We now have the groups for the Europa and Champions League.

A player having European involvement is such a big deal on FI for so many reasons.

They will tend to play for better teams, for a start. Significantly, they just get more chances to win as they play more games. And often European match days will have fewer teams competing then our regular Saturday/Sunday showdowns.

Particularly in the groups and early knockout stages you also get these huge mis-matches where a good team can tonk a minor club 6-0. That may not make for great viewing, but holders of the bigger teams players will not care!

And particularly in the later stages they get those massive Gold Days where only a handful of teams are involved.

Not only this – a player will keep optimism throughout the season in the hope of all that to come – provided they look like progressing in the competition.

This season we also have Team of the Month – a competition which players involved in European games are almost definitely going to dominate.

After dividends have been doubled.. ToTM dividends now feel a little lacklustre it’s true. But only in comparison to the other dividends on offer! They are still a very nice bonus.

For all of the above reasons – I’ve made signing up the genuine performance quality amongst the big names (as part of the Core element of Key Strategy) a big priority in site strategy.

The twist is that whilst I might normally expect to be done with this by now, the current state of the market means many of these players are still available at strong value. 

So this current key strategy is staying around longer than it usually would – I’ll change it when there is a benefit to doing so rather than just for the sake.

If we do get a recovery in the next weeks and months – I am suggesting we make life easy for ourselves.

There will be a time and a place for hipster selections – picking out our unknown dark horses who win a dividend and cost under £1. 

But right now, I don’t think that is a particular priority. We can get first team players from big clubs with high chances of winning cheaply at the moment.

These will be players that are naturally in demand in the event of a market recovery and could get a bounce without even needing to win. Also, they could win because we are targetting quality.

With that in mind, I’m going to do a very high level selection of some of the strongest players available in the Europa and Champions League, highlighting key players from teams with soft groups and high chances of progressing to the knockouts.

I won’t go into too much detail on each player this time – but you can almost always find my latest thoughts on them by tapping a players name into the Search bar on the Dashboard or in Scouting.

I’m going to split these into:

Key Players: Longer term holds with performance suitability and a good fit for the full season ahead, including being expected to challenge for dividends in European competition.

Punts: Not players I’d want to hold too long necessarily – but can be a good short term pick in the lead up to or during European ties. Could be a veteran with a high chance of winning.

High Potential Youth: Decent long term investments as quality youth players at value prices, with a reasonable chance of making an impact in European competition.