Here’s our Euro Fantasy Tips article with Rob Reid’s team for the Semi Finals including which teams to focus on and strategy. He also reviews his quarter finals points
Euro Fantasy Tips – Rob Reid’s Team For The Semi Finals
Quarter Final Review
Quarter Final Points: 52, Total points: 319, Overall Rank: 15k
Here’s the points:
My first really disappointing round of the tournament. A combination of factors led to a rank plummet. Most significant was taking a minus 8 to make sure I fielded 11 players – this backfired with my 2 hit players (Morata and Torres) only scoring 3 between them, so my hit cost me 5 points in the end. Then there was some bad luck on early subs – the aforementioned Morata, Sarabia and Damsgaard the 1 point culprits here. Finally, there was having to play it safe on my England defender – if I’d gone with the more risky Maguire or Shaw, I’d have been 6 points better off; at least Stones still got clean sheet though.
The round was salvaged thankfully by Harry Kane’s performance. I think people who had Captained Insigne or Lukaku on Friday probably stuck with their haul so I made a small gain there. So only 3 games to go now and work to do if I’m going to make the top 10k which is only 5 points away to be fair. The good news is that at least I got my win predications right so all 12 of my in-play players got through, though I have lost Spinazzola and possibly Sarabia to injury unfortunately. Onto the semi-finals then.
Semi-Finals Team
I’ll start by looking at the fixtures again. Odds to go through are in brackets.
Tuesday – Spain (evens) vs Italy (4/5)
Italy slight favourites and are the 2nd best team for a clean sheet this round at 7/4. I think this is a tight one to call, I slightly favour Italy. Semi-finals are often fairly tight low-scoring affairs and I could see this being a 1-0 for example. Italy I think will suffer without the injured Spinazzola – I don’t think Emmerson offers the same attacking output so they may be more conservative in their approach as a result. Spain have doubts over Sarabia and Laporte. If the latter is out this could be a big problem as they’ve not looked happy on the cross ball in this tournament. The good news is that we will get the team line-ups before the deadline of 20.00 Tuesday 6 July UK time.
Wednesday – England (1/3) vs Denmark (9/4)
England are heavy favourites, have home advantage and understandably are clean sheet favourites this round (evens) seeing as they’ve yet to concede a goal in the competition. A word of caution though – Denmark beat England at Wembley last October although that did involve an early Maguire sending off and also held them in Copenhagen in September. Neither team has significant injury worries (with the obvious exception of the missing Christian Eriksen for the Danes) though Denmark Captain Simon Kjaer is having painkilling injections to play by all accounts. There will be the usual question marks for England though I guess about which of their abundant attacking talent will fill the remaining 2 roles of the 3 behind Kane, with Sterling’s form making him the only attacking I would say is guaranteed to start.
Strategy
I’ve thankfully got enough free transfers to get me to a full squad of 15 players now and this even takes into account the injury to Spinazzola, a possible injury to Sarabia and the fact the Berardi will probably be benched again for Italy. I’ve also got half an eye on the final as well – remember you don’t need a full squad of 15 for the final as we’ll get the line-ups pre-deadline and we only need a starting 11. The safest strategy is to have 4 players from 3 teams and 3 from another as this will guarantee you 7 players through to the final. Safe is no good for me though if I’m going to get back into the top 10k, so I plan to do things a little differently.
At this stage, most active teams will have a similar pool of attacking players so the differentials lie ether in block defences or in off-piste Captain shouts. As such, I’m going to target the 2 teams with the best clean sheet odds this week (Italy and England) and use them to fill my defence. Luckily this only needs 2 transfers – Spinazzola would be a straight swap for another Italian and I’ll bring in Shaw or Maguire for Dumfries who is still left over from the Round of 16 – this will depend a little bit on what I’ve got left funds-wise as Maguire is 0.6m cheaper which could help me elsewhere.
For my other transfers, it’ll depend a bit on the Spain v Italy team news, but with limited striking options available, Immobile will come in for Benzema and I’ll then have 2 transfers to use in midfield. One will be on another Italian (probably Insigne or Chiesa for Beradri) and the other will be for whichever Spanish midfielder I can afford depending on Sarabia’s injury status. Even if he’s fit, I may swap anyway.
My Captain plan will then be to punt on an Italy defender (probably Bonucci, even though the graphic shows Insigne) for Tuesday in the hope that they score and if they don’t then fall back on Harry Kane for Wednesday.
Here’s how a provisional unconfirmed lineup looks
As usual, I’ll post my final team on Twitter before the deadline – good luck folks and I hope you enjoy the matches.
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