Subject: [NT] Ireland - Nigeria

One of the most unluckiest games I've ever seen. Ireland was incredibly unlucky...so many woodworks, penalty :)

On the other hand, i feel Fairclough is not good enough for NT despite the marks he gets. His total lack of technic means he bounces 90% of passes sent to him. And some of them were great today from the guy on the right wing.

It was a pity Armstrong wasnt playing more offensively as he is very good and there was a lot of space up front in the middle.

Anyway good luck for the next games, I'm coming to Dublin to support you next saturday against France! It must only be better now that you have drawn all the bad luck today :)

I felt we werent attacking enough and lacking support up front. They're the lowest ranked team in the world and we still played 4 at the back with 2 defensive mids.

Fairclough has very good technique?? not gonna get any better at his age anyway!

I'm devastated with that result.

On to the next game i suppose.

It has made things very difficult to get out of the group. I'd say we need something from the France games plus 4 points from the games against Hungary. I dont think that's impossible by any means but we did just lose against Nigeria.

Just watched France, forwards and gk aside, theyre no better than us which is why we have to get posession. The wide positions are vunerable. Otherwise no obvious weaknesses.
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I just check and found out that the form of the strikers is>

Fairclough - 9
Matthews - 6

I have noticed strikers with form under 13 hardly ever score unless opponent is much weaker.

Jirka is right about the striker form but there were no other realistic options for Executor to play up front, Keenan and Donegan are injured and Cregg and Cashin are in rubbish form as well...

The danger here I think would be to panic and make the team even more offensively minded. I'm playing a more defensive formation than the Irish one used today and haven't a problem scoring goals as I have one striker in divine form. Once the striker form thing sorts itself out the goals will flow.

Take a look at the list of players i came up with. I do believe there was at least 1 decent forward amongst them, that had never been played.

My days of scouting through long lists of players are behind me for the moment I think ;) Did you find someone or just think there might be someone?

To cut it at any level a striker needs stamina pace technique and striking, you miss out on one of these and he's not worth playing whatever his ratings or value may be (Which is why I didn't mention one or two other strikers that are around). There possibly could be one or two strikers out there at that level but their owner either hasn't sent his details to the database or he's playing for a bot team.

Like I said there is a danger of overreacting to a result like this. I think Executor played a good team with a good plan to expliot the gaps in the middle of the Nigerian formation. Sometimes you just need some luck....
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I didn't have a good look at the players i found. I was more concerned with just finding ones that may be suitable. I'll have a look through them now.

As for overreacting, a loss to the worst team is a loss to the worst team. I was suprised by the ammount of shots we had because i dont think we ever looked like scoring.
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They rankings mean nothing really- for example last season we won most of the fisr half of the season as we were in the mini world cup with nations of our size and we shot up in the rankings, second half we played some of the bigger nations and shot back down. Also, new teams start at 1600 in the rankings so it takes a while for them to drop back down...

I thought we looked like scoring a lot- we hit the post a few times and suchlike, I think Nigeria had 2 attempts on target in the whole game. If our strikers were in form they'd be quicker to the ball and you wouldn't see the "bouncing" back of passes that you saw today.

If your're that worried about it have a look at one of the games from early last season when we had strikers in better form playing in similar formations.

We are actually one of the more attack minded teams in International football. If anything, we would probably be better off results wise playing much more defensive formations.

We play 4 at the back, with a defensive mid infront of the back line, then another mid just in front of him, making it difficult to pass to. It leaves a big gap between the forwards and the mids.
Rankings and whatever we label the tactics aside, look at the ratings. We still lost to a weaker team.