It’s time for the 2023/24 Champions League to begin.

With that the first deadline for the UCL Fantasy season is fast approaching.

Matchday 1 kicks off at 5:45 on Tuesday 19th of September.

This week over on FFC we launched our UCL Fantasy Fixture Ticker. It covers all of the Group Stage matches. The sorted by difficult version can be found here.

This newsletter is here to make sure that your UCL Fantasy team is ready to go ahead of the deadline.

Louis Roberts is back, EXCLUSIVELY sharing his thoughts for Matchday 1.

Budget Gems!

There are two teams I really like specifically for budget players and they are Leipzig and Feyenoord. Both sides are maintaining some fantastic domestic form and offer up some brilliant picks.

One player locked into my Matchday 1 team is Xavi Simons (€6.5m). There is no telling how the injury to key man Dani Olmo (€7m) will have on the frontline but the 20-year-old has been providing multiple routes to points with both assists and goals.

Another player locked into my team is Marcus Thuram (€6,5m). Similar to Simons Thuram has both creativity and goal threat in his arsenal and playing out of position, up front, could be too hard to ignore. Inter have been by far the best team in Serie A - winning all of their early matches and looking convincing in the process. Thuram has racked up two goals and one assist already and with missed big chances it could have been even more.

The lack of mid-priced and premium option is one of UCL Fantasy managers biggest problems to solve going into the new campaign and both Simons and Thuram are two ways to eradicate that.

Getting the right premium picks is key. Here are the players that we think are the best ones to invest in.

There are also articles on site on differentials, enablers and captains (available from Monday). As well as our team of experts revealing their squads on Tuesday lunchtime ahead of the deadline.