Asunto: National Team

Bit sloppy in a few areas against Chile and that probably didn't help too much. Still annoys me when they continuously pump through balls that beat our defensive line and at the other end we look at passing all directions except through their defensive line. A few times we almost ended up gifting them a goal from ridiculous backpasses. In the end we weren't good enough skill wise and tactically and didn't really deserve to win. Trajcevski not being in top form is problematic but he still got us a consolation goal at the end to make the scoreline a little more respectable.

Hi,
Greetings to the entire Australian community :)

Welcome back K@rol, good to have you.
You should have made a trip to Australia and registered a team with us :D

Never say never achmid ;)

I’ll also say welcome back :).

In other news, apologies for the lack of nt matches in the past month. One of the difficulties of wanting to keep options flexible is most other sides book out and then it’s difficult to arrange fixtures. Good news is we have a friendly this week against Luxembourg before heading into an Asian cup tournament where we have snuck through as a first pot team and have games against China, Hong Kong and Uzbekistan. Hoping to run through that tournament as long as we can which would probably fill the fixture list out with a NZ game at the end.

Sometimes I just simply hate this game. Tonight is one of those occasions. Watching the game you'd think all our players had solid pace or worse and all had solid tech or worse. The amount of times a player simply wouldn't move and then 2-3 seconds later oh yeah I should move now or a great pass would be completely hashed up by a fumble. Felt like even our defenders had issues tackling as well whilst nothing happened from Luxembourg. Maybe games play faster on mobiles but I've seen juniors move faster than that.

13 shots to 8 35% pith, pretty much everything was in our favour except the scoreline. The scoreline isn't the issue even, it's more the way that game looked and how our players seemed to play well below their capability that's the frustrating part. Just one of those games. A few improvements could have been made if I had of been a bit more aggressive with the defensive line and cramped further upfield to try and keep it in our attacking half and a few better throw in placements but we still should have been good enough to get that one comfortably.

On to next week now but thats going to tank our rating a lot.

Haven’t seen the match yet but 13 shots to 7 for a 2-2 result is disappointing considering we had a similar result last week.

We take on HK this week in what is now almost a must win game if we want to control our own progress to the knockout rounds after drawing with China. Still frustrated by the last result given we were 2-0 up.

Edit: Watched the game and Chinas goals could have been prevented as both were opportunistic moments. A corner gone wrong defensively and then a through ball to their winger who slides a pass back to their striker on the edge of the box who drills home. Still should have won but I can see a few issues given how the game played out.
(editado)

Well let’s hope todays game goes better than the past fortnight when it comes to conversion rates. 2-1 loss and 2-2 draw when we’ve outshot the opponent both times and for most of the time outplayed them both.

Lol maybe not. Glad we got the win in the end but I’m getting awfully sick of dominating and not being rewarded for it.

19 shots to 5, 24% pith and after like 85min it was 1-1 after Myburg scored an own goal. We scored two very late to win 3-1 but what more do I need to do to put these kind of games to bed.

When you find out, let me know haha

Follow your league formulae?! :D

I have been but I’m on the wrong side :p. Unless you’re suggesting I play trainees for the senior squad ;).

So we take on Uzbekistan for our final group match. Ideally we want to win this by more than China beat HK to finish top of group D. If we do that we likely avoid a quarter final against Indonesia and instead possibly have a match against India (pending results). Finishing top would put us in the same section as Vietnam for a potential semi final who are probably the best team in this tournament. We've played them before earlier this season and lost I think 1-0 so I'm not overly concerned and would rather play off against whoever finishes 2nd then who finishes top. So long as we don't lose today we progress as either 1st or 2nd place in the group but I don't want anything less than a win here for the sake of ranking points. Been a wobbly season for that which is unfortunate with a number of unfortunate dice roll games. We've really only been destroyed by I think Chile this season but have yet to win games that matter.

Finally put a side to the sword. 7-0 and a comfortable win in the end and again it could well have been more. In the other game in our group China beat HK 3-0 so we end topping our group with a superior goal difference. Think that means we have India for our Qtr final next week which could be a tight assignment. Would be nice for a few of our strikers to regain some form for that one. Still frustrating seeing our defenders being dribbled or beaten and their own defs/mids being able to dribble past players like Sutton and you just think I hate how the rng seems to always go one direction at times.