Asunto: National Team

Current owner of Bob Jeans has hidden his skills from me :(. In the process of trying to resolve that but if they’re determined not to provide skills I’ll work with what I have from the beginning of this season. For what it’s worth if I can’t successfully negotiate something here that I’m comfortable with then I’ve still got options since I know the reason why I’m not getting his skills.

Annoying because it doesn’t actually help them by blocking skills I already know. They have zero power in that regard. They’d be better to negotiate with me with their concerns and we may be able to strike up something. Just annoys me when they purchase a player who is in a squad and they don’t want them playing for the NT, it’s like just buy someone else then.

Just thought I’d post this because we’ve been so good for so long when it comes to enabling nt managers to see players that when someone wants to be a smarty I’m going to basically call it out if they haven’t tried to negotiate first.

I’m always flexible if there are circumstances you don’t want a player played but I become less so if you resort to silly games like this.

Yeah it is very frustrating. As you say, there are so many more options out there that if you don't want someone playing for the NT, then don't buy an NT player.

It really makes you appreciate all the amazing work everyone here puts in.

It does and it’s something I felt I was going to have to deal with more from overseas managers especially when they brought this current method in. I said at the time and will reiterate it here that I am very appreciative of the fact this hasn’t been an issue to date and that my preference is always to discuss with me (or our u21s) first and foremost before blocking skills because in most cases we can work something out. Especially now that friendlies can’t result in any injury post the match.
(editado)

Yeah. I mean, just spitballing, given friendlies don't result in injuries, a good compromise is to only play him in friendlies and matches where they are likely to be close/against a higher ranked team.

Then when you play teams who are unlikely to beat us, not play him.

That way the NT gets to use him when we need him the most, but reduces his risk of injuries by not playing every single match.

And let's be real, in a 26 week cycle, there are only 10 matches (at present) that a player could get injured for the Senior Aus NT. Take away say the two matches against 6th seed sides, and that means there is less than 1/3 of matches he could even get injured in.

As he will likely play 2 matches a week for his club, which over a 2 year period is 52 matches, out of 78 matches, the NT is only accounting for 10% of potential time getting injured. That's like 1 injury (of any length) in a players career in sokker.

Hi, how he looks when yoy saw his skills last time?

Good enough for a starting spot in our best defense line and that there aren’t many immediate replacements especially around his age at present. Was only a few weeks back so given his age and the assumption he’s not being trained any longer he won’t have changed much from those skills.

Was a little quiet this week from myself but we had a friendly against Colombia. We ended up losing 2-1 so considering they out rate us by 8-9 avg ratings I think it was a decent enough effort. It's a shame that it's very difficult to outplay a side that ranks that much above you these days as the whole defenders and players moving from their position to ensure a striker is marked makes it really challenging to get in behind for a shot at goal.

Next week back to a rematch with Japan where hopefully they don't score 80% of their shots.

Well we get a rematch with Japan today. Looking forward to seeing if Japan can nail 80% of shots again (it was 100% until the last shot). We outplayed them last time but were limited as we had a few key players out of form or unavailable.

No excuses today. We're very healthy from a squad list. Few players out of form (main ones being Trajcevski, Whitley and Georgio) but I think we've got a decent enough squad to cover for that. Squad should continue to develop in coming seasons to as there are a number of players that have come through the U21's in that resurgence that should start to challenge for places in the senior side. Think we're already seeing it with Boyd and Parkinson knocking down the door.

Really need a win as we've been sliding in rankings lately despite not really having any bad performaces. The loss to Japan last time hurt badly and really should never have turned out how it did. Time to put things right.

Did enough to win that game but didn't create as many chances as I was hopng for. The auto adjustment of defenses to mark strikers worked really well for them and we weren't able to get as many holes through as I'd planned. Possibly could have been a bit more active with striker movements but was really trying to focus on funnelling the ball into our strikers and allow trajcevski to take advantage of his skills to break the line.

Only other weak spot I thought was our defender protecting the wing often got caught too far upfield and gave them the freedom to get the ball to their winger. Didn't end up costing us anything this week unlike a fortnight ago.

Disappointing end result all up but their keeper clearly wins over these matches.

Yeah, did enough to win 1-0 but certainly didn't dominate.

Japan had moments where they looked like they could be dangerous but then did nothing with the ball, so never really looked like scoring.

Deserved the win, but I'd say last time you played then you dominated the match more.

Unfortunate result against Spain. Lost a central defender very early to a straight red and that made things very difficult for us with the tactic that went in (on hindsight maybe it would better to send Traj to cover that defensive hole). We were able to create more chances then we did against Japan last week and then they had a defender red carded to level the game (although with their ratings the loss of a defender hurt them less then us). That being said we had several 1 on 1's that were saved by the gk and then the last 30min when Parkinson came on we exploited their player that had come back to cover their red carded defender and we were really unfortunate not to get another 1-2 goals as we kept getting last second tackled to stop us shooting.

3-1 loss as it was last time but felt we had a few better chances this time which didn't end up in shots. 10 avg ratings difference is tough to overcome so reasonably satisfied (although somewhat disappointed) with the way the match went.

Can’t do much when their strikers just dribble through in form defenders at will.Mexico just too strong today. A few mistakes where I didn’t keep the winger out hurt a little but it was just mostly their ability to just continually break tackles without losing the ball or momentum that hurt the most.

Set for Iran today. Would be nice to have a fairly relaxed result today. We've been on the wrong side of it this season and definitely has undone almost everything I've done until this point. Let's finish this season off with a few good results and work towards rebuilding next season where I'll need to be very selective to get our ranking back heading in the right direction.

3-0 win in the end which is better than the last minute winner the first time around. Still scratching my head around 28 shots for a 3 goal return. Wish we could stop goals when we played top teams like that. At least we got the win.

Definitely deserved more goals, I think they were just lost with no Trajcevski on the field :D

But the win is the main thing

Trajcevski had 0/20 against them last time :p