Tema: U17 national team

The U17s are on their way back from Venezuela still without a point in the World Cup qualifiers.

We took the lead early thanks to a Dawson Stanton goal but the Venezuelans responded with two to be leading at half time. Luke Burton equalised just after half time and there was a feeling an upset could be on the cards but the South Americans regrouped and scored twice more to seal the deal.

Identifying their goalkeeper as their biggest weakness, we added an extra forward to the lineup to try to take advantage of whatever chances came our way. In a sense this worked. We scored off both our shots on target. Unfortunately, we sent far too many wide for the strategy to deliver a result.

Our next match is at home against Spain, one of the best teams in our group but who have been struggling for results. Hopefully, we can make them struggle a bit longer.

Just got the scouting report on Hunter Hawks. His qualities are excellent for either a centre or wing defender.

Do you have a preference at all? Are you short on wing defenders?

My second 400+OR pull of the season, another defender Kai Brennan

Nice

Awesome, I got one last week myself.. ur SA is higher so more is coming ur way

I'll have him scouted in a couple of days. If you want a rough idea of where your players stand, here are the top 15yo players in each position I've scouted to date:

Goalies
Branden Poulton from Trueblue is the leading contender with G93 T65 Sp81.
Colah's Ethan Reilly has a higher goalie skill but lower secondaries and qualities.
Spitfire's Emanuel Fryer has comparable qualities to Poulton but lower skills and facilities.
Everyone else trails Poulton across the board.

Defenders
The Terrier's Jordan Cox (D108 Sp75) is the top dog and has already earned a spot in the national U17 squad as a wing defender.
Dylan Barnsley (D107 Sp57) from Atlantic and Beta's Abe Doherty (D91 Sp70) are the next highest skilled wing defenders with Barnsley having the better qualities but Doherty the better facilities.
Samuel Battlett from the Muppets has the best qualities for a wing defender but doesn't have the facilities to capitalise on it.
Hunter Hawks from the Knights isn't far behind on qualities and could overtake some of the higher skilled contenders.

Nathan Cullinane (D145 48-40-42-34) and Jackson O'Dwyer (D143 42-47-42-37) from Trueblue are the highest skilled central defender but need some work on the secondaries to be effective.
Jai Moody (D133 42-42-45-38) from Rudderz is in a similar position to the above two.
Colah's John Bussell (D108 52-52-49-52) is better balanced and has better qualities so will probably come into the frame at some point.
Samuel Battlett and Hunter Hawks (see above) also have the qualities to be excellent centre defenders as well.

Midfielders
Preston Houghton (M89 P63 T63) from the Terriers has excellent skills and qualities which has earned him a spot in the U17 squad already.
Toby Bulley (M94 P71 T71) from the Knights is ahead of Houghton skillwise at the moment but trailing in quality. He should still be in the mix later on, however.
Colah's Brodie Joyce (M104 P54 T47) needs to work on secondaries but isn't far behind Houghton in terms of qualities and has better facilities so will also be up there.
Similarly, James Etchells (M82 P56 T59) from Prestige also has very good qualities and facilities and could earn a spot.

Noah Kelly (M94 Sp70) from Beta's is the leading winger.
Kangaroo's Liam Quig (M77 Sp67) is probably next best while Tony Morse (M72 Sp52) from Rudderz has the best qualities to be a winger and is the only other player being trained for the position.
There is an opening for some players currently being trained as central midfielders to switch to wing. Brodie Joyce's speed quality is lower than his passing or technique but at 78 it is higher than the other leading centre midfielders so if no other candidates come forward I might switch his training to wing.
Dominic Aitchison (M90 Sp50) from Wooducks also has potential to switch to winger training successfully.

Forwards
Michael Davison (O97 Sh74 Sp72) from Beta's is the outstanding candidate at the moment and has earned a spot in the U17 national squad.
Bryce Power (O100 Sh84 Sp52) from Colah is currently next best but trailing on quality.
Ben Davies (O75 Sh55 Sp54) from Knights trails on skills but pips the top two on quality
Kane Earl (O85 Sh40 Sp40) from Wooducks needs more secondary training but has the best quality of any candidate and may yet grab a spot.

Poulton is a great goalie prospect, but wont me making the starting lineup, or even possibly the reserve bench of my top squad for a long time. Ace Keast is my go-to reserve guy so Poulton becomes a third string goalie.

Cullinane and O'Dwyer are both ok but have qualities too low for my liking Their scouted EOR / EQ figures stand at:

Cullinane: 208 / 68%
O'Dwyer: 222 / 63%

I'll build up their secondaries and improve them, but they will most probably end up on the market as they wont get game time for my squad, at least not in league or tourny matches.

Hugh tylers injured for 3 days so he cant play tonight

Phew!

Finally, we've earned a competition point with a draw against Switzerland. It took a 90th minute equaliser to snatch the point but we're on the board people!

My first season as U17 is drawing to a close and you have to decide whether to let me have another go or not.

Results this season have been disappointing: one draw and six losses from our competitive games. This makes it almost impossible for us to qualify for the World Cup so I will understand if people want to give me the boot.

I feel I made a couple of mistakes although I don't think they necessarily made the difference between winning and losing any games. And I feel I have learnt a lot so I would like to stay on. However, if you do go for someone else, I am happy to share what I have learnt.

The U17 team is quite different to any other team you manage in PPM. Because the players are so young, the best players are pretty much all 17yos. I played one 16yo (Scott McGrath) regularly in the top team and gave a number of others a run off the bench but virtually every other team stuck purely to the 17yos.

This means that you can't really build a team for the future. That makes it difficult for us because we don't have a lot of managers and, as runnyonion pointed out recently, our facilities are relatively poor. I recognised this at the beginning of the season and decided on a strategy of giving as much game time as possible to the younger players so that we might have a chemistry advantage next season. I won't know if that was effective or not till next season.

One of the mistakes I made was selecting a number of 16yos on the strength of their qualities in the hope they would train up well by the end of the season. I have since realised facilities are much more influential at this stage and I will take that into account more next season if re-endorsed.

A question for the future is, should the national manager try to encourage team managers with a promising player but poor facilities to put him on the market so he might get the benefit of better facilities?

You guys supported me after my first season as national coach and i had a pretty poor season. I then turned it around and had a pretty good season and im confident you can do a better job next season as well so ill be supporting you.

I am up
I'm happy if u stay..surely u can make difference next season.
Also, our better facility could make your job easier..we lost few quality teams lately and it takes mmt to catch up..

btw: to criticise is very easy if u do nothing,..

I voted to keep you in

The national U17 team are on their way back from Paraguay after a strong 4-0 victory over their hosts in their first game of the new season.

Paraguay are a weak team, currently ranked last, but we're only a few places ahead of them in the rankings so I'm pleased with a solid away win.

The XI who started the game look likely to be the starting XI for the rest of the season. One of the highlights was the performance of Beta's Scott McGrath who was a first team regular last season as a 16yo and is now clearly our best player and looks like matching it well with his opponents which will be a huge boost in midfield.

Also pleasing was Terrier's Jordan Cox in defence. The only 16yo in the starting XI, he will build experience and chemistry throughout the season and do for next season's team what McGrath is doing here.

Comparing player ratings with the first match of last season shows the team's strength is roughly equivalent to last year. This season's goalie isn't as strong but McGrath provides added strength in midfield.

Only three of our world cup group opponents (Spain, Switzerland and USA) played this weekend. The rest either hadn't booked games or had opponents who forfeited. The three who did play look to be stronger than us again but the gap isn't huge and they each have weaknesses we can try to exploit.

Nest week, we'll be playing the Australian senior national team which will be a hopeless mismatch but will give me the opportunity to give some other players a run off the bench.