Asunto: National Team

Our midfield has been ripped to shreds for this game against France in 30min time. Willis,Timpano,Beauchamp all out injured, Baveas,Oliveira,Gardiner all with form issues.

We've also got Mangos suspended, Howarth injured, Haereiti in poor form.

Absolute massacre. Good thing we've actually got some depth with our NT now.

I don't expect to win against France, I think I'd be a bit too optimistic. What I do hope for is a close scoreline and not a 10-0 blowout as against Eesti last season or a 6-0 blowout against Belgium.

Without some of our guns that makes the task that much harder but I'm quietly confident we've got the players able to put up a decent fight and that's the main goal.

Hope the game turns out to be something valuable or interesting to watch and there will be post game analysis to come afterwards.

Haha where to start? Were we lucky or unlucky? On one hand we pulled out a draw with 10 men, Kilkelly straight red carded in the 2nd minute followed by a poor tactical order as ut turned out. I figured if Kilkelly got a red it was because he fouled the winger and consequently would be best to switch my other defensive winger to cover the winger. So that backfired.

Pottier and Broxton injured, hmm not too good, joins the list of the other 8-9 we have unavailable.

No doubt France's 3rd goal was either against the rules of physics or a very poor decision to save. The ball was aiming right and somehow took a deflection off the keeper back into the net. Hmmm maybe I'm not seeing things properly ;).

I actually thought we went really well considering everything that had happened pre-match and during the match. We rode our luck with Pottier in goals for the first half and then came out and played some interesting footy in the second. Lucky to walk away with the draw, unlucky not to walk away winners and cop the worst share of the sokker generated luck with red cards and injuries.

End of the day a decent result.

On the other hand, how awesome was Hirons first shot at goal :O. Somebody wants their place back.
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Hirons 2 from 2. Has to be my favourite player ever (even though Croxall is quite possibly better).

If I look at everything but the result, I think we were unlucky. I think that has to make us lucky for the result.

Oh yeah. I've said it before, and I'll say it again. I don't like tactics where you give your opponent a free-header off your own goal-kicks, and that's pretty much what was given to France today.
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Yeah, only way to stop that though is by not playing the 5 at the back to protect the wing, or to drop the whole point of the attack into a position where their offside trap becomes too effective. So if you can suggest a way to generate both I'm happy to hear it :).

good result... I'm giving them shit for it, thanks Cometer :)

They'll probably say who cares because it was a B side, but we practically had our B side out there too with the exception of our strikers and the central defense :p.

That middle position is really annoying in tactics. It requires you to draw players out of position in order to win possession from goal-kicks. Sometimes in a tactic you have to give the ball away for the benefit of your shape, but it's often worth compromising your strategy to get the ball because goal kicks are so frequent and the centre line is not where you want your opponent to have the ball with time to think.

Awesome result :)

That pretty much sums up my view on it. In a game like this where they use wingers and press, I didn't really want to expose a wing for them to exploit and I didn't really want to shift Thompson or the strikers due to the press. I suppose I could have pushed Tarka back into a reasonable position to give us an extra option. That would have been the only sacrifice I'd been willing to make but yeah totally forgot about trying that.
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Byers on TL...Maras is better :)

apart from form that is ;)

Maras lacks the defense though so it's a bit of a trade off. Although yes, Maras is probably better across the 3 main areas.
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Well apologies for no pre-game hype for the MWC game against Latvija. Been frustratingly busy the past 3 days and haven't had time to do anything from home really.

We managed to grab a 5-0 win in what could very well have been 7-8. That's the first win we needed, we now need to beat Wales next week to confirm a top 2 spot and almost push us into the next stage.

Thompson played very well given we had Timpano,Beauchamp,Broxton,Baveas and Oliveira all injured or form affected. Tarka and Bourke also had solid games to set up the win.

I was impressed with Thompson in the attacking / distributing role. Moved the ball well, laid a few tackles and generally looked dangerous.

Tomorrow we take on Wales (Cymru). We played them last season during week 4 as well if I remember correctly. We managed to win that match with our 2nd side rather comfortably. They have changed managers although their current manager isn't exactly new to the NT job and should put up a decent fight against us. They lost to Norway by a large margin last week and that sets us up for potential qualification from the group if we win by a large margin this week and other results go our way. Failing that we're likely going to need to beat Norway again as we did a few weeks ago.

Expecting to have too much power for Wales in the end. I really think we're one of these teams that are good enough to be competing against the elite sides in the world cup but due to constantly falling short our next best option is the MWC.

I think we get a few players back this week which will boost our playing stocks. We're still not going to have Beauchamp back which is a pain and it doesn't help Baveas and Oliveira seem to be stuck at the wrong side of form.

Still we showed last week we had depth, we can easily do it again with a reasonably close to full strength side. Looking forward to the match.

Suggestions welcome if people have any, otherwise I'll go with my initial plan to take them down :).

do it...
good luck :)