Subject: National Team

I'm interested for Nt U21, i want a serious project with youngs Australians.

1. Italia 0 0 0 0 0-0 0
2. Schweiz 0 0 0 0 0-0 0
3. Australia 0 0 0 0 0-0 0
4. Malaysia 0 0 0 0 0-0 0
5. Singapore 0 0 0 0 0-0 0
6. al-Jazā’ir 0 0 0 0 0-0 0

Group E we were drawn into. Italia and Schweiz will be tough to crack though whilst Malaysias no pushover either.
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7-1 win against NZ. Believe that's our biggest win against them to date. Not bad considering we had Stephenson, Stewart and Kohler unavailable. Didn't quite win by 10 but we got close. Maybe next week :p.

Boo. Done by cheating!

Although if you look at the ratings of your midfielders and compare, you soon see why.

Obviously our midfielders are superior, that was never in question. Still though, our midfielders have often been better against NZ the entire time (ask Vilpu :p). I thought you made it easier on our midfielders by not preventing them from stringing together passes whenever they wanted to.

We hardly cheated, we were unlucky not to have won by more :P. You have another week to try and do better against us. Shouldn't be too hard to do.
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I just need to arrange nationality transfers of my first team midfield, that would get things sorted.

How do you exactly do that in NZ? I've heard one just has to fill a eniquiry with one question:

Do you prefer:
a. women
b. men
c. sheep

Only one good answer to become a NZ citizen. ;)

@cometer
nice result! though you had a wrestny, weak manager against you...:)

Obviously our midfielders are superior, that was never in question. Still though, our midfielders have often been better against NZ the entire time (ask Vilpu :p)

Despite of that you never beat NZ when I was in charge. I think it was 4:0 to me, including Mini World Cup win against you, which was sweet. New Zealand made it to world cup back then, unfortunately Australia didn`t:)

Anyway it was expected Australia to win. New Zealand is dying slowly and Gibbage couldn`t use some of the players too, for example top strikers Kevin Brunton and Priore. Offense has been NZ strength for years. Many thanks to Fiery Tigers who is producing these top strikers. Right now NZ is ranked 50th in the world. year or two they were in top 30, Australia was right behind NZ as far as I remember.

And NZ still has David Watts in the roster! So there is no miracles to expect.

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Only Bill Souter is in form on the striker front of the usual NZ quality too! Snowy has some nice midfielders coming through, Webster is a rock solid defender, but other than that, players are getting older and I can't see their replacements anywhere near.

I even play a GK I don't have exact skills on in goal, although GKs you can guess more or less where they are at.

I think NZs natural ranking is probably in the 60s and will slowly edge there unless something changes, there are by my count only 8 teams capable of producing NT quality players. IE all the prem sides.

Elrich +1 passing +2 stamina

Another victory against NZ. Scoreboard was a bit closer this time but we had more shots and conceded fewer than last week. 3-1 the end result, Kearton finishing was poor with 1 from 13.

NZ to 6 defenders in a line. Maybe next time we play them they'll use 7 ;).

I just wanted to keep the scoreline down. And thought that would be the last thing you expected!

Friendly schedule:

week 4 - South Africa, 44th in the rank
week 8 - B team vs India B team, 47th in the rank
week 12 - Bolivia, 50th in the rank
week 0 - Latvija, 41st in the rank
week 1 - O‘zbekiston, 95th in the rank

Decided to choose realtively easy opponents, well - not easy at all, but let's say that on the same level, with a decent amount of ranking points.

The aim is easy, go 'up' in the rank so that next qualifications will be easier. I'm satisfied with the schedule. Now for the WC quals...
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Ok, so let's start with us, will be easier to make comparisons with other NTs.

Australia
Rank position: 36
Average mark throughout the season: 71,48
Best average marks last season: 75.8 against NZ.
Strikers average in that game: 75%
Midfielders average in that game: 76.2%
Defenders average in that game: 68.5%
Goalkeeper rating in that game: 97%

Seems nice but is a bit overrated. In most games Australia had between 70 and 72 av. marks. The av. mark was raised a bit by high marks of subs [Bowyer 79%, Drum 83%].
In the season av. mark I don't take into accoutn very low results.

Italy
Rank position: 2
Average mark throughout the World Cup: 81.5
Best average marks last season: 82.2 against Suomi.
Strikers average in that game: 87.6%
Midfielders average in that game: 83%
Defenders average in that game: 75.6%
Goalkeeper rating in that game: 95%

We have a better gk...yaaay...;)
Truth is, one point in two games would be fine. I just hope Schweiz won't get lucky with Italy so that we can decide our faith in games against them.
Italy is a tough team, 2nd best in sokker. They have a new coach though and it is the only chance for us I think. Shame that Schweiz is the first to play them, not us.

Schweiz
Rank position: 18
Average mark throughout the World Cup: 78.2
Best average marks last season: 78.8 against Eesti.
Strikers average in that game: 81.8%
Midfielders average in that game: 78.5%
Defenders average in that game: 73%
Goalkeeper rating in that game: 90%

Ok, they are good. It won't be easy to win against them, but we have to try - what else is left there?
It suck, seriously. There are 16 qualifications group - this means that first 16 teams in the ranks go into pot nr. 1 [like Italy] and NTs from position 17-32 go into pot nr. 2 [like Schweiz].

We got second best possible NT from pot nr. 1 and second best possible NT from pot nr. 2.
Awesome.

We could've got, instead of 82% Italy and 79% Schweiz, let's say...75% Croatia and 69% Canada. But why make it easy...ehh.

Malaysia makes circa 70% notes, so it's going to be a lot of fun this season. I don't want to seem pessimistic, but yeah - we should concentrate on getting into the 2nd pot for next quals.

I always like to make some surprises, so...beware Schweiz :P
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where's the traditional game vs NZ at the end of the season? ;P

I don't want to seem pessimistic, but yeah - we should concentrate on getting into the 2nd pot for next quals.


Unfortunately, we had a few seasons of less than satisfactory managers and that knocked us down a lot. I've tried to rebuild it and have closed the gap between the top 32 and ourselves quite significantly. I think we're now within 100pts whereas 1-2 seasons ago we were about 250-300 behind.

Results can be achieved against Schweiz, tough but possible. Realistic goal is 3rd but we managed to knock over a number of sides last season, Turkey, Canada, Scotland, B&H, and drew with Hungary. Tactically we'd need to be good though and have most of our key players available for selection.