Asunto: National Team

Willis owned out there today. Don't think there were many passes that failed to at least find the intended man, just that we were finding ways to improve our missing. Still we got up 6 - 0 and I thought it was a much improved performance on last week, with 25 shots to their 3.

Open for comments, don't feel like you can't have your opinion here.

I was hoping we could get to 10 goals, but we only managed to score once in the 2nd half which was the only real disappointment.

I think that in few last games Willis proved his skills quite well. Today he was just great in the divine form :) Today it was against Albania - easier to dribble and sprint....but after tech and pace training he will do it with even best teams :]

ps. with such a weak team like Albania you could try moving forward the defence :)

Nope, best player on the field was Haereiti :)

yeah I know we were up against a fairly easy side, but knowing our U21 defenders, I decided not to try moving the defense up the pitch. Given our recent performances I wanted to make sure we would cover them and not to have them run through us like Bulgaria did to some extent last week.

Some differences I made in this tactic were in general just a few tweaks to cover their tactic, which was obviously going to be the one they were going to use. So things like having strikers moving into different positions depending on where the ball was and when their defense was stretched, I exploited the massive space in the centre of the goal box, and as a result Willis didn't even have to try too hard to set up our strikers with chances :p.

Was just good to get a comfortable win, and something to continue for next week.

I liked the movement of the forwards a lot more this week than last. Willis did indeed rip it up on the wing, but I suspect that we could have put anyone with pace, PM and Passing out there and they would have performed similarly as he had all day for most of his crosses.

I'm somewhat inclined to agree with vivski about the 4 at the back without a defender in front of them. Playing the central 2 closer together seems to make sense as with the current setup I start worrying whenever one of our central defenders moves off the back line to intercept a midfielder, leaving a hole (often filled by a striker) behind him.

Other than that, it was a nice demonstration of the skills of our younger players, particularly the mids.

Willis did indeed rip it up on the wing, but I suspect that we could have put anyone with pace, PM and Passing out there and they would have performed similarly as he had all day for most of his crosses.

Find me another Aussie player with magical passing...

I suspect that we could have put anyone with pace, tech and Passing out there and they would have performed similarly as he had all day for most of his crosses.

Fixed.

No I meant PM. He didn't have to dribble people often in that game.

Throughout the whole game I couldnt stop thinking..."we do not deserve tolose this..." I know my heart was in my mouth when mitchell was streaking down the field for a 1 on 1 with the goalie

Someone should've told him to put some clothes on!!

.......

*Stares at barhilo in disgust of that dodgy joke...but laughs because it was too lame not too*

haha well it obviously put the goalkeeper off :p.

Even so, it wasn't as nice as I had hoped. I tried dropping Cunico back further to try and prevent the centre passage knowing they were using an AM, but it seems like he still wanted to play further forward and got tackled a bit too often for my liking. That caused us the most problems. The goal they scored from the corner was incredibly frustrating but I just sensed it was going to be a goal for them since we'd butchered most of our chances.

Disappointing draw, we'll go backwards in points again so it's almost as bad as had we have lost.

Well i'm glad Byers hasn't been playing recently, his great form makes him a prime target for injury... LIKE BODGER!! [grr]

Choony is for sale:)

I'm surprised Choony hasn't played more games to be honest. Must have had some form/injury concerns at the wrong times.

he's improved a fair bit over the past month or two while we've been playing U21's, U20's etc, and he went through a bad patch of form late last season I believe if I remember correctly anyway. Still isn't our best striker, but certainly a very useful one.