Subject: US Senior National Team

I will help if you need assistance until you get a backup

google is my friend
No problem for my player, i'm sorry if he is not good in national team. I'll talk to him

Just so everyone is clear, these are the training ratios I wish everyone would have:

Backs:
Offense 100 70 70 50 25max aggression
Defense 100 70 70 50 30max speed 40max shooting

Wings:
Offense 100 70 70 50 30max pass
Defense 100 70 70 50 40max shooting

Pivot:
Offense 100 70 70 50 30max pass
Defense 100 70 70 50 40max shooting

Goalies:
100 70 50 25max tec, speed

*any attribute with max next to it is completely optional and should be player by player based on their Q's

Do you want to use any defensive or offensive specialists?

Never mind.

I want the USA team to be almost strictly specialists and maybe 1 or 2 balanced starters with balanced backups. From my personal experience the brute force of stronger specialization is better than the balanced all around player, and that goes for primary over tertiary attributes as well.

i found a balanced pivot is great as 3rd pivot
and one balanced from each position is also great

that is cause when the championship finals start u cant add more players. they are good ones to replace injured ones.

I had a plan to run balanced players for one half of the qualifications just so we save energy. problem is that we dont have many good of those.
it has potential to work

Thats what I tried, but we just dont have the necessary OR and players.

as salaries get more and more expensive and the cost of carrying players get more and more.... the balanced player will come back in style. Hard to build a team and backups when having 2 complete specialized teams puts you 2 or 3 over the cap.

Nice win for team USA!!!

How do the coaches think we're doing in WC qualification? Also, what positions on the court do we need to strengthen the most?

This has been a pure MrBrightside show. We chatted abit at the beginning but I am just slotted in there until someone wants to step up and take on Assistant role.

Those two wins against Argentina were very important. We are in a good position as we can conserve energy in 2 of the 3 remaining qualification games and get one win against Sweden at the end. Or we can conserve energy all three games. I think that our weakest position is keeper. We do not have a 4th to step in and Luther Brunson is not going to cut it as the replacement in 4 years. Kevin hall dropping to 4/6 was a suprise and a shame.

Between Jack and Russ, I think we have a couple of pretty good goalies to be honest. Russ was 6/6 CL 18 year old (and I think Jack might've been too), so they'll be holding their own long after several of the other "staples" of the team start to fall by the wayside. Compare them over the long run to the guys that dropped to 4/6 CL as 17 or 18 year olds, and it's no contest.

Brunson is a decent goalie... But I agree that he's not a long term solution. But then, that was never his role anyways. His experience growth was stunted a bit, and his current manager doesn't train him very well. His speed and technique stats are way way too low at the moment. Looking at eOR, I have Brunson at 453, while Russ is @ 788 and Jack is at 833.

If I had to choose our biggest weakness, it'd probably be at pivot (especially when you consider the youth we have coming along at back and wing). Particularly defensive pivot. Marrero came in with a high enough OR that he's been serviceable, but the miles are starting to show... and he doesn't have the qualities to keep up training at a high level.

I've mentioned him in the past, but I think Jacob Horne may be worth another look for the national team then in the short-term at DPV. While he's 4/6 to Marrero's 5/6, he provides improvements in many other stats:

Compared to Marrero
FIP +25
Blk +12
Agr +16
Tec +1
Exp +12
Also, I'll soon be up +2 on TF and have better coaches, which lessens the impact of being 4/5 compared to 5/6. Something to consider.