Subject: A false start

Sorry people, this is a horrendous start. A very unlucky game with underperforming players all over the field. This makes qualifacation a very tall order right from the start. I'm quite upset about it, but the opposing tactic was well chosen. Still, we ought to have won this game.

Feel free to throw rotten vegetables my way in this topic.

Not a bad tactic, although I think you made a few mistakes with players. Lemieux is our best defensive mid and though he can create chances as an offensive mid, he doesn't really do any tackling and so 1/5th of his skills are wasted. Farant was a disaster and I think we had plenty of better options to fill in that spot. Just off the top of my head, Sebrango would have been great on the side since he has superb side skills and gets played as a def-mid sometimes.

edit: also Zaharijja is good and maybe you wanted to play him for some extra training, but Gusberti is in superdivine form.
(edited)

I lost a fair few offensive mids due to red cards so I wanted a 10 with plenty def. Lemieux would have done great as defmid, but then his tech would have gone to waste. He is a really nice player. He didn't quite bring what I expected, however. I'll need to study this match to see what went wrong - apart from the strikers being positioned 'too low'. Speaking of which, I wasn't pleased to see how their defs regularly tackled them successfully, even from behind. Both are supposed to have divine tech, unless I'm quite mistaken. Farant was the best option in form, Sebrango is 33 and with a completely outdated NTDB*, I really wasn't going to field him on blind faith. gusberti is nice, but Zahar. has more def, which seemed like a good idea for a defmid. We have a nice selection of central midfielders, so I wanted to play to our strengths. A winger would have been great - in hindsight. The wing backs above the main def line are great for show, but absolutely suck against a well placed winger. Either the NTC of the DR has got very lucky in his choice of tactics, or he predicted me very well indeed. Hope it was the latter, as I can't stand the former.

Still, this sort of result is really NOT what we need and we shall need our own upset (next week would do me just fine), or hope that DR might score a few more points along the way. I feel very bad about it.

* Trying to have that fixed. Typing is still a pain however, so it is a slow job. Recruiting a bit of help as we speak, though.

Leopold has superdivine tech actually...every time he gets tackled i'm surprised :P