Asunto: National Team

If someone missed it, Maras had an impact on his team winning the Cup of Hrvatska. :)

And Willis is going near a milestone...149 club assists[17 in this season]

Well we've arranged a game against Ireland for this week. Always a challenging side to play and much like NZ we've had our issues in defeating them up until recently where we've had a pretty solid record. Believe we beat them 4-1 last time we played them but Willis had a field day. I'm positive it will be a lot closer this time around.

A win is pretty essential for us to continue the surge towards a #2 seed position for the next world cup qualifying campaign. Even though we have a handy buffer of around 200 ranking points it is quite easy to have that chipped away (we lose all games other sides win all games for example). Fortunately after the MWC we're in a strong position with only a handful of games left before the seedings are taken and that should leave me in a position to steer us in the right direction.


Edit: I guess I should say that I expect to do some gardening of our NT squad come the end of the season. Currently there's a large number who probably will never play for us again and there's a few who are probably coming through into contention. More on that later and I will notify people in this thread of the layoffs and additions come the end of the season.
(editado)

Any chance of free week(s) for Willis? I'm a step from promoting to Ekstraklasa, and I need him more than ever before...

yeah there will be hopefully. I need him tomorrow though if that's at all possible, since Beauchamps out injured again by the looks of things. The aim is to play a few 2nd XI and other type matches over the next month to add some variety and give some first team players a few games rest.

I hope you've been studying my recent formations because I've something entirely new for you for this game. I did consider going with my 5-3-2 that New Zealand sucessfully copied last week but where's the fun in that?
Magnificent victory of Fail redefining loss. Game on.

Sounds good then. I might decide to test something out as well which could open up the game a bit but we'll see.

That's the spirit. The national game has become boring recently with everyone using the same formation. Starting last week I decided that I might as well try something new, as we weren't having much sucess anyway and this is my last season.

I normally avoid using 5 defenders across the back if I can. Quite often that makes us come unstuck against stronger sides but meh, there has to be another way to play the game then a 5-2-1-1-1 or 5-2-1-2. The problem is hardly anyone is prepared to experiment enough to crack the tactic :(.

Interestingly enough I made the mistake of using 5 defs last week ;). Any of my normal 4-4-2 type tactics most likely would have worked but ah well, that's the breaks.

I think that formation is easily cracked but the problem is it requires a tactical sacrifice. You've got to know for certain which wing you've got defend and you're reliant on the newly created defensive gap not to be exploited. 5-3-1-1 is just the safest option at the moment because wing attacks are so lethal. Still, you're screwed if you're a small team because there's no way to gain a an advantage anymore. It used to be that even if you didn't have the best players, you could steal a result through having a better formation. Now everyone is using the same thing it comes down to who has the best winger and defenders.
The simplest thing would be for a bit more intelligence from the defense or just make scoring from crosses more difficult

but that just makes another problem. Instead of the winger becoming too powerful, suddenly the defense is too powerful. Top team defenses would then hold power.

Making crosses harder to score might be a possible solution. Allowing defenders to win most of the headers will create other possible situations tactically. Although I think you'd still see people blocking the winger to avoid the potential chance of a goal being scored.

Reducing the effects of long passing might be the way to go though. That cuts out 2 annoying situations, the 60-70m through balls and the 50-60m pass to the winger, making it more difficult to play 8 at the back and punching through balls. Then the only problem comes down to the pressing and that could be solved by being stricter on fouls from behind and making it a trade off between high territory and playing with fewer men on the park. Alternatively lobs over the defensive line might be useful since the striker gets the first run for the ball.

There's more than one problem with the current M.E and eliminating one thing just creates a dominance in another area.

Still I'll keep trying to work out how to counter that 5-3-1-1 because for sure next campaign we'll be faced with a lot of sides using it.

Well we're set. As usual the aim is to win the game, although who really knows the outcome of this match. All these games are good practice matches for the WCQ's next season. We've got quite a number of casualties for this game:

Beauchamp, Nikas, Storey, Hirons, Balabanel, Burns. Then there's other issues of form striking a number of players such as Haereiti,Stephenson.... the list goes on.

Anyway that's nothing new to NT selections so we've worked around it as usual.

Hopefully people watch the game. Sometimes I get the feeling I'm talking and replying to myself at the end of every game (with the exception of a few regular posters). I do like to hear feedback when it comes because it gives myself a chance to explain things and at the same time gives me a chance to view the tactic from a different perspective other than my own. Also makes it feel more of a team environment rather than a single lone figure and the NT has always been about team effort imo. So feel free as always to express your comments after the game.

This tactic has certain aspects I would like to get going before next seasons qualifications or to totally discard come that time so I'm not too sure how this will fare. We could be quite vulnerable or it could turn out to be gold, it makes for an interesting game though.

20minutes to go, so plenty of time for Nin to read this and attempt to take advantage of it. We're going in with a back 3, 3 dm's 1am, 1w and 2 strikers.... ;).

Already know one mistake, I hope it doesn't happen to cost us, got no time to change that. Will be an obvious mistake if it occurs :@.

Slight injury of Willis. GREAT.

Yeah, I was thinking similar things, especially how they didn't pick up a card for it. Anyway we got up 3-2. Hardly surprised they went with the tactic they did, was waiting for it for months so I wasn't surprised they went with it :). I just wanted to experiment to see if it was possible to shift play in a certain direction to open up the wing. It worked a few times but Oliveira kept losing the ball too quickly before a cross pass was formed. I think with Beauchamp it may have gone better.

Curley was rather impressive to be able to shrug off our 3 strongest defenders on a regular basis and make us look a little flat. That's essentially how they scored their goals on the back of some great work by Curley. Fortunately Maras had a top game and slotted home when required. I still thought we were the better side out there although the stats indicate it was more even then I first thought. That tactic will get a few tweaks to it to see if I can improve it somewhat. There's a few areas that come to mind straight away such as defender positioning, striker positioning off the Willis cross etc but a lot are minor changes here and there. In general I thought it went ok, would be interesting if we had Beauchamp instead of Oliveira there but that will happen eventually.

Wirrpanda was essentially useless, got a few chances then didn't fire off shots.

Still better than 20 days injury.

Doesn't change that much in my position, just one weak less of not playing. Argh...now I'll have to play a funny tactic tomorrow :S