Subject: US Senior National Team

Don't bother scouting the two Belarus guys(unless you want to). I already sent them to Bulls in a message. If anybody else wants to see em message me.

Send them to me please...

spain it is

thanks, I found one of the defender has passing the same as technique. the other one was more like an offensive player.

it will be a good idea to scout the other defenders

Spain beat Belarus by one goal!
So now we are tied with Spain with same goal differential.

I was hoping Belarus would beat Spain and make things "easier"...

The spanish players bulls wanted scouted are done. Do you need anymore scouted ? I can offer 2 slots again in a week

In a few minutes we will be facing Hungary. As we know they have a strong team and are the favorites.

We will be playing same lineup as the one we played our friendly as that is the one giving us better strength. I changed one player. Minton leaves giving the place to chase on the defensive end.

We will be playing 4-2 fast break attacking with backs as it seems effective against Hungary.

We had a great 1st half ending ahead of Hungary but the huge amount of fouls and 2 min penalties killed our chances and we lost it in the second half.

Spain won today. Not good. Not good.

Well that was a terrible game today... Our goalies did not catch anything, especially Jack.Since Spain plays on FB, so we tried to put Thomas on offense so he would prevent them to score from FB. Total day :idiot:

1) As for the result:

yeah... that game today was pretty much a must win for us. Everything from this point is an up hill battle. To even have a chance at qualification, we need to be flawless and have to have one of the top 3 teams implode.

2) As for the goaltending:

Jack has struggled in every international qualification match so far, and I'm so incredibly annoyed that he is STILL playing as much as he does (another 50 minute game today).

Suffice it to say that there has not been a SINGLE qualification match where Jack was the better goalie. In EVERY match, Pascale was better (in most matches, he was better by FAR).

If you look, the best goalie on my team (and the top goalie for prize money in division II.1) this year is actually my 3rd string goalie (he's not even 300 OR). And you know what? I have zero issues playing him for more time in games where the starter is getting killed. He's taken (on average) 5 shots less per game (~18 SA/game) than my starting goalie (~23 SA/game). Jack on the other hand, has faced 3x as many shots as Pascale in qualification matches, and has an average save percentage of barely 30% compared to Pascale's 40%.

I said it before and I'll say it here again. When goalies are even remotely comparable (as is the case with Jack and Pascale), play the one who is doing best. Take off the "minutes played" bullshit in the tactics and set goalies to rotate out after they get scored on 2 consecutive shots. The better goalie will play more time. How hard is that?

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So yeah... I'm very disappointed in the result of this game, but mostly because I feel as though the goaltending is something that should've been tweaked several games ago (the last time I posted on the issue).

Sorry for the rant... I'm just very... passionate. Or patriotic. Or something.

i played 3 goals for 1st and 2 goals for 2nd

tactic didnt work very well because they didnt go fast break on first half instead they did on second.

Also I was hoping we'd not commit as many turnovers playing slow but we had as many as spain in first half.

our offense was horrible missing many shots while the defense was not effective even when i played the best defenders in there in first half. they were more effective on defense than we were on 1st.

2nd hald i had to go for all or nothing. it worked till almost the end when we were behind only one goal but last 7 minutes were to forget.

with this loss we are virtually eliminated.

On my team, I have 2 goalies with almost identical builds (though 1 is a year older). The older backup was actually playing much better (his save percentage was more than 10 points higher). I recently made him the starter since he had more energy. His save percentage went down a lot. My impression is that backups might perhaps have better save percentages. In general, a player that plays less may perform above the average ability.

It's also good to have multiple comparable goaltenders to switch around to manage energy.

I think swtiching goalies every 3 goals should generally be effective.

I have decided to run for NT again.

All, but the 15yo i just called, of the under 10 chemistry players (well, they are in fact 2 or under) will be cut. There are 12 players.

Out of those 12, at least 10 will be reserved for incoming players as several managers are finished (or have finished) level 11.

Out of the remaining, I may cut some (specially some that will be 18yo and not used much) for players I could use more. In that case I will list the names of the players under consideration for being cut and you guys will have opportunity to give input.

There could be 2 players cut. So total we'd have around 16 slots available where 4-6 of those would have to be high OR that can give instant help and the remaining reserved for next season 15yo.