Subject: National Team Season 2

you can say that again ;)

thats quite sad. How come we lost with our ratings so much better than theirs?

They aren't really much better.

It was a disappointing game though, we simply couldn't put away the chances and I think 3-3 would have been a much fairer result. The major problem was our defenders struggling to tackle a couple of their strikers. Our strikers also had better shooting but failed to score, while Andorra's strikers had better technique.

Also they were allowed a bit too much space in the middle of midfield which was a problem tactically, but they had the advantage of seeing what we played last week while they didn't play last week.

I'll change things round quite a bit for the next game, which is against Hayastan (Georgia I think).

I think you'll find Hayastan is Armenia ;).

i haven't seen the match but was really surprised with the result.i am sure we lost it in the midfield....i really expected a better midfield.

Yeah we did lose it in midfield. Problem was he could see what tactic I played last week but I thought if we played well the tactic should still work. So they had a highly centralised attack and we couldn't cope (although to be fair we did play as well as them still and a draw would have been a much fairer result). Having Rangwala and Ratnakar, probably our two best mids, out didn't help though.

It really was a disadvantage Andorra hadn't played a match before.
The midfield problem could be solved by :
1. putting the wing-midfielders more to the center
2. playing with two defensive midfielders (in stead of an attacking and defending midfielder).

As the wingers seem to have the right amount of passing (they played a good match with some nice passes to the strikers), I tend to advise the second option.

De Generaal
(edited)

Yeah that was definitely in my thinking, particularly with the amount of good DM's we have as you already know. But I thought I'd give the tactic another go. Problem was the DM drifted across to tackle the player on the ball and there were free mids in the centre of the field at the edge of the box. 2 DM's would have solved it.

Thanks for the input though everyone. Constructive criticism is good :)

Ai..., tragic loss to Hayastan and a red card.
Beginning was hopefull, but soon it became obvious the defenders had no grip at all over their strikers.
India's wingers (who didn't play that bad) reached the strikers with good crosses, but the strikers played too far from goal to harm the opponent.
The 2 central midfielders were outnumbered as they had to put up with Hayastans midfielders as well as their strikers.
Very difficult to see anything positive in this game. Maybe the good work of the wingers, but they only are useful when the crosses can be converted by adequate strikers ...
(edited)

Thanks for the game.
Very nice win for us.

I think that our tactic was bether. But perhaps it were only your strikers who didn`t make a goal...

Our tactic was much better to be fair. If we had faster wingers we would have won. It was just a game where everything that could possibly go wrong did. I'm so disappointed. Because it was basically just luck, despite the 4-0 win.

The only thing I could have done was to play the DM's a bit deeper. But otherwise the tactic would have worked perfectly if the wingers had more pace or just found the strikers with their crosses. In and around the box our defenders were poor.

There really is very little else to say. It's disappointing because if a few things had gone a different way we would have won. Our strikers finishing was poor again though.

just looking at the report havent watched the match yet -

instead of playing 2DMs, play one centre and the other one as a center mind just in halfway between the DM and forwards.

we should have played the same formation that we used against wales with the wingers playing a little more towards the centre.

3 red cards ....
After this debacle its save to say India isn't ready to play with wingers.
Luckily Nippon also played very poor.
(edited)

Yeah...

This is ridiculous really. Once again the formation would have worked fine and the wingers looked excellent, particularly Rangwala, for the first 1/4 of the game or so. But everything that could go wrong has gone so far. Been so disappointing really.

I'm going to change things round alot next game. This is just getting frustrating. So much of it is simply down to luck as well.

The only game without red cards was the best, so lets hope the refs will spare India next time.
Do the 3 red cards also mean the players are suspended for the next friendly ?