Euro 2016 Round of 16 – 25th to 27th June
What a weekend we are in for as 16 teams battle it out for a place in the quarter-finals of Euro 2016, over the space of three days. As usual at Fantasy Football Portal we bring you those all-important goal projections which will come in handy if you are playing in single match contests, a daily slate taking in 2 or 3 games or the full list of second round matches.
The first thing to notice is that the bookmakers are not expecting too many goals – all 8 matches are forecast to see 2 goals or fewer, despite some of the matches featuring a fairly strong favourite. It’s no real surprise, though, when you consider that only 11 of the 36 group games resulted in 3 goals or more being scored, with just 1 of the 6 matches in both Group A and Group E going over the 2 goal mark and none of the matches in Group C.
Defences have clearly been on top and many fantasy managers might be tempted to go for the block defence strategy in an attempt to secure those clean sheet bonus points with numerous candidates to choose from in terms of team concession rates, rather than the usual tactic of stacking teams with more attack-minded players.
World Cup winners Germany cruised through the group stage without appearing to come out of second gear so perhaps this is the moment for Thomas Müller to find his feet – Die Mannschaft are expected to score more goals than any other side in the second round matches.
We’ll be previewing each of the Round-of-16 ties so make sure you reference those and factor in the goal expectancies when putting together your fantasy football line-ups.