Subject: [NT] Lithuania

What did I say??

El_Scorpio komu Seca 2008-01-17 09:09:33
I believe you can do it. You win over the Greece and Austria got Liethuaniu and Bosnu. Bosna is able to defeat Austia, or at least take them a point for draw... Good luck

Yeah, you made it man!! ;) GL in WC

Thanks. I was pleased with the tactic. I'm not looking forward to doing the stats - it's going to be hard deciphering who did what in that mob. :D

Some excellent prognosticating. :D In the end, I didn't do anything other then stay the course. Tho (IMO) the tactic and line-up was sound today, we still lost. Someone else ended up doing the heavy lifting.

It could be an interesting WC. We'll be a 4th seed. But considering how qualifying has gone, it'll be a little like playing with house money.

Congratulations to you from Austria.

We can`t understand Sokker-World at the moment and we are sad that we didn`t the Quali. But I wish you only the best for the WC and your future...

Greets

Thanks. It's unfortunate we weren't able to send 3 teams from our group. I think it was the 2nd or 3rd strongest group overall. Austria would have been a competitive entry in the WC.

Tough match today. Tho the number of shots was pretty even, Austria's scoring chances were far better quality.

I was surprised to see Ewertz in goal. Preiner is only SI 1 or 2 by my count. The first BiH goal was very weak.

Yes I didn`t want to let play a slight injured keeper... Perhaps it was a mistake.

But the keeper wasn`t the problem. We had 4-5 really good chances (Lindenberger and Garstenauer had surely 4 headers..). Normaly we win this game with 3:1 or more.

But it shouldn`t be.

Lithuania II stats

Stats for Omar and Iginla are very similar. Shows that stats lie sometimes. :) Omar did not show near the decision making, nor provide near the quality of service that Iginla did. Should Amado have survived I think we would have had another 2-3 excellent scoring chances. There were several nice balls from Iginla that Wang wasn't quite able to capitalize on. Wang got most of his shots on target, but missed the net on perhaps his best opportunity. :(

Our back-line was interchangeable. Any of them could have played central or wide. My guess was that the wide guys would see more action, so that is where I put the good form defenders. Didn't work out that way. :P Villanueva was tested over and over. He held up fairly well. (The final roster decision was between Villanueva and Dehere - since Dehere is better suited wide, Villa was selected).

Bucky quietly had a pretty good game. Didn't get quite the accuracy I'd hoped for from Sebrango or Bradshaw. Bradshaw made a number of difficult tackles tho which more then made up for it.

I don't have so much time (yet) but when I check canadian forum I see topics only from you and all about NT. How much people write on forum and how much are interest in your NT?

Final tactic thoughts.

The defensive midfield ideally wouldn't have been quite so deep. I wanted to play off the Lithuania midfield, but not quite that far - allowed them a little too much time and space. But even in retrospect I feel there was little choice but to err on the side of caution - better too deep then not deep enough.

The striker positioning worked out very well IMO. There were places where the striker was covered, but this just forced the ball to Iginla. When Iginla got the ball it pulled the striker's closest marker. Made for some very nice opportunities.

None of the Lithuania goals were "tactical". 1st goal both Villa and Wagenaar had a chance, and neither was able to chip the ball far enough for Clemens. 2nd goal both Fichaud and Malhotra had an opportunity, but neither got the Canada bounce.

In the 79th minute Wang had his best chance of the game - an unobstructed 8 yarder - and missed the net. That turned out to be the death knell, as the ball came right back to our end where they hit ~30 yarder to clinch it.

There are ~ 5-10 users who comment regularly (or semi-regularly) about the NT in the forum.

Surprisingly, I probably get more SK-mails (from Canadian users) each week about the NT's progress then forum posts.

I stopped complaining about the "new team" issue a while ago. Perhaps it's time to push that again. I think Nin still harps about it whenever he gets the chance.

That's true. Thing is we could miss out with only 2 losses for the whole qualifying campaign. Don't think many others would have done that in past campaigns, but the new team situation has been cruel to some teams that's for sure. All the best for the world cup campaign next season for whoever is in charge.

Luck is going to be important for the WC. It appears both Poland and Italy will be #2 seeds. Drawing either of those as group mates would make it very difficult.

I was considering not running next season if Canada hadn't qualified. Since we have I do plan to run again. I may have lost some support due to the difficulties endured this season, tho I do think I have a good case that they weren't caused by mismanagement.

The way things played out today, The Austria draw had no impact on Canada (aside from making the day less stressful). We'd have qualified no matter what happened in that game. We'd have been a #4 seed no matter what happened. The ultimate beneficiary of the Austria draw was Scotland, who like Canada, had some pretty poor luck and really did deserve to be amoung the 32.

USA and Canada in the same group again then?

Heehee. England is in Pot B. We could get 3/4 of the group from 3 WCs back together again. :)

I enjoy playing the US. They wouldn't be the worst pull from Pot C. The real key is Pot B. If one end's up with Poland or Italy, it will be a very steep hill to climb.

---

That particular group isn't possible - both Mexico and Canada are 4th seeds.

Put Croatia in as the 3rd seed, and I think you've got ye olde group of death.