Champions league matches are coming in very quick succession and UCL Fantasy managers do not have much time to think about their teams. Surprising elimination of Atletico Madrid and Manchester City make holes to plenty of teams and we all have just five transfers to fill them.
In this article you will find short guide for UCL semi-finals: best captain picks, differentials, clean sheet odds and scout picks. But before that, let’s talk a bit about some tips for UCL fantasy managers, who expected Atletico and Man City to go through and now their teams are full of eliminated players.
If you have more than 5 players that have been eliminated in your team, our advice is:
- One playing goalkeeper is enough for semi-finals. Do not waste your transfer for GK if you don’t have to. There is much better value in, for example defenders with similar price that are often recovering balls (like Thiago Silva for example).
- Focus on having playing XI, take hits only if you are not able to build a full XI with 5 free transfers. There are just two matches, to be played, so there will not be big amount of fantasy points around, so hits will not worth it.
- Transfer out your most expensive eliminated players first. You do not want to have expensive dead weights in your fantasy team.
And now lets get back to preview…
Tips for UCL Fantasy Quarter-finals
Best captain picks
2. Kylian Mbappe (LEI)
French international is back from injury and is expected to start against Leipzig. He had big impact from the bench in quarter-finals and he provided assist for winning Choupo-Moting goal. Mbappe is having solid Champions League campaign with 5 goals and 5 assists. He has scored 49 fantasy points this season in 8 matches, what is 6,13 points per match.
Bookies assigned 43 % probability to Mbappe scoring in next match, what is highest probability from all players from Leipzeig and PSG. It will be tough match against Leipzig, but we think that Mbappe is the best captain option from the first match. And if blanks, you can still switch captaincy to…
1. Robert Lewandowski (LYO)
Bayern demonstrated their superb goalscoring capabilities in quarter-finals, and Lewandowski registered double-digit haul in terms of fantasy points again. 93 points in 8 matches, that’s jaw-dropping 11,63 points per match. No other player is even close to this number.
Without any doubt, Robert Lewandowski is the best captain pick for UCL fantasy quarter finals. His form is astonishing. And even if you are in doubt and still don’t know who to captain, we use to say that: “if you don’t know who to captain, captain the best player in the game.” And that Robert Lewandowski surely is.
Differential picks
There is very narrow pool of players in semi-finals, so it will be very difficult to move in rankings, because a lot of fantasy teams will be very similar. But if you are chasing, we pick some interesting differentials for you with low ownership.
Thomas Muller (LYO)
Muller was not very productive in the group stage where he scored just 2 goals and assisted other 2. But his performance against Barcelona was superb and he scored 13 fantasy points with 2 goals and 1 assist. He could repeat that performance against Lyon, too and he is owned only by 2 percent of UCL fantasy managers.
Daniel Olmo (PSG)
Another player that is owned only by 2 percent of managers is Daniel Olmo. This Champions League season he has scored 37 fantasy points in 7 matches. He scored against Atletico in quarter-finals, and alongside Marcel Sabitzer they both represents main goal threat from RB Leipzig.
Clean sheets probabilities for Semi-finals
There are just two matches so it will be very hard to guess clean sheets. We converted bookies odds to probabilities to help you with guessing.
| Team | Probability of clean sheet |
|---|---|
| Bayern Munich | 45 % |
| PSG | 33 % |
| Leipzig | 17 % |
| Lyon | 9 % |
Based on this, Bayern and PSG will highly likely keep clean sheets. However, combined probability of all teams to keep a clean sheet 104% (400 % is maximum) what suggest, that we will very likely see only one clean sheet from 2 matches in semi-finals, what make picking a defence very difficult.
Balls recovered heroes
With only one expected clean sheet from all 4 teams it may be good strategy to pick defenders who are good at balls recovered. Here is the list of players who are the best in this statistic.
| Player | Recovered balls per match |
|---|---|
| Klostermann | 8.33 |
| Upamecano | 7.86 |
| T. Silva | 7.85 |
| Thiago Alcantara | 7.75 |
| Alphonso Davies | 6.17 |
| Laimer | 6.11 |
Scout selection for UCL Quarter-finals
Based on all the information above, we made our scout selection for UCL fantasy semi-finals.
Source: uclfantasy
Because of the high probability of a clean sheet Neuer is goalkeeper of our scout selection and Gulacsi is his back up due to low price.
Because of the clean sheet odds we added other two Bayern defenders – Alaba and Kimmich, with later offering attacking threat, too. Thiago Silva, Klostermann and Upamecano are best defenders for collecting points for balls recovered and they offer solid points output even if they lose clean sheets.
Idrysa Gueye is a cheap enabler in our midfield and he could collect at least one point for balls recovered. Then we have Bayern attack force here – Gnabry and Perisic, there are not too many other options at this price-point. The last two spots in our midfield are the second most productive midfielder Marcel Sabitzer and his teammates Daniel Olmo.
We went heavy on PSG attack with Neymar and Mbappe upfront. The last name in our scout squad is the top scorer Robert Lewandowski.
