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Subject: National Team
To be fair, Ozbey sucked. And Amien had tragic shot/goal ratio. Baveas was a solid mid, Broxton was main defender for quite some time...
Was a pretty good game that one though. Both sides still learning the ropes with tactical editor at the time and with limited knowledge of squads. Came down to whatever you could get in the week or so between the first NT match and when it was announced. Match engine was a lot different to the current one though, no headers, animations, just straight line stuff. Made defending really easy and scoring much more difficult then today.
For the record the draw has been made for the MWC. 36 teams into 9 groups of 4, with the 2 lowest 2nd place finishes missing out. We've secured a seed for the tournament and the group we ended up with was:
1. Australia
2. Crna Gora
3. India
4. Hayastan
3 seasons ago I'd have said that would have been a pushover group, however all 3 teams have improved quite rapidly. We're still favourite to go through and we've recently beaten Hayastan twice in the WCQ's.
I would expect Australia and India to get through this group but really there should be no excuses for us not to go through in 1st position.
1. Australia
2. Crna Gora
3. India
4. Hayastan
3 seasons ago I'd have said that would have been a pushover group, however all 3 teams have improved quite rapidly. We're still favourite to go through and we've recently beaten Hayastan twice in the WCQ's.
I would expect Australia and India to get through this group but really there should be no excuses for us not to go through in 1st position.
Not a lot to say about tonights game against Scotland other than we've got a few players back in the lineup that had been struggling for form all last season. The games not going to be too much different then what we've seen in the past, just a few minor tweaks here and there but I'm confident enough in it putting up a solid fight. We got done by Austria largely due to misinterpreting their depth of their defense and midfield and so often we had a midfielder out of position chasing down the ball and they'd punch holes through us. I'm hoping that tonight that doesn't happen as often.
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Not the result I was after, might be time to look over the last few and see where I can improve. I do find it frustrating not being able to make a one on one tackle and then struggling to beat one at the other end. There were numerous chances that we had that didn't turn into a shot for one reason or another. At least Barnes showed how it should be done when he got the chance.
On the positive it was nice to have Papaluca back in the lineup and as usual made a large number of saves. Now all we need is for our defense to function properly for a change.
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On the positive it was nice to have Papaluca back in the lineup and as usual made a large number of saves. Now all we need is for our defense to function properly for a change.
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Have set the tactic and lineup for the match against Hayastan scheduled to start today. I don't have a lot of confidence that this is going to happen however, as we've now missed 2 daily updates in a row. With Friday updates, U21 matches, Saturday updates, NT matches all now delayed with no sign of devs anywhere, I wouldn't be getting hopes up that we'll get our NT match in before tomorrow at best.
If the game does start, the aim is to kick off our MWC with a comprehensive win over Hayastan. We've played them twice recently but I think they've got a new manager in charge so it might not be as easy as last time. I still believe we'll end up on the winners side but time will tell.
Enjoy the game (if and when it starts).
If the game does start, the aim is to kick off our MWC with a comprehensive win over Hayastan. We've played them twice recently but I think they've got a new manager in charge so it might not be as easy as last time. I still believe we'll end up on the winners side but time will tell.
Enjoy the game (if and when it starts).
Well with the flick of a switch we've suddenly had matches today. Wasn't anticipating them to use a winger but fortunately their winger didn't cause us any major damage as Neill defended him well up until his send-off. Thought Villafane was outstanding tonight and contributed to a number of our goals including one from a free kick. A solid 6-1 result tonight puts us into a commanding position ahead of our next game against India. Unfortunately Neill will miss the clash but it's important we continue winning as we don't want to be in the situation of facing France/Czech Republic in the next few rounds.
Villafane certainly had some nice touches. That goal from range is something we see in training, but I don't think we've seen it in the A-League in a while.
We are set for the match against India in a few hours time. Been a bit awkward this last few days as the NTDB has appeared to be down, at least whenever I've tried to access it. Makes it pretty difficult to pick a starting XI and tactic when you can't see who's available or who's not and their skills :(. In saying that I have enough experience to have a good idea of who can do what and it's then just a case of manually slotting them into a lineup. We've got a number of players unavailable this week which makes things even worse.
Neill (suspended), Balabanel (injured), Puca (injured), Gardiner (injured), Stephenson (injured), Colosimo (injured), Bowyer (injured), Agostino (injured) the list rolls on.
We'll make the best of what we've got, we still have the core of players available for selection but it does make it a little tricky to identify possible replacements when the access to the database is down. I normally keep backup copies locally for days like today but unfortunately the last version I've kept is pretty dated.
Still I know the rough order of where we sit so it's just a case of selecting a side to achieve that.
India have been a side going under the radar for a long time now. As it stands they now have more users then us and their NT reflects this. I'd argue they've got some better players then we do in certain positions and we're going to find this game tough. De Generaal has a good variety of tactics so I wouldn't be surprised to see something out of the usual today. A victory is crucial here for us today because the difference in strength is minimal and the difference in ranking points is huge, so a loss will have a result of knocking our ranking points down significantly and if we have any chance of making the top 32 by season end, we can't afford to lose to teams ranked under us.
Hopefully we're able to secure our progression to the final 16 after tonight with a hard fought victory. Enjoy the game.
Neill (suspended), Balabanel (injured), Puca (injured), Gardiner (injured), Stephenson (injured), Colosimo (injured), Bowyer (injured), Agostino (injured) the list rolls on.
We'll make the best of what we've got, we still have the core of players available for selection but it does make it a little tricky to identify possible replacements when the access to the database is down. I normally keep backup copies locally for days like today but unfortunately the last version I've kept is pretty dated.
Still I know the rough order of where we sit so it's just a case of selecting a side to achieve that.
India have been a side going under the radar for a long time now. As it stands they now have more users then us and their NT reflects this. I'd argue they've got some better players then we do in certain positions and we're going to find this game tough. De Generaal has a good variety of tactics so I wouldn't be surprised to see something out of the usual today. A victory is crucial here for us today because the difference in strength is minimal and the difference in ranking points is huge, so a loss will have a result of knocking our ranking points down significantly and if we have any chance of making the top 32 by season end, we can't afford to lose to teams ranked under us.
Hopefully we're able to secure our progression to the final 16 after tonight with a hard fought victory. Enjoy the game.
Well we lost but I don't really understand how. We had several goal scoring opportunities and yet seemingly seemed to find ways of missing them all. The only goal we ended up scoring was off a rebound when it was an open goal. Every other shot ended up with a save and that's really frustrating, especially when at the other end every shot they get ends up in the back of the net.
We were our own worst enemies out there tonight, some horrible finishing capped off by a horrible pass from Graham which sent an offside player clean through for a goal.
Really don't know what more we can do, our defenders don't seem able to hold their own anymore forcing us to use a back 5 almost every game. This new push ahead mechanism has essentially led to as soon as they break the line it's a shot at goal, yet if we defend deep we get burned anyway and don't create chances.
We're really missing quality strikers, had we taken our chances, India would have been put away early.
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We were our own worst enemies out there tonight, some horrible finishing capped off by a horrible pass from Graham which sent an offside player clean through for a goal.
Really don't know what more we can do, our defenders don't seem able to hold their own anymore forcing us to use a back 5 almost every game. This new push ahead mechanism has essentially led to as soon as they break the line it's a shot at goal, yet if we defend deep we get burned anyway and don't create chances.
We're really missing quality strikers, had we taken our chances, India would have been put away early.
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Well we're now in a position of having to beat Crna Gora just to keep ourselves in the running for the next stage. From glancing at Crna Gora they've been hit hard with a key injury to their only real striker which makes things significantly easier for us.
We've not exactly unaffected either, our injury list seems to be growing, as everyone we had otu last week we've got out this week with the exception of Neill and then we've got more out through injury including Barnes and Gardiner. Fortunately we have sufficient depth in midfield because that's where we've been hit hardest with a number of 1st choice midfielders unavailable. However, that depth disappears when you factor form into the equation as well, so I've had to utilise players in lower form to fill the side and hope that their skills outperform Crna Gora.
A number of changes from last week with players being dropped due to poor performances against India.
Whilst I expect we should be able to post a win, if we don't we can start arranging friendlies. Not what I'd like to see happen, so I'm hopeful of a much better result. We still might finish 2nd in the group if India win but we'll have trouble qualifying as one of the seven best 2nd place finishers.
As usual suggestions/questions are always welcome, just send them through and I'll consider them.
We've not exactly unaffected either, our injury list seems to be growing, as everyone we had otu last week we've got out this week with the exception of Neill and then we've got more out through injury including Barnes and Gardiner. Fortunately we have sufficient depth in midfield because that's where we've been hit hardest with a number of 1st choice midfielders unavailable. However, that depth disappears when you factor form into the equation as well, so I've had to utilise players in lower form to fill the side and hope that their skills outperform Crna Gora.
A number of changes from last week with players being dropped due to poor performances against India.
Whilst I expect we should be able to post a win, if we don't we can start arranging friendlies. Not what I'd like to see happen, so I'm hopeful of a much better result. We still might finish 2nd in the group if India win but we'll have trouble qualifying as one of the seven best 2nd place finishers.
As usual suggestions/questions are always welcome, just send them through and I'll consider them.
Drum 6 from 9 :o. Where has this been? Excellent conversion rate and we come away with a comprehensive 9-0 win. Unfortunately this means we finish 2nd in our group behind India who managed to win 4-1 against Hayastan with a number of their goals coming off opposition mistakes similar to last week against us. Still I think we're safely through as one of the 2nd place finishes with that win tonight. Gives us 6pts with +13 GD which should be more than enough to progress.
I wouldnt mind if he had the same efficiency in the AL one day...
For everyone's information the remainder of the MWC draw has now been drawn. Considering who we could have pulled, it's not too bad of a draw.
A - Scotland vs Malta
B - Norge vs Latvija
C - Moldova vs Paraguay
D - Bosna i Hercegovina vs Australia
E - Hellas vs Ireland
F - France vs Bulgaria
G - Czech republic vs Andorra
H - India vs Perú
I said at the start I'd be happy so long as we avoided France,Czech Republic and Norway. With this draw we've now avoided both Czech Republic and France completely unless we both make the final. We may not even have to take on Norway either if things fall our way.
Feel sorry for India, topping the group, only to have to run into Czech Republic in the 1/4 and then possibly having to play France in the semi's.
In saying that B&H aren't going to be easy and certainly not my ideal 2nd round match, but it could have been a lot worse. A win would give us a huge chance of making the semi finals which would be a good achievement. Semi finals is definitely the aim after seeing the draw open up on our side.
A - Scotland vs Malta
B - Norge vs Latvija
C - Moldova vs Paraguay
D - Bosna i Hercegovina vs Australia
E - Hellas vs Ireland
F - France vs Bulgaria
G - Czech republic vs Andorra
H - India vs Perú
I said at the start I'd be happy so long as we avoided France,Czech Republic and Norway. With this draw we've now avoided both Czech Republic and France completely unless we both make the final. We may not even have to take on Norway either if things fall our way.
Feel sorry for India, topping the group, only to have to run into Czech Republic in the 1/4 and then possibly having to play France in the semi's.
In saying that B&H aren't going to be easy and certainly not my ideal 2nd round match, but it could have been a lot worse. A win would give us a huge chance of making the semi finals which would be a good achievement. Semi finals is definitely the aim after seeing the draw open up on our side.