Asunto: National Team U21

So a Czech Republic double header then for both our NTs?
(editado)

Tonight we take on Cymru in the quarter finals of the 2nd bracket (the bracket containing the teams that lost in the previous match).

Cymru have a fairly strong team compared to their overall ranking and use a pretty aggressive offside trap, which can be very effective, but also has some pretty big risks involved.

Provided our strikers perform, and we don't suffer an unlucky red or a game ending injury, we should make it through this round, but it certainly won't be the end of the world if we lose as we also need to look at the big picture of trying to get this second basket for the WCQ, something last weeks match was always going to hurt us.

Well what a load of shit that was. What did I say about a game changing injury? 3rd minute in...injury, which then meant someone with very little stamina didn't get subbed, and missed their Penalty kick.

Our Unearthly keeper (10k wage) in Divine form apparently can't stop any 1v1 shots, yet their Formidable/Outstanding (3k wage) has no issues stopping them.

Their striker can apparently dribble our defenders with ease front on and in a penalty shootout, we score our first 2 and then struggle after (again against their nothing keeper), and the second to last goal they scored was the slowest dolly of a kick ever.

Given the ranking difference, the ME has not only kicked us out of the cup (which I don't care about at all), but likely stuffed up our chance of a second basket.

Very frustrating when the ME steps in like that, what is the point of even trying if we are just going to flip coins on who wins and not look at skills at all

Don't think I've ever seen a tactic where the defence sits so deep.

We finally get a good world cup draw....and they are going to redrawn them :D

Needed to happen. On the basis of equality and fairness we had to have even groups (if they weren’t going to put the code in to take away the results against weakest sides so we were all on the same games played).

....and we got a horror draw.

Top 25% team for the 2nd pot.
And the 4th pot is the team that somehow beat us in penalties a few weeks ago.

Whilst they did the best thing they should have, it's typical that the time we finally get a good draw, it gets removed, and then replaced by a terrible draw.

Also if they did leave it, it was still more fair for those teams in the 5 group draw than it has ever been before (they had a 67% chance of going through as 2nd team compared to 50% previously).

Jayanthi (fwd not mid) out for 4 weeks - injured in a friendly. Just after putting one of his backups on the transfer list - sigh

Thanks for letting me know.

Sigh. But it is the game. It's back to back injuries that really hurt a player

An obscure tip for you to get an extra week of training into him...
Usually, playing an injured player would be a sure way to get him injured for even longer. But if you're playing a bot team in a league game who you expect to have no shots against you, you can play him in goal while slightly injured (<7 days) and train him in pace or even tech as a GK. Having said that, I take no responsibility if he gets injured trying to catch the ball. :D

Thankfully it was just a friendly, but messed up the times, so whilst I was in the middle of setting a tactic, and line up (I had removed people from the squad who were in the team), the match started.

We played a tactic I didn't want to play, with some players I didn't want to play.

Anyway, as I said, thankfully it was a friendly, and given it's a WCQ season, the points lost won't make any difference as we don't have much choice who we play this season.

Interesting stats

End of season run down.

Overall this season was a bit hit and miss, with probably our strongest U21 team ever

Unfortunately for 5 of the 13 rounds, we weren't able to show off just how good the team was due to competition rules, but they still did impress.

We won the Asian Cup which is always a good start, taking it back after crashing out in the Semi's last time.

We then entered the Druids Cup, which was a bit disappointing with how the rules changed half way through the tournament. We also had a couple of hard to take losses here, but that's all part of the game.

We had our highest rating game in U21's right at the end of the season, a massive 58 from an U21 team.

We also saw a team we dominated in the WCQ group phase twice, but ended up on the wrong end of the scoreline, make it to the U21 WC final, so whilst unlikely, the sky is the limit given we were better than them and then had a stronger team this season.

We missed out on pot 2 by 1 position...and then they changed the world cup draw, so then we missed out by 3 :'D which was actually nicer. Although between to two different draws, we went from having quite a nice WCQ group this season, to a Middle difficulty one.

Overall, it was a great season to show just how far our training efforts have come.

SQUAD of the season

GK
Munn - 35 caps

DEF
Carr - 16 caps
Haddrill - 25 caps
Rayner - 14 caps
Peters - 10 caps
Marsh - 9 caps
Tennant -7 caps

MID
Bulloch - 21 caps
Fleming (20) - 19 caps
Landers - 15 caps
Lozanovski - 4 caps
T. Jayanthi (20) - 7 caps

ATT
Prine - 7 caps
Caceras - 10 caps
Crews - 18 caps
Elliot - 13 caps

Time for a new round of season stats to start the season. Once again allowing us to see how we have progressed over the past 15 or so seasons since I started collecting stats when I took over the team (for objective stats rather than subjective ones often used by other managers).

In our second game of the U21 WCQ stage, we had a great result, but almost came away with even more.

Up against the number 1 seed in the group (we are number 3 and they are ranked 11th in the world) we managed to get a 2:2 draw, and held our own, if not more, throughout the game.
We were leading 2:0 for a while there, and had the lead until the 88th minute.

This opens the group back up again after the number 2 seed also managed a draw against Hellas.

It does show that whilst other teams rely on pure strength to win, that we can make up a good 4-5pt rating difference with good tactics. Imagine what we could do if we had the number of users Poland has haha

Hopefully I can get Morgan in to form so he can play a role this season