Subject: Ireland 1- 1 France

Congratulations to Executor on a well deserved point :) You made some tough calls and came up with a great formation to nullify most of their attacks. The few bits of luck you did get are far outweighed by all your bad luck last week- Well Done!

(To put things in perspective a bit, France have over 1000 users compared to our 23)

Good job getting a point out of this match against a tough opponent. Putting more focus to the wings paid with a clinical Fairclough headed equalizer. Congratuations !

Good result, well done.

Just watched the game. Probably a little lucky to get in half-time at 0-0 but the better team by far in the second half and we probably should have won it.
All i would say is the wide players could be brought in a step and having the mids, one infront of the other means they're either facing the wrong way when receiving a pass or one has his back to the other. It also leaves huge gaps down the sides of them (France didn't expose it because they play so centrally). If you have one play slightly left and one slightly right, it should sort that out.
Otherwise excellent and definitely the way i'd play against Croatia.

EDIT
It wasn't even a mid anyway. Freyne playing directly behind the forward and directly infront of the mid is what i meant.
The bad news in all this is Hungary seem to have gotten their act together. If we want to get out of the group, we'll probably have to push France into 4th.
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The wide players hugging the touchline was the masterstroke :) Thats what let us get behind their defence for our chances (including the goal).

I'm guessing that Freyne as a deep lying striker (he's actually a pretty good striker), not a midfielder, was obstensibly to nick the ball off a defender taking the ball off Fairclough, and then use his pace to clear any other defenders. It didn't come off in the game but it was a pretty inspired try in my books.

This "stacking" of players to outnumber France in strategically important areas (it was done on the wings as well) was well worth the disadvantage of having 2 channels open inside the wingers, especially with the security of three centre backs.

Looking at the other teams it looks like it will be us, France and Hungary competing for the 2 qualifing positions behind Croatia. As the three of us can all take points off each other from what I can see we still look like we're in with a good chance yet (perhaps even as one of the best 4th place finishers)

Good luck to Executor against Croatia and hopefully you can get some big players back in form for the six pointers.
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Croatia are a lot tougher to beat than France, so chances are any tactic will have to be pretty defensive.

Yeah :) An 8-1-1 formation might be in order. Any suggestions for good defensive set-ups you've seen that Exectutor could have a look at?

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"The wide players hugging the touchline was the masterstroke :) Thats what let us get behind their defence for our chances (including the goal)."

I thought the wing attacks were pretty good. I mean the defensive backs. France cut inside them a couple of times because they were slightly too wide.
5-4-1 would be what i'd go with against Croatia. Any more defensive and you're just inviting them onto to you and will never get out of your own half.

Czech R. - Espana

Czech R. needed just a point to qualify but Espana were stronger than Czech so the setup was very defensive...

CZE - ESP

I thought the defensive throw ins and especially corners could also be improved.

Offensive wings were great, the def wings could be closer to the middle i felt, but it always depends on what kind of players you play.

Thanks guys.

I'm happy with the point but I'm still 2 points short of where I hoped to be at this stage.

I dragged this thread back up from the grave to show you new lads how we used to have seperate threads for each NT Game.

It was ok Back then