Subject: [U21 NT] TES

Nice player, he could be useful in the future. Now I prefer same age Senthil Munusamy who is a bit slow but strongly better in Defence.

Nice crucial win today against a similar strength side in which Suksma scored his first goal (really a fumble from Island GK but a good cross from Lanka).However, Chandramouli played a bigger role in saving those screamers and was the main reason in getting us this win. The Island strikers were menacing and on one occasion even pierced India's resolute defence but Chandramouli was upto the mark and came up on top in a one on one situation. Gambhir and Rahulan were the only weak links in the team based on gameplay.

Just to add some context about other teams that we are competing with right now. These are the current rankings:

72) Malta U21 887.91
73) Nicaragua U21 871.00
74) Severna Makedonija U21 869.63
75) Lëtzebuerg U21 844.12
76) India U21 836.78
77) Ísland U21 817.99

Here are the other results:

Malta U21 - as-Saʻūdiyya U21(98) 3:1
Nicaragua U21 - Venezuela U21(31) 0:2
Severna Makedonija U21 - Ecuador U21(52) 0:8
Lëtzebuerg U21 - Slovensko U21(29) 0:5
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yes you're right my friend, next season I will plan friendly in a different way in order to get better results (I didn't know friendly was such an important thing).
A win against Island is a good step, but there are a lot o f things to do...
Kishore Muthukumar DEF and Senthil Munusamy DEF are our worst marks and I will try other solutions.
I enjoyed the performance of Sundaramoorthy, Suksma, Nikhil, Lanka, Zev and Rochan.
Vincent "the wall" Chandramouli is our NT star!

Now we face stronger team: Canada and Sverige .
I Will use only one striker then and test our new players. Maybe with our 21 players we would have more chances but I think it's better to invest time for new season line up.

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Passing a few insights about Canada U21:

1) They were ranked 4th and finished 4th in their group for the WC qualifiers, 5 points behind 3rd ranked team.
2) Against lower ranked sides in their group, they didn't concede a single goal. These were the results:
Canada U21 1 : 0 Panamá U21
Panamá U21 0 : 3 Canada U21
Al Maghrib U21 0 : 2 Canada U21
Canada U21 2 : 0 Al Maghrib U21
3) In the match that Panama (R 70) lost by 1 goal, Panama had used 5 defenders while in the match that they lost 3-0, they used 4 defenders. Al Maghrib (R 86) went with 5 defenders in both games (haven't watched any of these games though)
4) In the recent game against Daehan Minguk (South Korea), only 4 players (Dunne, dos Santos, Lorian, Wright) were part of their last group stage encounter. So we can anticipate that they'll play a similar squad and maybe even similar tactics against us.

72) Malta U21 914.09
73) Nicaragua U21 867.76
74) India U21 865.53
75) Severna Makedonija U21 839.80
76) Lëtzebuerg U21 833.47
77) Ísland U21 789.24

India jumps 2 places after yesterday's win. I made a mistake while writing the results of other teams yesterday and displayed results of their group stage encounter instead of the results of the friendly games that hadn't occurred until then. Hence, have edited my previous post about results to reflect correct results.

Severna Makedonija lost 30 points after losing by an 8 goal margin against Ecuador which gives us a 26 point cushion against them.
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A brillanti analysis. Very good and useful to add to my ideas.
Unfortunately Canada forgot our agreement and choose other team. Nevermind I find out Luxemburg ;)
I see a chance to better our ranking now. In the first 11 I will use three age 21.
Does it sounds good?


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Insights about Luxembourg:

1) Were ranked 5th but finished last in their group. Even lost against Cameroon 0-2 (R 88) in their first game against them but then came back to win 2-1.
2) They conceded 45 goals in the group stage while scoring just 3 despite fielding 5 defenders in every game.
3) In the friendly against Slovensko (R 29) (which they lost 0-5), they fielded 8 of the players from their last group stage encounter. One of the MID got injured, so that'll be 7 against us.
4) They play central mids with 2 forwards (No wingers)
5) In the game against Honduras (R 67) which they lost 2-4, they went with a 5-2-1-2 tactic that they usually employ but they lost 2-4. Honduras had used 4-1-3-2. Against Cameroon which they had lost 0-2, Cameroon had used 3-4-1-2.
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A brillanti analysis. Very good and useful to add to my ideas.
Thanks mate.

I see a chance to better our ranking now. In the first 11 I will use three age 21.
Does it sounds good?
Go with it. Luxembourg too fielded around 3 21y players in their recent game so there's no reason for us to hold back.

So I collected some data about our recent results against teams that were similar/slightly better/slightly worse than us. Will add a few thoughts on that later during the day.

Planning to also collect info at the mark by position level later.


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Well done!
There is twice 2-0 against Sakartvelo but the second match was

India U21 - Sakartvelo U21 1:1

Thanks for pointing that error! Have corrected it.

Now these are averages segmented by results.


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Here are some thoughts on the above tables:

1) We tend to play a bit defensive judging by the fact that our play in half is higher(overall 59%) as compared to our opponents. In fact, among these 8 games, in no game has our play in half been lower as compared to our opponent. Even in games that we win/draw, it's higher on or side (55%). I think this could be because our mids tend to play behind and double down at the back more often or our mids not just be strong enough. In games that we lose, it's bound to be higher on our side as the opponents tend to dominate the game.
2) The same with shots taken. Our team can definitely improve on that parameter and in the games we won, we were lucky to convert those few shots that we took.
3) It also seems like we place our forwards too far ahead judging by the fact that we have more number of offsides as compared to our opponents. The other possible reason could be that we place our defenders down the line which results in lesser number of offsides for our opponents. I wouldn't worry too much about this parameter with regards to defence but for attack, we can try placing our attackers slightly behind.
4) Now this is a bit confusing. In games we win, the opponent avg mark is higher while in the games we lose, the opponent average mark is lower. Now I don't know too much about how often you change tactics but this can really useful for you. You can try to emulate the tactics that you used in the games that we won against opponents of similar strength and maybe modify the tactics that you used in the games that we lost. You are doing something right on the tactical part when you play against stronger teams, you just need to tweak the tactics that you used against weaker teams.

Another slight caveat about average mark for me is that maybe our avg mark gets inflated because of our strong GK. So the team avg mark at the end of the game might not be our true avg mark. Will have to look into this though.
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I can give one or two stamina trainings to my India U-21 players. I can still give them pace training also. What is your suggestion about this?

In normal circumstances I prefer not to interrupt pace training, but if you think that little bit of stamina may be good for them at the moment, I can go for it.

Hi Wiki, 1 week of stamina and then pace is a good choice.
I'm mainly interested in Shilpa improvements.

Ok, they'll train stamina this week. Shilpa got one pace training, no jump so far

congratulations once again for the study. this season modules and roles have often been changed and the statistics can be read in different ways. it is true that I chose to play defensively considering our level. I often use 5 in defense (external deployed as MID but very low) and even with the diamond shape the central midfielder remains very close to the 4 defenders. consequently it is normal to see low possession percentages and a game mainly in our half. In fact, my goal is to get off quickly by skipping the midfield and getting our attackers forward. for this we often go off side, it is a calculated risk. Unfortunately, on many occasions the counter attack did not work: wrong passes, lost tackles or nonsense backwards ... I think this last aspect may depend on the fact that the midfielders do not see the attackers too advanced due to low playmaking and passage. for this reason I now decide to lower the line of attackers a little. I think that against Luxembourg we will be able to better understand movements and see if they are good for new players. next season we will play with 541 against stronger opponents (alternatively 532 if we go down) while against affordable opponents we will start with 532 (with alternative diamond 41212). I am looking forward to see what happens against luxembourg and to read your analysis. GO INDIA GO!
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