Euro 2012 Fantasy Player Pool - Day 9 Roundup

In a day of extreme tension on the pitches of Group A, the fantasy scoresheet featured a few standout performances matched against lots of low numbers.


The top echelon of the Leaderboard is shoring up position, with owners trading a few spots back and forth here and there, and bracing to see which players they'll have on board for the stretch run.  The middle of the pool remains as bunched as ever, while at the low end, we congratulate Kyle S. -  who moved up his second spot in as many days.  If only we were running this thing until September. He might've gone all the way to the top.


Of course at this point we're all pretty much where we deserve to be in the table, based on the players we chose. These teams tended to make it hard, with Poland, Greece, Russia and Czech Republic all offering numerous chance to make missteps. Many of us did.


As Group A came to it's merciful conclusion, some players continued to be punished for transgressions committed early in the event (Szczesny), while others found ways to finally make an impact, however negative, on the proceedings (Pogrebnyak). Two commie catalysts went cold (Arshavin and Dza), while the pool's most popular goalkeeper by a stretch finally gave all those owners reason to think they'd made a good choice (Cech).

You didn't really think this guy was going without a Clean Sheet, did you??

Playing time issues continued, and will continue, to haunt many owners. The Greek squad features some of the most diverse selection in our pool, including several players who have yet to appear in a match.  Their advancement at the expense of a couple valuable Russians is a problem for a lot of people on a lot of levels.


Still, the big point advantages earned by Dzagoev, Arshavin, and Shirokov owners are now banked, and can't be cut into like they might've been if Russia had ended up going on the run some were starting to predict.  Arshavin looked like a player reborn in the first two games of this tourney, Dza will get very rich soon, and Shirokov will have a few years to think about that awful free header attempt he botched late against Greece.


The big loser from Russia's crashout is unfortunately my good friend Jared D., who was scoring big from having Arshavin as captain, and was among the very early leaders in the pool, but is now likely stuck in side bet territory with schlubs like me.  Sorry J, your rise and fall in this tourney mirrored that of the Russkis.


Elsewhere, it's always painful saying goodbye to a host nation in a big tourney like this, but Poland really didn't make much of a mark on their event, and when it was left to them today to do a bit of hard work and advance, they just had no ideas about scoring, even though they knew a draw was never going to be good enough. Did I drop enough eurotrash football cliches for you in that sentence?  


Anyway that was a weird game to watch. Blaszczkowski owners will remember the Polish presence at Euro 2012 fondly.  Russian hooligans and the rest of us in this pool? Not so much.


As I hinted at before, putting Petr Cech in your fantasy goal looked like a pretty dicey call a few days ago, now it looks inspired.  Czech Republic is now a million miles away from that opening 4-1 defeat, and no one else in the pool has any real attacking options from their squad.  Since a keeper will always outscore his defenders if he makes a few saves, the Cech-less among us will likely leak more points away.

What will happen in Group B? Lemme untie this and get back to you

Tomorrow we lose two more teams and things crystallize even more.  With an even crazier set of permutations in Group B than we had today, we can only hope to get even more onfield action to match.  The question of the Netherlands' advancement or elimination is going to be a huge separator, while it's always interesting to see who'll win "German of the Day" honors.


Game On!