AEV-Forum

Ok, this week sees a bit more of a move towards the final line-up, and focussing more on the players who are likely to play a lot of the WC. There is a bit more that can be done and this is not yet the final team or lines. The lines are set to 65/55/45/35 to give more time to the players most likely to play, but still give some boost to back-ups who will feature in case of injuries (which may be more prevalant in the next engine).

In goal is Rivers, with Wilkins backing up (swap after 2 goals if losing). Atkinson is third choice at present. I will ask in a moment for opinions on which goalie the community feels is the long-term likely starter.

Defensive pairings are Smith-Murray, Jemson-Dyer, Small-McGiven and Stallard-Noone. The top-7 are clearly the top-7 and would give huge problems to work out who to drop if we played with 6. Noone is likely to play in the WC as he is catching very fast. Aston is the current #8 but will be overtaken by Noone. Bridges will overtake Marshall/Samways/Ward, none of whom are expected to play for the U20s. Ward has the Q/P to play but no EXP (I can't fit him in my team so he is listed to try to get the EXP up)

Centres are Bromwich-Burke-Eaton-Penrice-Hessenthaler-Lynas. Apart from Burke/Eaton who are close it is a fairly clear order although Hessethaler has a chance of challenging.

Wingers are relatively tough to choose, and are generally weaker than the other positions. They are hard to choose as there is a much wider range of Q/P and attributes all over the place, so it is very challenging to predict which players will be where by the WC start.

For now the pairings are Dobson-Ebbrell, Widdrington-Quinney, Hooper-Stein, Wise-Ryan. This week Wise and Stein have swapped over. The players missing out all have a chance of making the team, as they have better Q/P than a few in the team at present. Webber and Johns are new youth pulls that should make the squad if they can catch up the EXP difference, Forbes is a brilliant 18yo that may just have too far to catch up but could see some ice towards the end of the WC. Hignett has a slim chance of catching up the lower Q/P players as well. Richardson won't play.

PP/PK are the main area where we are still spreading players far more than we will later, rather than focussing on success. They are:

PP1: Quinney-Bromwich-Dobson-Stallard-Small
PP2: Widdrington-Burke-Ebbrell-McGiven-Dyer
PK1: Wise-Eaton-Murray-Smith
PK2: Widdrington-Bromwich-McGiven-Jemson

Noone and Stein are both on fourth line and no PP/PK so we can monitor precisely the difference between small minutes for U20 friendlies and big minutes in club friendlies + PP/PK as it may be that we are better off playing three lines and getting the fringe players into club friendlies.

As always, comments/suggestions welcomed, and the next post will be the goalie comparisons.

oK, community input please, not least as it involves my goalie so I would like an impartial decision.

Our 3 goalies have the following stats, I would like to know which one(s) should be playing in the friendlies to develop the best goalkeeping for the WC starting in about 6 weeks - not automatically which one is best now.

All listed as Goal-Speed-Pass-SC-EXP-Q/P
A: 37-46-8-22-4-90/71. Gaining EXP slightly under 2 per week.
B: 50-27-11-14-26-95/53. Gaining EXP at 2 per week.
C: 49-31-10-7-13-90/53. Gaining EXP at slightly over 1 per week, but no weak spot.

How should we play this, even if there is a clear favourite, there is the choice of do we focus exclusively on one goalie and risk injury or give the likely back-up some games just in case.

Thanks all, much appreciated.

EDIT: One final thing, After the youth pulls this week, I will be contacting all managers with a player in the squad to say how I feel their chances are and what training I would like the player to have. It would be rare for youth pulls much later than this week to make the squad due to the low-EXP, although not impossible if they have huge AI well proportioned.

This week we have injuries to two starters, so I will switch to three lines. If we had a fully-fit squad I would probably have gone for four.

Ebbrell-Bromwich-Dobson-Murray-Jemson
Widdrington-Eaton-Quinney-Dyer-McGiven
Webber-Penrice-Hooper-Small-Stallard

To avoid excessive energy loss, all players feature on a special team line, and those who are on both PP and PK are on the second line of both.

PP1: Quinney-Bromwich-Dobson-Small-Stallard
PP2: Hooper-Eaton-Ebbrell-Dyer-McGiven
PK1: Webber-Penrice-Murray-Jemson
PK2: Widdrington-Eaton-Dyer-McGiven

Goalies are Rivers-Wilkins to swap after 2. Lines are 60 seconds for all lines, tactics are 10/0 every period as our defence is better than our forwards. As always, any questions please ask.

his is how the goalies looked 3 weeks ago.

All listed as Goal-Speed-Pass-SC-EXP-Q/P
A: 37-46-8-22-4-90/71.
B: 50-27-11-14-26-95/53.
C: 49-31-10-7-13-90/53.

Since then they have trained to:

A: 42/47/8/22/10 (+6AI +6EXP)
B: 50/34/11/14/30 (+7AI +4EXP)
C: 56/32/10/7/18 (+8AI +5EXP)

The conclusion before was unanimous for B starting all this season and likely next season, with most backing A as back-up. Is this still the community view? Does C have a chance at either role now?

I have my personal view, but as my goalie is involved I would like a community view as well please.

Exactly the same this week except Johns is injured so Stein comes in.

Two more things, one I would like to do a further goalie comparison, second, I intend to add a fourth goalie and replace the weakest 5 players in the squad with a line of 17yos at the end of this season. If there is such a thing as a meaningless game next season it makes sense to give the 17yos a taste of the action.

Posts : 400 Posted 20/09/2008 11:17:54 AM [url=http://javascript%3Cb%3E%3C/b%3E:confirmd%28%27delpost.php?quoteac=1&quoteno=36159&rub=4322&cat=4416&page=7&login=229663%27%29;][/url] [LEFT] Ok, our first competitive game with this squad is against the Netherlands. The teams are fairly evenly balanced and this could go either way.

IMO the teams stack up as Germany top of the group, Sweden bottom, with today's game deciding 2nd/3rd but it is close between all 4.

We are playing this game on high as there is a good chance that we will both make it through to the next stage so the result could count double. We will play our next game against Sweden on medium, and then I will look at the standings before deciding how to play the final game against Germany. With any luck they will have won their first two games and will be taking it easy, but that is optimistic at this stage.

I am playing four lines, 65/55/45/35. There are a few reasons for this, the fourth line will have all those players who have less SC than ideally required and will play on medium aggression, the top lines get more of a rest, and Noone is a PP specialist defender who gets on the PP line but limited defensive role this way.

Tactics are spread evenly at 10 to attack each period, as in all the friendlies. Our defence/goalies are good enough, our wing/centre lacks goals big time. Just look at our friendly scores even with the attacking bias.

The goalie is Rivers, set to swap after conceding two, if we are losing. Back-up is Wilkins although Atkinson pushed him hard for the spot. All 4 goalies are within 10 points of form, making it pretty much a moot point, unfortunately 3 are dropping but at least #1 Rivers is rising.

Lines are:
Ebbrell-Bromwich-Dobson-Dyer-Smith - Hack n Slash
Widdrington-Burke-Quinney-McGiven-Jemson - Hack n Slash
Webber-Penrice-Hooper-Small-Murray - Hack n Slash
Wise-Eaton-Johns-Stallard-Noone - Medium

PP:Quinney-Bromwich-Dobson-Ebbrell-Noone. 4 forwards + Noone, and well balanced.

PK1: Murray-Burke-Dyer-Smith, 3 defenders+Burke
PK2: Johns-Small-McGiven-Jemson, 3 defenders+Small

Not 100% sure on the PK, I considered running with only 1 line, and considered either 2, 3 or 4 defenders, but settled for this. Our forwards are predominantly weak PKers.

The only potential changes to this set-up are Stein could come in for either Wise or Johns as fourth winger, we could play 3 lines, Eaton would rise up the lines if he got to 10SC, Atkinson could be back-up if his form was higher than Wilkins and there could be some changes to PP/PK. The core is pretty much set as is as far as I'm concerned but I will run the squad details past a few managers for a second opinion as I'm bound to have missed something.

As always, any comments or questions please ask here or HA-mail.[/LEFT]

Posts : 400 Posted 20/09/2008 11:17:54 AM [url=http://javascript%3cb%3e%3c/b%3E:confirmd%28%27delpost.php?quoteac=1&quoteno=36159&rub=4322&cat=4416&page=7&login=229663%27%29;][/url]
[LEFT] I am playing four lines, 65/55/45/35. There are a few reasons for this, the fourth line will have all those players who have less SC than ideally required and will play on medium aggression, the top lines get more of a rest, and Noone is a PP specialist defender who gets on the PP line but limited defensive role this way.
[/LEFT]

A few tweaks but no major changes this week.

We will play on medium, it is definitely not worth playing on high as Sweden are favourites to not qualify, but playing on low would mean a pretty guaranteed loss and that is too dangerous.

Still on four lines (65/55/45/35) with the only change being Eaton and Penrice swapped, although this was a close call due to form. Quite a few players are under 50 form, not that there is any way to influence this, but we are not looking strong on this.

We have dropped the second PK line entirely, no change to the first PK line. The top 3 lines are playing on high aggression with the fourth on medium. If Johns (9) and Stallard (7) can get to 10SC we can play the fourth line on high as well, but I fear that Stallard won't get there at all and we don't really have an eighth defender who can step up to U20 level without him.

A win or draw guarantees progression to the next phase whatever the other results, a loss means that we would need a point in the last game to make sure of our progression.

Another victory, again a touch fortunate. A great powerplay performance with 3 goals from 6 PPs, all Quinney, and another excellent goalkeeping performance (36 of 38 shots) give us the win, and guaranteed place in the next round. This disguises the fact that we were outplayed in each area. Every line lost its faceoff battle and aggression battle, and they had 10 more shots than us.

The faceoff thing is weird though, they won 21, we won 20, so it would be impossible for all 4 of our lines to have a less than 50% rating, but that is what is shown.

We now play Germany in what is a group game for the next stage. We are both through to the last 12, and the result next week will be taken forward to our group of 6, along with our win against the victors of the Netherlands v Sweden tie. Advice encouraged, but I would suggest we play on medium. Low seems too much like a surrender as we may need the points, but it seems too early to be playing on high.

As for other changes to the line-up, I don't really see any glaring holes or weaknesses, so I will probably stay with this set-up unless injuries alter things. As always, advice welcomed if you have any suggestions.

EDIT: Our next group will consist of GB, Germany, either Netherlands or Sweden, Denmark, Finland and either Romania or Slovenia.

Whichever of Netherlands/Sweden and Romania/Slovenia go through will start on zero points. Of the teams we haven't played yet, Finland are probably the best team out of all 6, Denmark will be tough, probably the same as Germany who are slightly better than us, and we really want Romania to best Slovenia, as Slovenia are actually very good whereas Romania would be the whipping boys.

After looking through this, unless Romania shock Slovenia, I can't see a likely victory in this, we probably need 3 points out of 4 games (including Germany) to go through, which is definitely doable but not easy. I'm beginning to consider going to high next week to try to get points on the board early as I would find it very unlikely for Germany to do this.

CanadianOllie hat geschrieben:Ja Thomas da gebe ich dir recht, aber ich denke das ein bißchen Defensivtaktik uns nicht schaden würde.

thomas hat geschrieben:Das nächste Problem ist, das Pockel sich für 5 Tage abgemeldet hat und somit der nächste Defender sein wird, der im Formbereich 40 rumdümpelt. Langsam mach ich mir Sorgen.