Asunto: National Team

Nice to have a fairly comfortable win for a change. Could have been slightly more aggressive but GD isn't going to play too much of a role here. Solid performance and we can move on to Mexico next week.

Mexico managed to beat Belgium so we are highly unlikely to finish 4th. Been a weird season. Upsets all over the place except when we need them :D

3-2 loss to end the qualification season against Mexico. Looking at shot counts it looked about right. Watched the first 30 or so minutes of the game and regretted seeing how they got their 2nd and 3rd goals (especially their 3rd). Anyway ended up being close despite not having several of our usual starting choice players unavailable through injury or form.

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Just played a friendly against RD and that was just gross. Forgot I’d modified the “mirror” tactic a few weeks back and so it put us on the back foot from the start. Should have checked but has been a week I’ve been limited for time. That’s on me.

Got worse though. One of our DM/CM got red carded in the 13th minute which just killed any possible momentum we may have made.

Still not done yet though. Trajcevski then got SI (injured would have been a much better outcome then SI as it meant that crippled our offense. So we’re playing with 9.5 men, 6 of them in defensive spots. We got dominated.

They copped a red to a striker later on but that had less of an impact.

Somehow despite all of that we snagged a draw. Finally got on the right side of a bad rng situation but we could only get a draw. Considering what it could and should have been I’ll gladly take that. We deserved nothing from that game.

Worst performance of the season and we get something from it.

Apologies for that one. Moving on to next week really quickly here.

So we took on Ecuador in a friendly today. The match itself was mostly even, think Ecuador had a slight edge in the first half and then we did pretty well from that point on. We had 52% possession, outshot them 8 shots to 5, outrated them in ratings and in striker and defending ratings and yet we end up losing 3-0.

Was a little too defensive today and I think for large parts of the game Sutton was blocked from receiving the ball which hurt but I think a 3-0 loss was pretty harsh all things considered. Would have thought at worst a 1-0 loss would have been a more reasonable result.

Just seemed that everytime we got in behind we got tackled or the ball got dislodged 90 degrees to our striker and everytime the reverse happened the ball ended in the back of the net. Two goals came from avoiding a tackle and the ball going into the net and their other goal came from a good build up play with a little slow to react defender and they scored from outside the box.

Disappointing way to start the new NT season. We probably should have been spanked last week so perhaps this is making up for that. Still a lot of improvement can be found ahead of the season. Trying to find the right balance between being too aggressive and conceding easy goals vs more structured defense and making it more difficult for ourselves to score. That balance needs to be worked out for different opponents because in some cases we can get away being aggressive and in other scenarios we get destroyed. Feel this game was one we could have been a bit more aggressive given I correctly predicted the winger so will take that on notice.

Pondeljak being out of form makes things a little more painful too as it pushes Sutton to the wing position where I'd rather Sutton played more centrally given how good he is.
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So we have a bit of a situation this season in that we can’t participate in both the MWC and Asian cup due to scheduling conflicts.

I’ve currently registered is for the MWC as that starts earlier and have a tight limit on entries. A lot of teams in the MWC are a little above us in ratings and rankings but we have chances to upset a few of them.

The other side is waiting longer and entering the Asian cup where we should do pretty well but most teams are ranked below us so any loss there would hurt our ranking. Losses anywhere will. So a small advantage there is we should win more often. Winning the Asian cup looks like this time it will end up in like a continental tournament semi and final but again that likely means nothing for us.

A third possibility is to register for both are pull out of the MWC after the group stage if we’re not in the winning bracket and not participate in the Asian cup if we do progress.

I’m open for preferences if people have them. Asian cup probably less fun until the later rounds but should net is more ranking. The MWC is more fun but higher gamble between more ranking points and losing more ranking points.

So over to the community. Which option would you prefer? Can offer an alternative if you’d like to.

I think you need to do:

A) what will gain us the most ranking to get our rank up
B) do what you will find fun and not too time consuming that you don't put in the effort you would like to.

It's a hard balance at times, and I think going too far one way or another is bad, and it may be a decision only you can make (obviously with the help of the community if people have a preference...but I suspect most won't have a preference)

Up to you. I like the idea of competitive games. If you'll enjoy having a crack at both and it's not too disruptive to either tournament if we need to withdraw, then go for it.

If you'd prefer to focus on one or the other, then that works too.

I must admit I'm not sure I understood the start the MWC and pull-out option. If pulling out allowed joining the Asian Cup then it seems like the best option but as you say it doesn't I'm not sure why we'd pull out?

So the MWC is group stage followed by matches right through the tournament even if you’re not playing for the title. Instead you’d play for position. This is what causes the conflict. You’d drop out by forfeiting matches once the Asian cup started if we were only playing for say minor places. The irony is those lower place matches give a higher probability of winning too.

From a pure ratings perspective the Asian cup is almost certainly better for us on probabilities.

The MWC has a possibility of gaining more ranking points than in the Asian cup but also has a high-ish chance of ending up worse off.

Problem is we have to play someone in those weeks if we’re not in the MWC.

I’ll have a look at who is available around our ranking and will make the call from there. 20 years ago I’d back our team to win the MWC so goes to show how times have changed.

Looks like the decision has been made already for us as the Asian cup has the right number of entries and closed off.

I was leaning more towards the MWC anyway as most of the Asian sides have really low ranking points so we wouldn’t have gained a lot from winning most of those anyway outside of games against Japan/China etc.

MWC we’re in the 4th pot so everyone we play will have more ranking points then us. Could be an opportunity but also could be a little risky. End of the day if we finish last we get easier matches to end the tournament so could turn out ok.

Would have preferred both but that international tournament between winners of regional cups put a spanner in that time frame.

A very interesting tool developed. Thought I'd post here for interest




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What’s cool is they have my old user history.

Season 12 haha that feels so long ago and I still remember it. At this point I’m ancient.
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Ok, so I've spent the good part of this afternoon getting everything up to date and having a look at where our players sit. There have been some noticeable movers particularly in the defender and midfield space. This will result in a few shuffles in the NT squad to accommodate these players that are now deserving of the place in the NT and a few will be removed as they are no longer good enough to be there.

Congratulations to anyone that has their player moved into the NT squad in the coming hours/days.

That was harder then I thought it was going to be.

In the end made 11 changes to the squad of 40 (would have been more aside from the fact I'd moved a few already late last season).

Anyway so here are the changes.

Outs:
Ross Winterbottom
Dean Stephenson
Greg Selling
Elliott Prince
Todd Leijh
Neil Hay
Patrick Fox
Alex Farmer
Jay Curcija
Alexander Collina
Archer Brooks

The latter two were hard decisions to make. Brooks may come back yet I'm not entirely sure but I had a limit for places for position and he was on the outside of the cut.

Those coming in include:
Patrick Brain
Bill Stanton
Denis Franklin
John Brown
Oscar Sekulovski
Perry Houston (probably one of the ones I'd toss up if I decide to bring Brooks back)
Steven Brain
Noel Wilkin
Marshall Schofield
Ace Scuderi
Jackson Bresciano (interesting given I dropped him a season ago as I needed space at the time for others. Again probably on the edge if I decide to go a different pathway).