Rate My Team: UEFA Champions League Match Day 8

With the opening kickoffs of the second leg of the Champions League Round of 16 slated for tomorrow, it’s time once again to give our fantasy teams some tender loving care.

This is how I ended up after Match Day 7:

You’ll see that I hit a home run with my first captain option, Kylian Mbappe, so I made the obvious decision to leave the armband on him rather than rolling it to Cristiano Ronaldo or Robert Lewandowski. I also played all my subs correctly, leaving all of my lowest-scoring players on my bench at the end of Leg 1.

The result was a solid, if not spectacular, 70 points. Here’s how I’m positioned going into Leg 2:

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Turning my attention to Match Day 8, I’m not sure I have all that much work to do: I still like virtually all of my players. I have almost a full squad of names who play on either the 9th or 10th, so I feel sufficiently protected from the risk that players with games next week might get injured between now and then. I’ve filled my bench with players who play next week, and my captaincy sequence will be Ronaldo > Mbappe > Robert Lewandowski.

The one issue I do have is Casemiro who is suspended. If I replace Casemiro, my most likely target will be Juan Cuadrado. I have just enough budget to bring him in. (Danilo would be another, cheaper option.)

But I fear if I transfer out Casemiro, I’ll just find myself burning a transfer to bring him back in for MD-9 if Real Madrid go through. So I’m considering just leaving him in my squad and benching him.

So at the moment, my decision point seems to center on making one transfer versus none. That seems weird to me — with three free transfers available, I feel like I should be using them. What do you think I should do with Casemiro, and what are your thoughts on my squad in general?

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How is your UCL squad shaping up? What issues are you facing? Whom are you dropping, and whom are you bringing in? What is your plan for armband management? Please share your thoughts in the comments, and be sure to check out MiQ’s Match Day 8 Preview plus Prakhar’s Match Day 8 Player Picks.

And if you’re on social media, please follow us on Twitter (@NMA_Blog) and Facebook (@nevermanagealone).

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