Hey guys,
As Revo mentioned, the hardest part lies ahead. In order to qualify, we would need a 6-1 record to be sure, since a 5-2 record could land us anywhere up to the 4th spot (or if we are very fortunate, the second spot based on goal average). Therefore, I'm going to have to make some decisions and seeing that Suomi isn't unbeatable despite their HCA, I am thinking that our odds against them might be better than our odds of beating the Czechs. The Czechs have once again shown us that they are extremely powerful, and although our weaknesses have clearly been exposed, those of the Czechs ( if they have any) are yet to be discovered. Not a single one of their games has given us a clue as to what weaknesses their team may posses. The annoying part of all this is that we play Suomi last, meaning that they could CT us in that game which makes winning extremely difficult. However, considering they got HCA, they'll certainly want to get the most out of it at the next stage, which makes me confident that they won't use the CT in their last game, and thus we should have a chance at beating them (we're better than Belarus, and Belarus managed to pull it off, so we should believe in ourselves).
We don't fully control our own fate anymore. If Bulgaria wants to qualify and if you look at their options, they play Suomi - us - Czechs. Suomi has got the HCA, so they'd need to CT them for a victory, forfeiting their last 2 games, which isn't something they will do. Then they play us, after which they go on to play the Czechs. If they Czechs are quallified by game-day 7, they'll have an easy CT-TIE game against them, so their most important match is against us. However, if Bulgaria for a reason decided that qualifying has become an impossible achievement, then they'll cut their losses and just CT us (which is a scenario i need to keep in the back of my mind).
So regardless of the choices I make here, we could end up with 6-1 record or we could end up with a 4-3 record which could mean we could come in 5th if Sakartvelo manages to win their last 3 games and would end up with a better goal average than us. I've got a week to get things right, but as it stands right now, the Czechs team is the lucky ones cause they face 2 teams in succession (us and Suomi) who can't risk playing a CT without forfeiting the game after them...
Either way, you've elected me as U21 coach, and I am going to do what I can to qualify this U21 team for the European Championship. If my plan backfires and we end up lower, then so be it. I rather try to go all out (I'm forced to at least try to qualify as long as we got chance, however small that chance might seem) then play it safe and come in 3rd (and probably regretting later on that I didn't try to make the European Championship).
Finishing in 3rd or 5th place isn't a big difference. You get eliminated from the European tourney and the only difference is that we'd lose a couple of ranks (we'll probably lose about 8 of them if we end 3rd and we'd lose about 15 of them if we end 5th). Each season you don't qualify for the Euro's, you lose rankings to those who did manage to qualify for the next stage. Since Europe has the biggest amount of teams, the other non European teams jump over nearly all the European teams who fail to qualify for the European championship and thus we'll lose rankings if we don't qualify. So i'm going to attempt to qualify, but the Czechs are the toughest team around. Unless something new would pop up, I believe that our odds of getting 2 victories in our last 2 games are better than getting a win against the Czechs and then somehow miraculously get a second win against either Bulgaria or Suomi (at least that's how I see it now).
Continued...
Last edited by SREZ at 6/20/2012 7:34:59 PM