Subject: National Team

I love these summaries :) Good luck.

When the tactics you set don't occur on the field it's incredibly frustrating. Almost all their throws our players were not in the positions they were suppose to be, in almost all cases not even close. I've just rechecked the tactic and it's fine, but our players weren't.

They weren't suppose to be 2 squares behind the throw. I meant to have 2 defenders 2 squares behind but the midfielders were on the halfway line covering flat throws. Why on earth didn't it execute. Tactical discipline doesn't play that much of an effect.

There's one thing that could possibly explain it in conjunction with tactical discipline and if true changes just about everything about the way I go about creating tactics. I'll take a closer look at it over the remainder of the season and it could just open the door to a number of things I've been trying to figure out :).


Needless to say I'm a little disappointed with the result. The goal they scored shouldn't have eventuated as I had set throws to cover the 90 degree throw and it didn't happen and we paid for it. Also Libbesson was too far advanced from where he was suppose to be as well and as a result we paid the price for a lot of through balls between our defenders. Was meant to be a V shaped midfield but was actually more like an ^ shaped midfield and that caused problems.

I think that just about does us in now, unless we somehow conjure up an unlikely result against Poland and Slovensko falters to either Hayastan or Hong Kong. Apologies for not producing the result I was after against Slovensko.

On reflection last week probably deserved a draw and this week we were probably fortunate to get the draw. Guess it balances out in the end.

Well due to issues with Sokker I was unable to let everyone know that I wasn't going to be able to make a pre-match talk for the game against Hong Kong as I went down the coast for the weekend. Fortunately, I was able to set a tactic and lineup early saturday morning and it looks like it went down smoothly. A 6-0 win is a solid result and it quite possibly could have been more. Kearton played exceptional, creating havoc wherever he went and managed to come away with 3 goals from 3 shots.

Well tonight we take on Jamaica. It's still 10 hours away so plenty of time to be ready. We beat them last time 9-0 when in fact we probably should be beating them by a bigger margin as Slovensko put 26 past them last week. I think 26 might be pushing our luck but if we can aim for 20 it's a helpful result. A win should be relatively straight forward but we need to keep pressure on Slovensko if we can just in case they slip up and give us an outside chance of jumping them into 2nd place. All we need is for them to drop points against Hayastan and/or Hong Kong and we're back in the race. Hopefully we get some help from somewhere as we're badly overdue some luck with the national team.

Slovensko winning 9-0 isn't ideal for a number of reasons. It now means we're either going to have to put 30 on Jamaica and 10 on Hayastan and then hope Slovensko lose to Hong Kong, or we're going to have to beat Polska.

As a result of that, our tactic tonight has been significantly tweaked as we have to catch this goal difference up as we're not going to beat Slovensko on points alone now.

We'll need at least 26 goals now I think, so we'll need to generate somewhere around 60 shots, which can be done.

I'm hoping the tactic set for tonight doesn't backfire or actually work against generating shots but we'll have to wait and see.

I think we're just playing for some pride now, a win here and we secure 3rd.

Australia vs Jamaica
# Users 75 - 70
National team rank 41 - 90
Rank points 1975.59 - 156.74
Previous encounters
2010-12-18 Australia - Jamaica 9 -0
2009-01-08 Australia - Jamaica11 - 1
Major Australian Goalscorers during past encounters
Richie Newhill - 7
Scott Stephenson - 7
Stephen Wirrpanda - 3
Hayden Drum - 2
Talon Kearton - 1

Interesting Statistics
- Australia have only ever played Jamaica in Australia and only ever under myself (cometer) as manager
- Our first game against Jamaica back in 2009 composed players with less than 20 caps for the NT. Scott Stephenson was amongst that team that demolished Jamaica 11-1. Stephenson has 70 caps for the NT and has scored against Jamaica on every occasion to date.
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Too many offsides, too many horrible goal attempts by Stephenson and Kearton. Offsides were caused by turning over the ball too quickly for our players to drop back. 11-0 isn't going to cut it, so it's becoming increasingly likely we're going to miss out. Don't know if there was a lot there other than reducing offsides that would have given us another 30 shots. Cutting a winger and slamming it in midfield maybe but I thought we dictated possession well and just didn't put enough in the back of the net.

Yeah, I thought the winger tactic gave enough decent supply to score more...too many one on one or point blank saves. Stephenson taking a touch rather than hacking out of mid air for freak goals might have made a difference....but unfortunately as a manager you can't influence that.
It would be nice to be able to set each player to play a certain way (other than def, mid, str)....often think the same with keepers.....something like having a choice of staying on your line, attacking balls in the box, or random? Outfield players could be similar in that you have 3 options....that's my wishlist for game enhancement out of the way. :-)

Don't know if this is the correct place here, but occasional NT-Winger Andy Willis is on the Transferlist now. I doubt that anyone can train him, just if someone here wants him to see in the right hands before he dies of old age.

Hm, forgot the timezonedifference, sorry.

We take on Malaysia tonight in an U24 match at the request/suggestion of the Malaysian NT manager. Currently in the process of finalising everything, players will be promoted to the NT side shortly. Hopefully our side will be strong enough to put Malaysia away but we'll have to wait and see.

Hope everyone enjoys the match. More news should come a little later on.

I wouldnt underestimate Malaysia these days Dave, They did beat Germany 1-0 in their WCQ campaign!

I'm not underestimating them. I think people underestimate our U24's a little. A lot of the players have played in at least 1 world cup, as far as I know the Malaysian U24's haven't.

With the exception of not having Barnes fully fit, we've got quality across the field.

I realise Malaysia has been a quiet achiever, so I'm not expecting this to be a walkover by any means. The game will be close and will come down to how well sides take their chances along with the general game to game luck of the number generator.

If I've got my tactic right, I strongly believe we'll end up winners.

If there is a concern I have, it's that our strikers aren't going to be as strong as theirs. Our average marks, should come pretty close to theirs. We'll probably be a little weaker due to some of our defenders marks but marks can be overcome when they don't truly reflect the skills of the players or the tactic.

I'm most looking forward to seeing how our midfield functions as I believe that's our strongest area. If we can control the midfield then that's half the battle to winning the match.
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Good game to watch that. Durante was disappointing in front of goal 0 from 8 but aside from that a game won that was deserved. Towards the back end of the 2nd half Malaysia came over the top of us and their winger on a number of occasions got past Wimbridge. I perhaps should have made a substitution for our outside backs to keep fresh legs on their winger but it didn't matter much. A great save by Dihm at the death kept us ahead.

The first half though went almost perfectly to plan. A few more goals wouldn't have been uncalled for as we had numerous chances to bury the game right there and then. Could well have been 3 or 4 to 0 at half time.

Our midfield in support of our DM's worked well to keep their strikers away from the ball and the only real way to them was by getting the ball to their winger and if they failed, turned into a quick counter attacking situation for us (as I played the winger on the opposite side to what I thought they'd play).

Happy to get a win though against an opponent with a similar strength to us. We've missed that this season, as we're beating teams we should be but haven't as yet beaten someone that we have to play well to beat.

Comments about the game or tactic are welcome as always.

I think you summed it up pretty well.....good sub with Doumanis on for Durante....might well have been the difference in the end. That first goal form Abreu was something else!
Their striker was too good in the air on quite a lot of occasions....don't ask me which one....team full of bins....if they had a team nickname it would have to be the "garbage men"....LOL!!!

We take on Poland tonight in our 2nd last WCQ this season. Unless some sort of magic falls from the sokker gods and we beat Poland and Slovensko fail to take all 3 points against Hong Kong we'll be out of the running for qualification. The 2-1 loss to Slovensko when we were ahead 1-0 and looking pretty good is most likely going to cost us a place as well as failing to put enough in the back of the net against Jamaica (20 as opposed to Slovensko's 41).

In saying that when there is still a slight possibility I'll keep trying as if we can get the chance but it's been a season where we couldn't get our true 1st XI playing together in the matches that count. Again today we've got Villafane on the sidelines, Stewart,Papaluca,Morton,Maras,Gardiner out of form to name a few. When your depth is already tested due to a low user base, having issues with key players that you rely on heavily makes the task even greater.

We've put up a reasonable showing though, we've only lost the 2 qualification games so far.

Tonight I'm hoping to improve upon the 6-0 defeat we suffered against Poland. There were a lot of positives from that game in that we were able to keep them scoreless after approx 20min for a 0-0 back 70min, though the damage was done early as well as picking up a few weaknesses in the tactic we played. In hindsight we probably gave them too much opportunity with the ball and they made us pay.

I think realistically we're not going to beat Poland, so it's just a case of putting up as good a showing as we can.

Suggestions are welcome at the moment, nothing has been finalised as of yet. I'm a little disappointed we can't watch Slovensko's match before ours so as I know whether we have a chance or not but I'm quite confident they'll despatch Hong Kong anyway.


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