The word "fancied" is correct and usable in written English.
You can use it when you want to express an opinion or a preference for something. For example, "I always fancied the idea of living in the countryside."
Germany's staggering and irresistible progress through this tournament has propelled them yet a gain beyond fancied opposition.
For a working-class intellectual (which was how I rather cockily fancied myself as a student) to speak and understand French is to short-circuit many of the stupidities of class prejudice in the UK.
Although the club narrowly missed out on automatic promotion, they were heavily fancied to triumph in the play-offs.
But when Yugoslavia became their quarter-final opponents, few fancied the Germans.
Viggo became an internationally fancied and bankable star as Aragorn, king of men, in the Lord of the Rings trilogy starting back in 2001.
But we'd heard about the latest American craze of skateboarding and fancied having a go.
Although there was disappointment that neither Mike Leigh's much-fancied Topsy-Turvy, Anthony Minghella's The Talented Mr Ripley, nor Neil Jordan's The End of the Affair made it into the frame for best picture, the Brits did well overall.
The Beats of the Anatov, a study of Sudanese cattle herders, took the documentary prize for Hajooj Kuka, over the much-fancied The Look of Silence, Joshua Oppenheimer's followup to The Act of Killing.
This is the time-lapse study of a child's growth to adulthood, filmed for a fortnight or so annually for 12 years: an artwork of inspired simplicity and organic consistency, infused with pure generosity and love, and easily capable of riding out the backlash-lifecycle that always attends much-fancied films like this.
British films had dominated the shortlists for the Globes - once seen as a jamboree, but regarded now as a reliable guide to Oscar form - but neither Anthony Minghella's much-fancied The Talented Mr Ripley nor Neil Jordan's The End Of The Affair won anything.
Thanks largely to Nokia, a much-fancied mobile-phone company, which dominates its stockmarket, Finland's shares are worth more than three times its GDP.
