Subject: Friendlies

I haven't been in any rush to arrange any friendlies for this season as our free weeks will depend on how we get on at the WC and whether we will have to qualify for the U21WC , which is still in it's planning stages due to it being run by new organisers this season. so the only matches arranged so far are

Week 2 v England (competition team)
Week 3 v Canada, hopefully U21's but possibly B.
weeks 4, 5 and 6 will be WC group matches.

The rest of the season we will take as it comes.

if you ever need a last minute friendly... i know the lithuanian manager is really disorganised and usually doesn't have anything sorted until a week or 2 before the match.

If we ever play Lithuania then i'll give special orders to Steven MacInnes regarding their winger ;)

The game v New Zealand has been arranged for this week but no criteria has yet been set. I was after an U21 match to test out our youngsters before the U21WC but at this time that is looking unlikely and we may settle for a B team match, which will also serve the purpose of not wanting to risk any first team players who may be involved in our WC opening group match the following week.

Scotland will play New Zealand on Saturday with both teams fielding mostly an U21 side, a few 22 year olds will also feature at New Zealands request.

Thanks to Seca (New Zealand manager) for spending over a week trying to raise an U21 side, as this is possibly our only chance to get a look at our guys before the U21WC.

Game kicks off at 12.00 local time.

I'd hope that we can win this game with our offensive players causing them problems but the lack of a real defensive mid and with a defence that could be quicker then these guys could also trouble us..

Striker, Jacob Priorie 7631486

And Att Mid, Tyler Lanev 8375450

Could be a high scoring affair today.
(edited)

Scotland 3 New Zealand 0

A nice game to watch i thought.

Obviously Buchanan being an overage player wont be around for the U21WC but Docherty has similar qualities and with 3 or 4 levels of more form he wont let us down on the wing.

Our only other 22 year old used was Gregor Addison in the centre of defense, the other 4 defenders used today will be first picks dependant on form and availability.

So, those two aprt i thought that we done well, the throw ins could do with some more work, i had Rusk too far infield but even then he collected and used the ball very well at times. Still, that needs tweaked.

The forwards could also do with a tweaking positionally, i tried to move one up and hang one back a bit but when one went wide we had nobody in the box at times, so that also needs tweaked, but overall it's a tactic that i'd use again.

The passing on the mids was fantastic today, hopefully that will be the norm and not just everybody having a good day at the same time :)

An injury to Langfield (sorry Stu, but at least he's still usable this week and will train) and a red for Fletcher slowed us down a bit and New Zealand came more into it then with a bit of prolonged pressure but i thought that our defence stood their ground well and we managed to limit them to just the one shot on goal.

Overall, pleasing stuff which gives us something to work on in the run up to the U21WC.

Keep training and keep the updates coming! :)

Under 21 WC starts in Week 10.

To take us up to it we have...

Week 7 v Nigeria, we will mix it up a little with B team players and U21's against their first team

Week 8 T/B/C, trying to book an U21 match

Week 9 v Denmark, First team friendly, should be a tough test.

Week 8 now confirmed as U21 v Chile.

Tomorrow's friendly v Nigeria kicks off at 12.00 uk time.

U21?

We agreed first team players against your choice of players. I have already named the squad and it aint U21, that starts next week.

Read it again Ken :)

Week 7 v Nigeria, we will mix it up a little with B team players and U21's against their first team

Oh my mistake.

Strange game that one.

We were lucky not to go down to 10 men in the first minute after conceding the penalty and even luckier that we saved it :)

Throw ins were strange, they started out going to Buchanan then suddenly, from identical positions Buchanan started taking them, then near the end they went back to normal. Throw in Nigeria's openinmg goal, Buchanan's reluctance to pass and it was very strange today.

Still, our B team never lost and there was one or two decent performances from the younger guys so that'll do.

Well basically we were playing a young team as well. A 23 yo keeper who is really Unknown. And not just that you got to admit your team was very lucky. A penalty saved, so many chances missed but thats the luck I have. But still good match cant wait till the England match if I beat them, thats when you will be happy, I will gurantee that.

how did we only get a draw against Nigeria? don't they only have something like 10 users there?

Nigeria are probably a bit better than you think they are. Ranked at 46 just now is higher than teams like Japan and Latvia who we were taking 8 off last season with our first team. Our first team v Nigeria would have no doubt produced similar results but i dont see the point in that. This was a chance to give guys like Douglas and Dickov a run out whilst still being trained at 25 aswell as playing two or three younger ones to level the playing field.

I called this a B squad but in reality it was mostly a C or even D squad.