archer21

Against most teams that we’re better than, I definitely agree that we’d want to play on a better field in better conditions. However, Costa Rica doesn’t have the speed or physicality that we do, so a long ball game probably favours us anyways. I could be wrong though, maybe it’ll just slow the game down and make it sloppy, which may not favour us. We’ll just have to wait and find out in November.

Around the 1:40 mark is the incident. Will Johnson fights for the ball with the keeper and the keeper pushes Johnson away so Occean gives the keeper a little shove then gets hammered by a Cuba player. I looked it up and it was apparently a 6 game suspension for “several acts of unsporting behaviour and using offensive language toward match officials”. https://www.google.ca/amp/s/www.cbc.ca/amp/1.1317026

I wonder how much power the player has in this decision though. Davies was clearly not happy with being sent home in the prior window. Will Bayern risk pissing Davies off by forcing Canada not to play him? It’s clearly important to him that he plays as much as possible for Canada.

If the argument is that Herdman should call extra players to get them integrated with the squad, then I agree. However, I do agree with El Hombre that it wouldn’t have made a difference in actual matches. If we called Akindele instead of Brym, and gave him the minutes that Brym has, nobody would be complaining about not calling in more guys. The problem is that most here disagree with Brym being called over Tesho. Another thing, people keep saying “we didn’t replace the injured/Covid players”. Sure we did. We had 23 players in the first window and 23 players in the 2nd window, not counting the injured guys. Just because the roster release showed 27 guys or whatever doesn’t mean we actually intended on having 27. We probably intended on 23 like first window and just added the extra names in case they ended up making it.

I’m surprised Brym is still getting so much hate on here. I agree that he probably didn’t deserve the minutes, but he’s shown pretty well in my opinion. Had that terrible cross against Jamaica and could run a little harder defensively but he did a good job keeping possession against Mexico and Panama. To answer your question though, I’m assuming Herdman sees Millar as more of a winger and Brym as a striker, so Brym becomes the replacement for David.

I’d be surprised if we don’t start Davies and David. If we wanted to rest them, it would have been on Sunday I think. They’ll be fine to play 1 more match. I’m sure they’ll end up going back to their clubs pretty exhausted, but this is too important for us to cater to them. We should be sending out our absolute best 11 tonight and dealing with the consequences after.

Yeah they were definitely not as organized against Panama. They played all attacking players because they couldn’t play any of their UK based players in the away games. So they tried to fit in a bunch of attacking midfielders, wingers, and strikers into their front 6 players and were very poor. The pitch conditions didn’t affect Panama as much either, as they play a more direct style and didn’t have to try to break down a low block like we did. Two completely different matches, so it’s not really a like for like comparison when looking at how Panama scored and why we couldn’t replicate that. It would have been nice to have Larin or Cavallini (or even Akinola) to have more of an aerial threat to get on the end of crosses.

It should get interesting as we get further into the competition. I wonder if our away matches against CR, Panama, even El Salvador could be more open matches because they’re later in qualifying. If El Salvador is on the outside looking in, they may be more incline to push for the 3 points, which in my opinion plays right into our hands with our counter attacking speed. We need to be in a good spot though so we are not the ones chasing points late in the competition.

I think we’re underestimating the squad that Jamaica put out. On paper, yes they are missing a lot of their top players. They’re all recent additions though, and before all these English players were added, Jamaica were still a top 5 team. With their domestic players, they drew away to Costa Rica and nearly drew away to Mexico. The first window was very strange for them, as they tried to fit all of their UK players into one match, when they don’t all fit together. I think in the future windows, we’ll see a better mix of domestic/UK players and they’ll get some good results.

Agreed, but it’s not like we can’t win any of our away matches. Win 1 away match (I’d expect us to win at least 1 of @ES, @Panama, @Costa Rica, @Honduras) and suddenly you have a bit of wiggle room again. I know it’s hard to play away in Central America, but we have the talent to do it.

I expect Davies and David to start too but I wouldn’t put too much into what they said post game. They seemed hesitant to say that they’d be starting. I think they kind of have to say they think they’ll start, otherwise OneSoccer, Canada Soccer might not be too happy with them as it could affect viewership/ticket sales.

Interesting, I hadn’t seen that it includes EFL players as well. It may still not include players in Scotland though. I could see it either way, but to me it sounds like he’s concerned that Spoony would have to quarantine and not be able to play. The comment at Gleneagles was a joke from what I can tell, as that is a very expensive, high class hotel.

Are you just assuming it’s a quarantine cost issue or do you have insider info that that’s the issue? All the press releases said Premier League players can still practice but need to quarantine. Meaning Scottish league and Championship players still can’t play when returning. It seems more likely that that’s the issue than simply the cost of quarantine hotels.

Haven’t seen many TFC games lately, but glad Shaffelburg is doing so well. He’s always had the pace and it sounds like his delivery and final ball is much better now. Could be a decent option when we’re playing counter attacking football. For people who watch TFC more often, does he play good short passes and one-twos in and around the box, or is he still mostly just good on the counter?

The majority of their team is from the UK, so not really. Depending on whether their guys are vaccinated and whether the vaccination exemption counts for players from Championship and from Scotland.