Asunto: National Team

Well done guys. You shouldn't have much trouble next week and maybe a run all the way is on the cards? Good luck!

Yohane was definitely their strongest defender they had defense wise I'm pretty sure. They had that on their left side of defense, same side as Willis.

edit: Actually on a second viewing it seemed like they tried to protect the left side expecting the winger there with the slightly out of position mid. Well spotted, I didn't pick that up first time, but probably since the ball was mainly down the right side I wasn't watching much on the left ;).
(editado)

Yeah with Srbija losing, that makes our half of the draw a lot nicer. Still a few under rated teams lurking shortly for us, Bosnia, Israel, potentially Turkiye or Venezuela, but certainly a lot nicer than the half Island are in which contain Osterreich,Peru,Srbija,Ireland etc.

Glad to see Haereiti but Wilis has been just awsome O_O.
I like the 4th goal ^^

I guess Osterreich and Israel are the only threats.

Willis is quite in good shape...got at least 1 assist in 14 consecutive games...:)

Osterreich we can't play until the final anyway.

Bosnia can be annoying at times, they beat both Osterreich and Canada in the qualification games last season, so won't go under-estimating their capabilities.

Still it's nice to get a 1/8 match against Shqiperia :).

Willis is insane. We were extremely lucky when IDM went and sold him that he was still trainable and young as well and ended up with a good trainer with a lot of cash I might add. The only down side with Willis is that because he's so good, it makes our tactics easier to predict, but we're getting a few other midfielders coming through the ranks to help.

Hirons looked like he thought he had his Tribe strip on. Normally a much better finisher for the national team, must have been the blue strip rather than the traditional green and gold.

I'm really disappointed that he didn't convert the goal on the set play from the kick-off at the start of the second half. Fantastic setup with the ball bouncing around a whole heap of players before suddenly being passed forward, where Hirons all by himself found the keeper once again.

Loved seeing Broxton in the "Widera" position. He's been one of our better players for a long time, but we don't get to see his best when he's stuck on the back line (where he's a rock admittedly).

When I saw the formation, I thought "Broxton has his work cut out for him today", but he performed very well. Wondered out of position a bit much for my liking as I like to have a DM protecting the centre corridor rather than supporting the wing-back.

I don't mind a mobile DM. It did become a bit of an issue once Oliveira was injured, but he had a lot of territory to try and cover by that stage.

Broxton was a switch to DM as an experiment more than anything to see how that worked and it worked rather nicely. He has better passing and defender skills then Widera does, so by giving him a shot at DM I tried to use the extra passing skills. Something I wouldn't have done a few seasons ago when Broxton was required to play in defense. Turns out I was able to slot another player stronger in defense in the defense line so it boosted both positions and genuinely worked well.

As naph pointed out him moving around worked alright until Oliveira got sent off cause I had the 3 midfielders trying to support each other to try and get as much ball as we could. Despite the distance he had to cover if there was any player in our team that could cover that much it's Broxton ;).
(editado)

what if we throw willis as the attacking mid just behind the strikers I bet he will pick up a bunch of assits on the through balls that way. Could be interesting to see in the Shqiperia game :) !

have tried that before with Oliveira, it's pretty difficult to thread the needle precisely but it can create some goals. Won't stretch their defense though to allow simple passes into the box unopposed but it's always an option.

If we were to play an AM I'd be more likely to play another midfielder rather than Willis, but I'm sure against Shqiperia any player could play AM and do well.

try playing willis as striker :P he'd just dribble the ball into the back of the net

Today:
1st minute
Freekick
Andy W.
goal

:)

2nd minute
Andy W passing
2:0 :)
(editado)