Subject: [NT] Bolivia

personally I love Amado's play right now...

keep it up Sean, waaay up!

hehe I bet you do Deja :D You want him to continue until wednesday don't you....

All is quiet for before the storm .... :)

The original plan for this week had a big role for Olaf Lavrynenko. His injury sent the coaching staff scurrying back to the chalk board.

Had a couple of other ideas, but the form update pointed me in a particular direction. Think I'm satisfied with the present game plan. I have notified the managers of participating players.

Players with 2 yellow cards will either sit or play a minimal role, as BiH next week is a more challenging opponent.

Underway against Bolivia.

Fairly standard 343 this week. The Bolivian defense is expected to be fairly narrow, so at times the outside striker is a little extra wide. Last match Amado struggled and made some very poor decisions - hopefully he will be less passive in this match.

Manohar steps in for the injured Wang and rested W. Lavrynenko (who is the sub striker and may see a few minutes at the end). Ortega Santiago gets a start in midfield with O’Hara being rested and some poor form amoung other attacking midfielders. A couple of our rising stars, Verville and Ribiero, are expected to make second half appearances.

Line-Up
Parker
Dehere, Fichaud, Abbas Musa
Ortega Santiago, Omar, Barrera, Iginla
Biron, Manohar, Amado

Bench
Madden
Villanueva
Verville (60 Iginla, shift with Barrera)
Ribiero (70 OS)
Lavrynenko (80 Biron)

Amado pks, no designated fk taker. I have house guests ATM, so I won’t be able to catch the game until a little later. :)

Better result then last time. I suppose that shows how hair-brained the use of O'Hara up front was. :) I think the tweaks to the midfield alignment were beneficial. I was also, for the most part, happy with the slightly wider positioning of the strikers.

For the strikers, had pace at the two wide positions, and our jack-of-all-trades in the middle. Think it was fairly effective. Manohar was able to make good use of his side skills.

Amado still made some poor decisions (tho it was better then last time). Failed to cut to the net a few times, which was necessary given his slightly wider positioning. Both he and Manohar made some poor shooting decisions - firing from range when they could easily have improved their shooting position. Biron made excellent shooting decisions - most all his 9 shots were extremely dangerous - tho he missed a couple of sitters.

Midfield played reasonably well. Did very well with ball recovery. Iginla's passing was a little off (form?) but he made good decisions. Ortega Santiago had a nice game. Omar made some nice passes, but made some dreadful decisions - especially on freekicks. Pretty quiet match for Barrera and Ribiero, and especially for Verville who played 30 minutes and had ~1 touch.

Defense was fine. Dehere again was a disappointment for me. His passing and decision making seemed far below what I expect from his skill set. Parker faced one shot and made one save. I think the pink agrees with him.

Bolivia II stats

Couple of things from the stats.

Barrera didn't have a quiet game (as I said above). He became a little quiet after the shift, but was very active and highly effective in the center. Could easily have had a couple more assists.

Amado and Manohar shooting numbers were not very good - 8 of 18 on target for Amado, 2 of 7 for Manohar (not sure if the 56th minute one was on target - thought it hit the keeper, then the post. Gave him credit for it).

Biron and Manohar's shooting stats flattered a little, as both scored a goal on a play where they didn't actually shoot.

Flank backs still trying to do too much with the ball. Disappointing passing numbers from both Abbas Musa and Dehere.