BuzzerBeater Forums

Hellohello. Thanks for voting me in friends, opponents and other people, now the hard work starts...

I'll use this thread for most of the u21 matters this season, any time I'm doing anything worth sharing I suppose. I'll definitely do game reports, with my own game MVPs also. The game start time/location this year is actually a bit rubbish for me, on most days I'd arrive home just as the game is finishing – I am on (semi)flexi-time though, so maybe BB is the thing that finally gets me in before 10am occasionally? Ha (if not I'll watch the replays anyway)

Over the next few days I'll scout a few hundred players I think, so if your player was “dropped” from the squad after a call up, please ignore this. If I'm scouting him at all it's likely a positive thing (and for anyone who isn't aware: just because you become a National Team/U21 manager, you can't automatically see the attributes of any players – you have to call them up to the squad, which is why this process is happening)

I'll be making my first proper squad selection over the weekend – if at that point your player isn't in the squad, you can message me and I'll be happy to explain why I chose someone else instead, but you should get a message from me anyway – I'll be sending as many as possible and keeping people in the loop if their player is close to the squad where possible.

At the moment I won't discourage anyone from messaging me, just be aware I'll be busy scouting a lot of players, and there's a lot of messages I'll need to send and reply to so apologies if I'm slow.

Going forward however: please do send me messages on Friday's if your player has “popped” this week! Everyone likes good news and it'll be useful to check on training plans, etc.

That'll do. Speeches are rubbish. I'll come back when I've actually done something useful ;)

Current players scouted: 153
Current level of blocking in u21 players in England: shocking
Current players who are locks for the squad if I like how their minutes looked last year: 7ish?
Current frustration: my lack of spreadsheet/database knowledge :D (I've learnt a thing or two already, but I seem to only be able to do half of what I want in each...wait, and now I've fixed what was broken. I'm great)
Supporter packages bought: 1 (3 months). A 15 message history just isn't going to do it...

Next job: message some managers to get further towards clarity for this year...It's tempting to just mess around on the spreadsheet some more but the 18/19y old scouting can wait.


Last edited by Bergkamp at 10/4/2017 10:32:53 AM

Hi again.

Total players scouted in the end: 290 (maybe one or two out either way). Only 285 made my database though, I cut the lowest 5 or so with lower TSP/potentials off. (I finally found some quality control?) ;)

In time I'll be messaging those likely to be in contention next year, those with the highest TSPs of their age group and high potential players, etc to point out they should be the ones to focus training on. Once I've done that I might post some general idea of those players / depth charts maybe if I can work out a format I like and makes sense.
Between seasons I'll point out those who've added the most TSP, a shout out in a thread isn't worth that much, but I will notice and attempt to outwardly appreciate these things.

For now I've mostly focused communication on my shortlist of potential players for the squad this year, which is/was 26. Sorting/making sense of the bigs in particular has been annoying. What one player has, the other just lacks...(and none of you aside from Gully trains shot blocking! Seriously..)

As of today, DMI/game shape makes actually selecting the team a lot easier! (Good old game shape). It's often a bit of a lottery in week 1, but of the 26:
- 11 moved to 8 game shape and 1 to 9 (well I did get him a perfect 60 minutes, but still..lucky),
- 2 dropped to 5 and 2 dropped to 6 (transfers last week explain 1 each of the last two categories). Could be worse, could be better (I haven't analysed the actual mins played yet).

I won't actually add the players to the squad until late on Sunday though. (less time for the opposition to scout innit). That and so accusations of bias towards my picking my own players will be delayed a few days ;)

I've been encouraged by the response rate to messages I've sent out so far, had a few decent discussions about training plans, etc (and obviously there's people I need to get back to. I should probs get used to that feeling..).

My next post will be about our group / schedule at some point before Monday.

If anyone thinks they can help, or wants to help with anything with anything specific do let me know.

***yes I do need to mention shot blocking in every post, it's a self imposed contractual obligation or something.
(blahblah, too many paragraphs, if anyone wants to become my press release editor maybe that's a post that needs to be filled?)

Last edited by Bergkamp at 10/6/2017 3:26:15 PM

I won't actually add the players to the squad until late on Sunday though. (less time for the opposition to scout innit). That and so accusations of bias towards my picking my own players will be delayed a few days ;)

You don't need defending but since I know how the entire group looks I think its safe to say I would have picked your guys, obviously with the proviso that game shape would have to be good.

Speaking of game shape, I know I told you this in a mail but just so everyone can see it, I mistakenly thought my 21yo was a backup in my cup game on thursday. This would have given him a tad more than 60 minutes. However I omitted him and so he only got 47 minutes. I apologise for that and will not do it again.

So our Europe U21 Championship this year is pretty tough I think, and the schedule isn't favourable either.

Our opponents below (and their u21 world rank / number of managers)
Spain, 2, 1476
Estonia, 17, 416
Netherlands, 32, 94
Finland, 42, 216
Slovenia, 50, 125
Scotland, 65, 14
Ireland, 83, 43
and we are currently ranked 57, with 172 managers.

What makes the schedule tough is that we have 4 away games, only 3 at home. One home game is against Spain so unwinnable anyway, and we're away at Estonia, Finland and Slovenia. (3 teams you'd want to have a chance of beating in a good season). There's the Scotland/Ireland “local rival” risk of a crunch effort with this draw too.

The rankings probably have to be taken with a pinch of salt at u21 level given the large turnover of players. I think it does show that we underachieve as a nation though – Netherlands and Slovenia are smaller nations but ranked higher (this is something I want to change! And while this is getting ahead of things a bit – I do think our team next year looks better than this one even without much input from me)

First game up: tomorrow at 5pm, away at Estonia/Eesti (BB)

I am from Estonia, so would be nice to beat them tomorrow- strong team though. Also have been spying in the forums- nothing so far😂. All the best for the upcoming seasons.👍

Last edited by kammu at 10/8/2017 1:40:23 PM

England 96 – 122 Eesti
(43634)

Well, how do you analyse a game you're winning for the first 27 minutes but end up losing by 26?
Not just the game pattern that was weird, two injuries in the first 15 minutes is odd, and a bad thing, and makes analysing the tactics/lineup chosen more difficult again...

I think I'll go with just taking a few positives from the start, our PPP ratings looking ok, and the matchup ratings don't look awful either (equal defence, and good passing). When Hall got injured we were 12-9 up, when Karthiyaswamy got injured we were 30-24 up (and the rebounding was 6-6 him vs his opponent, 8-8 for the starting bigs overall). As I said in the opening sentence, we were still leading into the 3rd quarter...Rebounding ended up being a big issue in the game after the 2nd injury though and our overall “6'2 Enes Kanter at Centre” defensive strategy seemed less than ideal.

Negatives: obviously the defence, and I thought Lauricella would grab some offensive rebounds if we played outside but that didn't happen at all.

All that said, they used more effort so we were probably never going to win despite the good start and injuries.

Game MVPs: 1 - Stannard (efficient offence),
2 - Mahoney (most of the defence on 2-16 Vee),
3 - O'Sullivan can have 3rd place as he got most assists and no turnovers (but a steal and a block and a couple less shots would've been nice)

I haven't properly looked at game shape and stuff yet this week. There might be a couple of new call ups, but again, I've not looked yet, I thought it was time to get this report out finally, apologies for the delay.

Onwards, to the Netherlands!

Don't really understand why Estonia normalled. They're the seeded team and it would make no sense for you to waste enth at this early stage. Clearly they don't want to win the group.

While I'm slow on the match report again (I did talk about it a bit in chat on Tuesday), just wanted to pop in to say - pretty great job on the game shape this week everyone (y)
Just 2 players in less than 8 game shape and 4 in 9 gives us a much better chance of a good performance, and any selection headaches I have this weekend will only be of the positive kind...

Today you can enjoy some data stuff from my scouting at the start of the season.

Firstly 18 year olds: I scouted 80 of these.
Top 3 tsps: 63, 61, 60.
#1 hasn't played a minute this season, I'll see if I can get the owner to sell.
#2 just sold for 86k to a Swiss team. Hopefully he's trained from here...both of those guys just allstar potential though.
#3 is Kim Bujalska (43467086), a HOFer, owned by Porzigod. Has 4 x 48 mins this season at C, getting the inside training done early I assume, which on a 6'1 guy is great. Looks a very nice player, and looks like he's getting some smart training too. Should be a future NTer.
9 players between 55 and 59 tsp (two more HOFers in here)
34 between 50 and 54 tsp (1 HOF, 4 MVPs)
There's an All-time great who started with 48 tsp (0 minutes! The manager hasn't logged in for 10 days, but I'll send a message anyway)
4 more MVPs with either 48 or 49 starting TSP.

Last edited by Bergkamp at 10/22/2017 2:41:58 PM

19 year olds: 89 of these in my database. I'll go slightly more in depth seeing as some of these guys have actually been trained now.

Top 3 TSPs: 75, 72 and 70.
Fod Bartolo: (42675478). MVP potential so we like this guy's prospects.
Thomas Wieczorek (43467649)
Ryan Thomas (43467849)
All 3 being trained in England too, which is a bonus?

11 between 66 and 69 tsp (3 of MVP potential). Shout out to Buddy Arthur (42675708), he has some nice defence/inside skills already and could make the u21 team a year early.
25 more over 60 tsp (7 MVPs and 2 HOFers)
Another shoutout: Craig Ashburn (43467534). At the start of the season he had the most "useful/versatile teamplayer points" (which is OD+PA+ID+SB).
Wieczorek and Arthur join 2 others as joint 2nd in that formula (David Jackson and Jason Chaucer the other two, if either of their managers are reading)