Asunto: National Team

Never mind. I've worked out what you meant....

Those are the 4 best teams in all of the Polska division III leagues, not just the top 4 in your division.

P.S. we need to stop spamming the national team thread.
(editado)

Yup, top 4 teams of all 3rd leagues.

Ok, no spam.
Willis was superb today! ;)

Byers managed to get his best score, 72

Well you've smashed the previous season goal scoring record cometer.

60 goals already this season. I don't have the numbers for prior to season 6 (but I'm pretty sure we were getting regularly thrashed back then anyway). Previous record was 46 from last season, (Borkos had 45 back in season 8).

I might have to split the highlight video into two this season.

Has been a pretty successful season to date. A few minor setbacks against Turkey and Russia but other than those we've won everything else, well besides the NZ game earlier in the season which was still part of the last campaign.

We've had some pretty useful players which makes things a lot easier and hopefully our NT continues to develop and improve for many seasons to come.

Still I hope we score a few more this season yet in the remaining matches. We've got India this week followed by El Salvador (with div 2 and under players), then Costa Rica, before finishing up with Czech Republic and Moldova. We'll see how we end up going in those games.

India is going to rather interesting, really not sure how that is going to play out, although I'm optimistic we'll be able to come up with something that will get us the result we're after.
(editado)

Well we're ready to go into this match against India. Going to be tough to gauge, I think on paper they might be almost as good if not better, given they're 1st XI has been around a few seasons. De Generaal likes to play around with wingers, and given we're already somewhat handicapped, this is certainly an area I have to be concerned about. They can also defend heavily against sides as well, but I think that will sort itself out at some point as I'm sure they'll end up with a gap if we're good enough to control the game.

That's really the bottom line to whether we're able to win, if we can dictate play like we did last week, there's no reason we can't run away with a nice high win. The problem starts coming when we cough up ball and then have to turn and chase. When we've got the ball we've looked good, when we haven't we've looked rather vulnerable with our U21's but that's part of reality. This is our U21's and as much as I'd like them to be Poland, you can only use what you've got. I'm still confident we'll get the win but I think we'll have to work hard for it, unlike last week where I felt confident we'd run away with the game early.

Game is in about an hour, tactic is set, I'm expecting De Generaal to try and use the wings but stranger things have happened in the past, but that seems to be his general structure.

This is also our first ever match against India and it would be nice to walk away with a clean sheet but in all likeliness they're going to score somewhere.


Game should be good to watch though, to see where abouts our U21's fit in comparison to other developing NT's.

As I expected, India tried to get around us with wingers. I had modified a fair chunk of the movement of last week's tactic to have that outer defender push across to cover far earlier than I have in past matches. Since they don't play wingers extremely high up the pitch, it allowed us not to have to waste players in defensive wing positions, and gave us the chance to take a stranglehold of the midfield.

I think we did rather well, we could have buried a few more chances but on the overall quality of the game, we deserved the win we got.

Definitely a good win, and great to see some of my ideas (you probably had them anyway) come into play.

Once again the defenders didn't have a lot to do but that's good I guess.

Overall quality game and it will be nice to go up some more ranking points

Yeah, it comes down to a toss up of whether to go defensive and play wingbacks, or to push your outer defender as you suggested across further. Was leaning towards the shifting idea as they don't play really high wingers, although it can expose you at the back if they shift the ball from 1 wing to the other wing and then back again quickly, but that's why i tried to have players able to cut out or deflect the pass in the centre as well to give us a bit more time to reform.

The outside defenders had a fair bit to do this game though, the central defenders got off a bit easier. Our strikers caused a lot of trouble at the back but we were unable to finish off as often as I would have liked but we got the result which is what counts :).

once again, the score could've been much higher were it not for lousy finishing and superb goalkeeping. but we got the win, and ranking points, which is all good :)

This week, we're taking on El Salvador. In particular this should interest managers in division 2 or lower as our side to take on El Salvador will consist of players from this range. That is to say, only players from division 2,3 and 4 playing in Australia will get the chance to represent the NT.

Managers who think they have a player who has a strong chance or even if they have a player who they'd like to play for the NT please send me an update of skills of these players.

This is your opportunity to have a player represent the NT that may not get much of a chance otherwise, so I hope managers in these divisions are interested.

All reasonable players will be considered. Please don't send me an all tragic player for example as there would be no chance in him playing. Players would need to be fairly well rounded as well, so having tragic pace and tragic tech with brilliant striking won't make the cut either. So try to use your best judgement and if you are unsure, feel free to send them to me anyway and I'll let you know.

Finally, since the match is Saturday, I'd prefer them to be in by Friday evening at the latest, so I then have the chance to assemble a side and determine a tactic to take on El Salvador.


Edit: Might just add, players who are part of the 1st team usually but are in one of the listed divisions are eligible for this match.
(editado)

Bah. Discrimination !!

Yeah!
I, for once, welcome discrimination :)

Tarka and Baveas!

Almost a shame that I'm in A-League, these sorts of things used to be the only way that Croxall got a game.

that's one of the downsides to having a really good multi-positional player, is that despite how good they are, the specialists are genuinely just that bit better to warrant selection.

There is a competition game coming up shortly as well, and I'm sure sometime next season a 2nd string game will be arranged (assuming I'm still managing, but I'd hope even if I wasn't these kind of games would still exist).