Asunto: National Team

Offensively thought we were ok. Defensively thought we were ordinary. Gaps in defense everywhere, defenders dropping too far back too quickly into the goal box giving the USA space to shoot from the outside the box. I think there are some areas there to tidy up on. I’m not a huge supporter of having mids so far away from the defense as any turnover on offense exposes our defense and allows for easier through balls.

I’m surprised the shot count was that far in our favour but the results suggested we perhaps should have done better than we did.

It wasn’t a terrible effort, I think you can improve defensively a bit without losing the attack. I also think you should consider substituting defenders on as well to give some freshness to the defense line.

Throws need work as well.

Thx a lot for your feedback, i really appreciate. :-)

That's true, i had the same feeling about my DEF line and my MID line today. I used the same tactic as previous week but igave today a very bad result. Offensively, i got some nice 1vs1 stopped by his GK (about 3-4). But defensively, my players did not move as hoped. They moved late towards the opponent ATT line, giving too many gaps between each DEF. And even if when i look at my tactic, i really do not feel they are too far away from my DEF, when i saw the game, i saw them really useless. Moreover, their MID line was really strong with def skills. I also thought he will play as he used to as in his last games (NT and own team) but he changed against me with great result.
You're right, i have to improve my DEF and MID line. About throws, i must see it again because i did not see such bad behaviour of my players.

Well the left corner we had we butchered as the mid was too close to the corner taker for example. Think we allowed USA a few easy throws as well without putting pressure to get the ball back.

However, yeah on turnover our mids were almost helpless as they were so far ahead of the us midfield.

I must admit i had never saw this type of action in any games before. I often used this position between my 2 MID useful for the throws. But here, when there was a corner shot, every time, the player must shoot towards the ATTs in the goal area but never towards the other MID near the line...

Depends if the strikers are marked or not. If they’re marked and a midfielder is close by corner taker will attempt to pass to the midfielder instead. Not common but can and does happen. Unfortunately in our case tonight, since the mid was on the sideline the pass missed the target and went out for a throw.

I would agree with cometer.
I felt last game tge defenders were too far back but sometimes you do that to surprise an opponent, however if it's a "go to" tactic, then they are too far back.

They need to be further up the field to be more in contact with MIDs and not allow the opposition to back easy pot shots.

Either that or the mids need to be brought back. It’s all about shifting the depth whilst still maintaining structure.

Scotland - Australia 5:1
Well, i had to stop watching the game at 38' minutes (lunch time) and i saw that our tactic was good, they were neutralized, we could have got some nice actions with long passing but our strikers received the ball and and have to go back and were tackled by defenders... Then, i went to see the result and... It was a disaster !! :-(... The scottish coach changed his tactic and i saw that he scored 4 times in 9' !! I'm sad regarding to the 1st half well played... I will look at the 2nd half to understand what happened to had been so much destroyed in such less time. I'm sorry.
(editado)

Well i've just finished to watch the entire game. And at first, as i saw the name of his tactic, i believed that he has changed his tactic in 2nd half but no, it was the same tactic as in 1st one. Then, what to say. In 1st half, we managed to block their attack. Their MID were more complete (able to tackle our MID) but quite useless to reach their ATTs. As i said, we could have some chances to reach GK if our long passing were more fast tp reach the speed of our ATTs... We scored at the end of 1st half with a bad goal. Not undeserved.
But in 2nd half, the scottish ATTs socred at each shot and we hit post twice and lost few 1vs1 from our ATTs... What such painful to see.
I'd really appreciate if someone can see the game to know if we saw the same totally efficient win of Scotland today or where i'm totally lost with tactics please.

Hard loss there mate. When the sokker gods decide to let in 4 goals in 9 minutes, there's not much you can do. Even the worst default tactics rarely let in goals at such a rate (would be a 40+ goal match), so there isn't a lot you can do when it happens.

I'm sure there will be things that need fixing but I can guarantee no tactic you had out there deserved that.

I wish I had the time to watch, but I'm struggling to watch all the u21 matches let alone others (ie my team or Aus) right now (almost a new, first baby, new house about to move to, a research paper and presentation due shortly and still the all over the place work hours including overnights).

Keep your head up, keep trying to adapt the tactics to close gaps, and results will start to follow

Two things and I told you about this before.

1) 2nd half our mids were way too far away from defs

2) You lost it here. High pressing tactic and you didn’t use subs in defenders. That’s why the match changed in the 2nd half. It’s a really easy message. You can continue to fail to use your subs and you will continue to see this.


Real shame because you did so well the first half. Renaud injury probably didn’t help but not using defense subs ultimately sunk you today.

Don’t believe me? How many through balls did they get first half? How many 2nd half?

Thx again for sharing point of view, always important even if i will not do agree on everything you said. It is the basis of a fair debate.

About your 1st point : 1) 2nd half our mids were way too far away from defs
I did not noticed this. I will rewatch the game to verify it but i clearly listen your last points and put closer the MIDs to the DEFs to have more consistency. My point of view is that their MID were really more complete (with high defender skill) to be able to counter our MID skills. But as i said, i will check what you pointed out.

About your 2nd point : 2) You lost it here. High pressing tactic and you didn’t use subs in defenders
We lost a top defender because of injury happened yesterday. I considered that the 2 DEF subs should be used only in case of injury because we did not have enough free position to make predicted substitution as i made for MIDs. I consider that MIDs can be substituted easily even if the risk of missing one sub in case of injured ones could be replaced by DEF or ATT with less impact than for the DEF or the ATT side. Moreover, the subs did not have the same level/form as the main DEF team, that's the 2nd explanation why i decided to not use them as normal subs as i did for MIDs. Same explanation for ATTs subs.
Maybe i'm wrong by doing this but i really hate to get injuries and not have enough player to replace because i already used them previously. I understand your point of view but i will never take this risk for DEFs, never for me.

I mean whichever way you look at it 5-1 was a little harsh given the chances but yeah it opened up when we started tiring. That’s the risk with pressing- more movement means more fatigue.

I don’t know the current status so maybe we had some bad form/unavailable defenders but I thought we were doing ok with defs. Even more so than mids of strikers. I guess perhaps some of our older crop have started falling away but still thought we still had some depth there but it has been a while since I last knew of what we had.

Tactic wise thought we were good and better than a 5-1 result. I think the gap in midfield to defense came due to player fatigue perhaps. Didn’t notice it first half but saw it a few times in that 2nd half particularly later on.
(editado)

I must admit that even if i played since a long time here, with some quite strong teams (my own team can reach 79 mark) and i never noticed some "fatigue" as you evoked. The lonely way to replace players were for me, low stamina and bad form or even bad TD.
The depth DEF bench is quite good indeed but form, low 2ndaries skills worry me to replace main DEF by them. MID bench is really in top form.
But OK, for the next game, i'll add more DEF on the bench to replace few of them and see if i could see changes as you evoked. Our next opponent will be Indonesia which a similar team in terms of mark.

I mean it’s a trade off. You wouldn’t sub off a sd form, sd def for say a tragic form, unearthly but you might sub off a sd form sd def for a brilliant form divine def for example. Stamina only goes to formidable so yes there will be deterioration. You may not have ever noticed it because f you were superior to others in your league and they also didn’t use subs then both sides fatigue similarly and it likely isn’t noticeable. On the other hand if you don’t have superior players (and our nt doesn’t in a lot of places) then yes you’ll notice it more often.

Effectively what happens is as players move they get tired and their skills perform worse than what their actual levels are, so at some point in time fresh legs would usually be better providing you have players in similar ranges.

It’s why people sub strikers and wingers because they usually do the most work and having a fresh player can make the opposition players start missing tackles, fouling etc if they also haven’t been subbed off.

If you keep a deep defense and don’t move around as much you actually don’t tire as quickly and can hit hard in 2nd halves. Most noticeable in ET in cup style matches as stamina continues to drop post 90min. I’m not saying you have to do that but to it’s where some tactical decisions are made. Do I try and press for territory and to get the opposition defense tired as well or do I sit back conserve energy, ride the fact they’re going to attack hard and then at some stage flick the switch and attack more aggressively.

I’d usually sub a defender off if the opposition use a winger and I’d sub the defender that was marking that winger as wingers attract a lot of ball and defenders marking the winger do a lot of chasing and tackling.

In this scenario they didn’t use a winger but I’d have been tempted to sub off the 2nd and 4th defender given that’s where their strikers were set up to attack through