamo at least and then move him along for another player who has weaker opposition than Arsenal.

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Summary
Having covered a lot, it’s time to have a quick recap and attempt to put things together to build an idea of what we want/need to do…

1) The Manual-Subs and Captain Change will again speak for themselves but it will make life a lot easier for us if we plan these well and pick our squads accordingly, by way of having players who play on each Matchday so we can chop and change.

2) With a carefully selected squad and ‘Superstar’ picks in toe, our squads should be competitive enough to the point where we can focus on the weaker teams and take advantage of the halved point hits. With the correct picks, and a good slice of luck too, stacking up -6 or -8 hits can be very beneficial when the teams we can attack are so weak compared to the established European teams.

That’s a wrap folks. Lets all keep our fingers crossed now that the goofballs in FUCL HQ don’t go and do something stupid again and fudge up the game for Gameweek 2. Good luck with your squad selections and I do hope that this write up helps you out a wee bit in making your initial squad and also planning for the future rounds.

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FF247 League
We are running an official FF247 league in this seasons Champions League competition and all are welcome to join. The site link itself is UEFA Fantasy Champions League and our league code is 8010637.

For whatever reason (are we surprised) last season’s leagues have not automatically renewed so you do need to re-join as you won’t be entered as per you would with FPL.

The winner of our league will receive an exclusive FF247 t-shirt and a visit from Potty 😉

Thanks for reading Champions League 2015/16 Hints and Tips. This article was written by NIN