Asunto: [NT] Australia vs Israel

Wow, interesting game :)
And the result is ok. $

More to the game I write then later :)

Interesting game indeed. We looked pretty efficient in the first half. A few miscontrols by Thompson and some good GK kept us out. But some good work from Parker at the other end also held them goalless early.

There were a few areas of the tactic that I wasn't fond of, but we did seem to mark up pretty well. I assume that was due to your scouting?

I'd like to see wing-backs come more central when the ball is on the opposite side, to assist the CBs and encourage expansive cross-field balls.

I'd also play defensive wing-mids narrower to push their wing-mids wide and unsight the winger to block through-balls to the strikers.

When you leave holes in the back-4, it's important to block the line-of-sight from the mid in possession to their strikers, so they can't just slot balls to the feet of the strikers. For that reason, I'd play the central DMs a little deeper, to allow their CMs to take possession but tackle them from the front and set up a counter. Occasionally their CMs got the ball on the wrong side of our DMs and that's a very dangerous situation with a loose back-4.

Solid result against a team we were fairly well matched with. But if I'm being critical, probably a game we could've won.
(editado)

Australia 2:2 Israel
This was the first game from the new coach Andreasson. After the game he wasn`t sure, how to react. "It`s a good resulat. But we was with 2:1 in front, and then we wanted to win." In the first half, we were the bether team. But: The biggest chance had Israel with a penalty. Anthony Parker saved us with a brilliant save. All in all, he made a great game.
Our tactic, the 4-4-1-1 worked well, I think. We had a lot of ball posission. And the pass-quality was ok. The second half started bad, only seconds after the start Israel scored the 0:1.
We had to react. And we did.
Thompson with a good ball in the middle and Stephenson with a header scored the 1 to 1. Then we scored the 2 to 1, or bether said Israel scored an own-goal.
At the and, the draw was ok.
Israel had a few chances too.

I`m happy with the result. The game was good, I think my tactic worked well.

So, now its your turn:
Say what was ok, what was bad. And bring idea etc :)

Your right, we could have won.
And its a good point you say. The central midfielders should have been more defensiv. Because if we could have got the passes to the strikers, Israel wouldn`t have any chance.

I thought our 4 midfielders were stuck in no-mans land at times.

At times not defensive enough to cover the holes in the back 4, which resulted in a central defender being drawn out of position and passed around on a few occasions.

When we were very high in attack our mid-line was probably marginally too far forward as they had defenders kicking the ball just over their head, but they were so deep that they couldn't add anything to the attack.

I'm also not convinced that you want to have 4 mids in a line as it reduces the number of viable passes. If we'd had some of the mids push forward when one of them had the ball, then we could have switched play more effectively between the mids to look for that killer pass forward. With them all in a line I think we forced passes to Stephenson and Thompson too often and too early. Alternatively maybe a 4-3-1-1-1 with a link-man in front of the line of 3 might work better?


There were certainly some encouraging signs though, Thompson looked good on his wing and Parker had a pretty good game between the sticks. Our defenders had some of the biggest roles I've seen for Australian NT defenders and acquitted themselves well.

I'll go the other way and say I wasn't really that impressed ;).

Thought we were lucky to get a draw from that when we should have won fairly comfortably.

I've never felt comfortable with Stephenson as a lone striker. 1 from 7 again kind of demonstrates why he can't score very often except from his head.

Thought some of the throw in positions of our players weren't great either, allowed Israel a lot of free ball from their own throws. Square throws are pretty predictable and we left them exposed and allowed them to win the throw and immediately put us on the back foot.

Gaping holes between our central and outside defenders exposed us badly as their strikers slotted straight in between where the gaps were. At the same time we had no coverage between their midfielders and their strikers which allowed them to take full advantage and if it wasn't for Parker we may well have been a few goals down.

Whilst on the topics of gaps it also seemed that their midfielders slotted nicely into the gaps between our midfielders allowing them freebies from their defenders without too much difficulty.

So that meant they'd be able to go from their defs to their mids without too much problem and then due to our vacant gaps push a ball through to their striker and it ended in a shot on goal.

On the plus side though we were able to string together chances and Thompson looked dangerous down that right wing and was able to send in a few good chances to Stephenson.

2-2 result acceptable but I wouldn't be rushing to call it a good result.

Good luck next week.

Hey, don't be too harsh with Andreasson :) it was his first game, give him some credit :)
I think you did a very good game and you can call this result a good one, could have gone either way, though... Mids starting to become very important, I had only 3 and you controlled the game and, even if you used only 4 defs, I still didn't have too many chances (maybe just the first goal), you can also look at Romania game today, also 4 defs and almost no chance for Chile...

just my opinion :D Good luck!

Hey, don't be too harsh with Andreasson :) it was his first game, give him some credit

You obviously haven't been around these forums long enough if you think that's harsh ;).

I'm not afraid of saying things as I see them. When things go right I'll acknowledge them too.
(editado)

They are just observations and suggestions. Andreasson can take it on board and either use it or not.
In the end, he will be judged on the results, not on how well he implemented our ideas. :P

Its interesting what you all write, and it surely helps me :) i will answer to the critic etc. Later on this Day (im in train)

A few reactions to the critic for the Israel game...

-"it would be bether to play with 2 strikers"
I would like to play with 2 strikers too. But: Then I lose an other player on an other position. And with the new engine, I think that 4 or 5 defenders are a must.
Only possibility would be to play a 4-3-1-2 or perhaps a 5-3-2.

-"we shouldn`t play with 4 central midfielders in one line"
Ok, thats right! I saw this too. Perhaps we should play with 3 central defensiv midfielders and one more offensiv.

-"the 4man defense wasn`t so good"
Thats true. I wanted to play with 5 midfielders and so I had to pla with 4 defenders. It was not perfect, but in my eyes Israel did not have so many chances.


So there is really much to make bether in the next few weeks. This is clear. But I think that the tactic with 4 defenders and 3-4 central midfielders could work good.
I will try surely tactics with 3 central midfielder and 2 strikers. (The last could be a winger or a offensiv midfielder).

All in all I`m more or less happy with this first game. The result is ok. we have to say that Israel had a higher ranking and a few really great players too.
So now we have drawed again and could stop the way down (after 2 loses).
So now we can show in the Mini world Cup, what we can :)