Asunto: National Team U21

Any insight into how you’re weighting skills per position? We all love a good debate here :)

Certainly happy to discuss without giving exact numbers, can't give too much away to the opposition (although I know a place we can have a good debate over the exact numbers)
(editado)

Going to "answer" this before I get on to MIDs so I don't forget.

GK: Keeper >> Pace >> Pass
DEF: Defender > Pace >> Play/Tech > Pass
MID: Passing > Playmaker > Technique > Pace >> Defender
ATT: Pace/Tech > Striker >> Defender > Pass/Play

Read in to it as much as you want for some good old banter, but try not to read in to or predict what I'd do and change training due to it. There are a lot of factors that go in to it.

If anyone wants to put their own % in for me to look at and potentially change my own numbers, the limitations I have are as follows:
- For each position, each skill value needs to be whole integer between 0-100
- Only the 7 main skills go in to the calculation (there is no modifier for stamina or form)
- Final number is only expressed as a whole integer and I don't believe it takes in to consideration part points when listing them from A-Z

Midfielders

Will have to sit down and watch the game, but on the surface of things, I'm pretty happy with that.

After beating the number 12th ranked U21 team last week, to back it up with a draw against the 34th, but outshooting them, all whilst giving up a 4pt rating advantage, I'm pretty happy with given we are 62nd.

It was also a new tactic, which whilst basic in nature, thought would counteract the Chile tactic fairly well.

We also had a couple of newer guys playing, so that was nice to see as well

Smashing it up & making a late run for 3rd at least. Moldova game will be key....could match them on points if next week's results go as expected & we beat them in final round. :o

13 shots for 0 goals. Disgusting ME

Just to get an idea of how many goals you can actually expect on average (as it used to be something like 1 goal for 3 shots a long time ago), I went through the last round of world cup matches.

203 goals
1036 shots

Basically works out as 1:5

Obviously many factors involved but good to get a rough idea what is a normal rate for U21 NT, so now I can compare to this figure

Yep, looks unlucky as 'f'. Very nice game anyways.

Hopefully that's the shi**y result out of the way before important game! :)

Once again, 8 shots to 1, 0-0 draw. This is getting old

Watching the game (since I was online at the time) 4-5 of those came from long range contested headers I thought, so I think 0-0 is within the realms of a fair result. Wasn't an unfair one. Unlucky we couldn't get 1 but it's not an unreasonable result. I was a bit surprised the shot count was that high when I saw the report. Felt from about 20min in that it felt like a glorified juniors match where neither side looked likely to score and may as well call the game over and go home early. Felt we had control of the game though but again think I saw one good chance the whole match and we missed it. We definitely missed midfield firepower so those 2 out definitely would have likely made a difference.

Agree that it was in the realm of a fair result, but when you have a number of them that one off is unlucky but ok, then as a group of matches, it leaves that realm of fair results.

Also the U21 matches are definitely very different to the seniors and many goals often come from that long range. As you say, they are kind of glorified junior matches :D, but then again, I've got the most junior titles in Australia :P

All things aside, I do think your assessment of this as a one off match is fair, it's just when it is added to a number like this, that is what makes it frustrating and unlikely/unreasonable

Yeah, that's fair enough. You've had a bit of a history with these kinds of games where results haven't gone your way when they should have. Only thing I thought tactically we were a bit shallow up top and there were maybe a few more exploitable throws we could have looked a bit closer at. All this without seeing their previous tactics etc and also noting that time isn't your friend atm so all that in perspective thought the game was ok just lacked quality of players from both sides which led to that glorified juniors type scenario and then both sides set up very similarly and took each others players out of the game a little. Was a shame the advantage we had in the winger didn't pay off with at least one decent cross to a striker though. That gave us a way through the mess that was centre midfield.

Yeah I wasn't very happy with my defensive positioning when they were approximately in line with our goal box, so will need to take a good look at that

Didn't get a chance to have a bit of a brag this week, but 5-1 over Jamaica was a great result.

Finally the strikers had a golden day, and hit the back of the net with ease.

Trajcevski proved his position as leader of the team (especially with Van Gisbergan on the sidelines), and the one goal he didn't score was after a shot of his rebounded off their keeper, to just in front of the goal line, for Mairou to tap in,