Asunto: National Team

yeah but since I wanted to try and give as many of the 16 a run I threw in Wells for the last 20 minutes. Rayner's miss was probably the most sickening though although Croxall missed a few too.
(editado)

As it was I was actually pretty impressed with both Croxall's finishes. (Missed some sitters though as you say)

yeah his assist was rather sneaky and probably should have been a goal rather than an assist to the Malaysian defender :p.

His cross to Mitchell was good as well, but Mitchell found the crossbar.

"Nevermind, Estonia will sort you out for me ;)"

Yup ;)

Cometer - Willis in unearthly form :))

Just a reminder for those that this week is an U20 match and there are still spots available for the game. Please feel free to sk mail myself with your U20 players if you think they have a chance or you want to know if they have a chance.

Cheers.

Want to give a brief idea of the kind of levels you're looking for from the DEF, MID or ATT? Just a really quick guide.

very briefly:

DEF:
stamina: good+
defender: excellent+
sum of pace and tech: 14+
sum of playmaking and passing: 12+

MID:
stamina: good+
sum of passing and playmaking: 15+
sum of pace,tech: 14+
defender is a bonus

ATT:
stamina: good+
sum of pace and tech: 18+
striker: excellent+
defender,passing,playmaking all a bonus.

That's very brief, players can be higher in other areas, lower in others. Also this won't necessarily get into the final 16 because we have a few really top players atm particularly in the striker department.

If things change I'll notify here but from my 10-15 minutes spent trying to best answer this question.

Might even become lower if we get desperate towards Friday evening, but we should be able to fill the side up.
(editado)

Tarka for attacking mid?

O'Sullivan may be good enough to warm the bench.

Hmmm, don't know what to think atm, 57% possession, 35% pih , 9 shots to 5 our way yet we lost 4 - 0 from rather streaky plays. Perhaps not playing a dm hurt, but we didn't have much of a choice given the players we had.

What happened Dave? That didn't look very good. The tactic didn't emphasise our strengths nor cover our weaknesses. Good to get that one out of the way in a friendly. Really it could've been 0-5.

The defensive structure didn't look right. You really can't afford to play without a DM and not have the opposite DEFs cover the centre channel....

we played: ---x-x-x-x---

instead of: ---x-xx-x----
and.........: ----x-xx-x---

Really, O'Sullivan is just as good as a Defensive Interceptor as he is a wing-back.


But you live and learn. I thought Bulgaria's counter-attack tactic worked a charm. Nothing fell our way, but redit to them, they definitely deserved the win.

i believe the tactic COULD have worked but I think it shows a little bit of practice with that kind of tactic was needed first (but you need these games to get that practice happening haha).

I think it waas definitely good to see a game where we didnt have an Attacking winger. even though our Attacking wingers really are our strength, if we always play it, then they can always be covered.

Nice try there dave, unfortunately all the balls from the mids went to not our top striker, and their through balls did tend to carve us up.

Next time, im sure the players probably will be in the same position, but move differently (ie close the gap fast or something).

But yeh looking at their lineup which consisted of about half 19yos or less, i think they have had a bunch of awesome YPs
(editado)

yeah as it turned out it was as you said it was but I was hoping that shifting them across would cut out a lot of the balls if the midfield failed to cut it out.

Wasn't the greatest tactic I was well aware, but I wasn't going to play a dm that wasn't capable of playing as a dm.

The tactic didn't emphasize our strengths because our U20's have different strengths to our other sides. We are really weak in that department and it's a real concern. The reason I wanted this U20 match was to get to know what players we had coming up that would potentially make our top national side whilst to also get people active and it did neither.

Was a horrid result and one to quickly forget about, but when we had the ball we looked good, but looked very ordinary off the ball.

Thats one thing i like to see, playing younger ages, to see how their strengths differ from our number 1 national team.

Its very easy to fall into the tap of saying, "this is australias strength" and then as players progress, we are just trying to fill how our OLD number one team was strong

I think its worth moving your strikers a little more laterally at different places on the pitch just so you reduce the chance of being closely marked all the time.

It seemed like most of the game we were running back and forth something like
|...|..x|...|x..|...|

Only varying when we had the ball high on a wing.

To take it to an extreme IMO its better to be marked closely 50% of the time in each game than to be marked closely 0% of the time in 50% of your games and 100% of the time in the other 50%.

(Disclaimer: I'm not wanting to stick the boot in, just offering an opinion.... If any of the above reads harshly its not intended as such)

The players are copping a bit of stick, but I'd go as far as to say we had the better squad on the day. However, the message I'm getting from you is that you didn't have the skills at your disposal to play an effective formation.

If we were playing against them again tomorrow, I'm guessing we'd see a few tactic changes from you... and I'd be surprised if we didn't win.

I'm not laying into you. The game today highlighted some of our weaknesses and that's probably a good thing. Are there young talented players who have slipped off the radar?


Would it be an idea to set up some sort of national academy? I'd be willing to participate in a program to pick up and train players we ear-mark for success. It might be a way to build some strength in the areas we're currently deficient in to give the national coach a bit more freedom to focus of building good tactics to defeat the better opponents.