Subject: Ireland Vs...

Are you going to argue with me about this again? They changed the engine and suddenly the defence that had never conceded more than 2 goals in any game conceded 9 in the next 3 games. My arse there wasn't changes.

To be honest though, even despite our recent poor results i'm confident about this one.

Nice to see you are confident:)

I have a suspicion that the changes to the game engine f**ked us. Certain things that had worked perfectly before stopped very suddenly the day they introduced it.

I have to agree with you here - after the changes my strikers are playing much worse than they did before. Now they are trying to shoot more often out of the penalty area. Even If they can go one on one with goalie they decide to shoot far from the goal.
And in last matches we haven`t had any luck...hopefully Island bad luck turns to good luck..

I was thinking more in terms of defending. It appears that the skills balance has been redefined, certain things are more important than they were. Our defending recently has been abysmal, which is stupid seeing as it had been pretty much fine for the first 9 games.

Yes, I understood you...but I haven`t noticed any changes in defence. My biggest concern is striking.

Have you been keeping track of this player's skills btw? Old player of mine that seems to get similar ish ratings to your current defenders. No idea what he is like though now.
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His last rating was 30. How is that similar to our defenders? I've players in my club scoring higher.
He is someone i've never seen before though. He's never came up on the dream team rankings either so i have to assume he's not good enough. I'll have a look at his past.

Highest i can see is 38. It's unlikely he's good enough. They need to be hitting 40 at least.
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Honestly, you shouldn't base whether a player is worth picking based only on their ratings. You should find out his skills first.

I'm not saying he is definitely going to be worthwhile, but the only way to find out is to ask.
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I dont take too much notice of the ratings if it's 3 or 4 points either way. When it's 10-15 i have to assume he's not good enough. His skill rating suggests he may be worth looking at when he's in form but it's not likely.

Congrats!
You were better today. I hoped to score at least once...

I'm pleased you didn't.
It's a win but i'm not entirely happy. We werent clearly the better team.

Looking at the rankings today, a lot of yesterdays results went well for us. I dont think we'll be able to get into that top 30 though.
Winning the next 2 games would gain us about 60 ranking points and put us on 1516. To be honest though we need to over take Switzerland, they have a walkover next week which would put them on about 1550, so unless they got hammered in the last game, we'd just miss out. I dont expect Portugal to drop far enough for us to overtake them.

I don't think that 352 you're using is doing you any favours really. In qualifiers we'll be up against teams that will rip that defence apart pretty easily.

I'm aware thats a possibility. The only other option for my liking is 4-5-1 or 5-4-1. I've tried the 4 man midfield (or 3 man with 1 defensive) multiple times and i havent found a system that works yet.

To be honest though we need to over take Switzerland, they have a walkover next week which would put them on about 1550

Don`t worry, I`ll win Switzerland for you.
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Election is up. I'm in. The choice is yours

The addition of Paraguay has just ended any slim chance we had of getting into that top 30. Basically we, along with Switzerland, just got screwed.
Thankfully it's only Paraguay they've added or we'd be looking at ending up in the 5th seeding group.