Saudi Arabia

Sorry that the topic is a little late [Spokojna Egzystencja Stała Się Jebaną Apokalipsą ;) ]

5.02.2010 [H]
23.03.2010 [A]

Formations:
4-3-3 poor
4-5-1 passable
3-5-2 solid
5-3-2 passable
3-4-3 poor
5-4-1 solid

Team Spirit: calm
Confidence: poor

Two coaches: off and def

Surely the weakest team in our group, which we of course shouldn't underestimate ;) To this point they'we played two games, against Russia A(541 press-inad) and Hong Kong H(442 AIM-excellent), losing both 0:3.

I'll throw in the sheats with their players tomorrow after training.

cheers :)

I think they are stronger than Ecuador, Ecuador that barely lost 1-2 to Russia.

Anyway, we have to take care of both of them as these are in some sense the easier games we have to play this season.

They are definitely stronger, but this is evened out by homefield advantage we'll have next week and won't have today

Definitely:).

jacek_BTL napisał:

They are definitely stronger, but this is evened out by homefield advantage we'll have next week and won't have today

It's time to prepare for them. They are definitely hot after today's nice win, but we have to take care of this match too.

We have homefield advantage, much better players, better team spirit and confidence. They will use next two games to build up TS for home matches against Ecuador, Wales and Russia. Both Mexico and Russia lost yesterday, so we are 3 points ahead. Next week Russia goes to Mexico so one of them will loose points for sure. Also Hong Kong has a hard away game against Wales and may loose points. This is one of the easiest games in this campaign, everything goes well so far, I think we definitely need to play 17yo future captain for 90 minutes next week.

As far as the captain is concerned, the discussion is similar to last week. There is no doubt that we can afford to play him in this game (especially if we make the correct choices from that tactical point of view), however what happens in the long term?

We have only 4 slots available, and a series of 5 very difficult games coming up. We have to do our best to get some good results in these (1+5) games. Already we can see a forward is injured, if he is injured by Friday, I have to call another one...There are a lot of scenarios where we will need all these 4 slots, and as I said it many times, risking the qualification cannot happen.

We are in a better position than last week, but we haven't played any difficult away games and at this point even a single mistake can cost a lot...

About our forward: 110 doctors will heal him till Friday :) But is it eally needed? Saudi Arabia got magnificent central defence using 5 defenders, we will get outstanding very low with Zagajewski/Mokrzycki/Bednarz + 2 IMoff, this will be enough (especially that if they play 5 defenders we will have really huge ball possession). And we may always play in the way similar to Portugal's last game - 352 AoW. We can have two brilliant side attack with passable midfield (or outstanding sides with solid midfield).

By the way, I think another thing to do would be switching 3rd 20yo winger for a 19yo one, preferably by getting rid of Obiegło, who is oldest and proved to be least useful during last 3 games.

110 is too little from my calculations(there are only 4 updates left)

Anyway, I guess you are right about Obieglo, that is also my strategy: to get rid of him once we're done with the batch of 5 tough games to follow (after the saudi arabia one).

As far as the arabian defense is concerned, was that a defensive coach?!(since ecuador gets formidable with 18yo's)....

jacek_BTL napisał:

About our forward: 110 doctors will heal him till Friday :) But is it eally needed? Saudi Arabia got magnificent central defence using 5 defenders, we will get outstanding very low with Zagajewski/Mokrzycki/Bednarz + 2 IMoff, this will be enough (especially that if they play 5 defenders we will have really huge ball possession). And we may always play in the way similar to Portugal's last game - 352 AoW. We can have two brilliant side attack with passable midfield (or outstanding sides with solid midfield).

By the way, I think another thing to do would be switching 3rd 20yo winger for a 19yo one, preferably by getting rid of Obiegło, who is oldest and proved to be least useful during last 3 games.

Maybe it's a little more than 110 doctors, but it's possible :)

About defensive coach: I think yes, they used it against Russia. Even if we think they could have made such a serious mistake and play with other one when they had no reason to do so. For me best method of checking such things is looking at ratio of attack to defense. In the game agains Russia they had side attack at level passable very low (21) and central defense at level magnificent very high (48). 21/48=0,44.

I set similar lineup in HO using our team and I got:
- defensive coach: mythical low (66) defense, solid very high (28) attack. Result: 0,42
- neutral coach: titanic low (58) defense, excellent very high (32) attack. Result: 0,55
- offensive coach: world class high (51) defense, formidable high (35) attack. Result: 0,69.

Which strongly hints at defensive coach by them.

If comparing to Ecuador, in the games against us they had 22,5 stars at defense (keeper included) and they did 92 hatstats defence out of this. Saudi Arabia had 26 stars and did 128. So first team got 4,1 point for each star and the second 4,9, no way that the second had more offensive coach than the first :) (bigger ratio for Saudi Arabia is explained mostly by most of difference coming from keeper, who contributes more to defence, partly also by Ecuador playing with 2 forwards for 25 minutes and their players being younger and thus getting bigger part of their stars from sideskills (wing and playmaking) that don't contribute to defence).

Do we have a list with their players?

I think you are right with the coach. They also played pressing and that decreased their ratings a little bit.

This means that they did use a defensive coach against Mexico too, right?:)

I don't think so. During that game they already had low team confidence which lowered their attacks. With 3 CDs and 2 forwards their side defense was lower than their central attack, and their central defense was only 1,5 times higher.

Experiments with our team in the same lineup and poor confidence gives:
- def coach: titanic very low central defence, formidable very low sides, passable very high central attack.
- neutral coach: world class low central defence, excellent very low sides, solid high central attack
- offensive coach: magnificent very low central defence, solid low sides, excellent very low central attack.

Last one fits best - it's the only case where central attack is better than side defences and central defence is approx. 1,5 times higher than central attack. So I think they used offensive coach against Mexico. Which also was a logical choice for a team expecting to win midfield and having troubles with low team confidence (which means they needed all attack they could get) :)

After friday game:

Team Spirit: calm
Confidence: poor

4-3-3 poor
4-5-1 inadequate
3-5-2 solid
5-3-2 passable
3-4-3 poor
5-4-1 solid

Couldn't paste the players list here, so I sent it directly via ht@ to mastercyb