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I'm opening this thread late because as I wrote, I was on holidays for the previous weeks. First of all, I want to thank you all for trusting me and getting me elected for the next 2 seasons.

Last season, we did well and it allowed us to have a good world rank (just above #30 at the beginning of the season). The previous good results also allowed us to get an easier group and we should finish 3rd as only Taiwan and HK look better than us.

We had 2 easy to start the season, the first one against Saudi Arabia and our easy win pushed us to best world rank ever with WR #27. We will try to do even better later this season. Second game against UAE raised a GS problem. Out of our 15 players, only 10 had a GS equal or superior to Respectable (7). I took the decision to suit up only the 10 players with decent GS and I will probably do so all season long regardless of how good/important the player is. Beside our win against UAE, there was a surprising win of Saudi Arabia against Macau which suited up only 4 players.

We have a good team with great offensive strengths but without good GS, nothing will be possible so I ask all managers to be careful with it. It will also help your players to perform better in their league games and you may win more games. As for Malaysia U21 NT, our next game is against Lebanon, it should be easy for us so I will be extremely strict with GS even if that means playing with 5 players.

We are temporary first of the group because Taiwan and HK played only 2 games. In the meantime, we will play a friendly game against Paraguay. The bad news of the week is Peter Gisnos' injury for 2 weeks, 2 weeks without playing and without being trained plus at least 2 weeks to be back with a good GS, it means Peter won't be available for a month! I will most probably call a new player to replace Peter and other players with bad GS.

I like this season because there are some surprises, China just forfeit a game, Vietnam looks a lot stronger than past seasons, Macau is giving up, Singapore is doing fine while not being as strong as the past seasons...

I didn't scout other groups yet, 3 more games before the real challenge starts.

First loss of the season against Hong Kong, we fought hard being one point behind at the beginning of the 4th quarter. It was Wally Victor's first game and despite being one year younger, he showed he belongs here.

Next game will be against Taiwan, probably the best team of the group with 4 high salary inside players. We will try to surprise them as this is the only way we can do something. The result of this game won't affect our ranking, we will finish #3 of the group as the last game should be an easy win against the weak Macau team. In fact, as the next phase is drawn, it is better for us to finish #3 than #2.

What is interesting is that a unusual team will qualify for next round as Lebanon, and Saudi Arabia have a win and UAE has two. In pool A, Vietnam should qualify with India leaving New Zealand without a second round for the first time in a long time. In pool C, China did a forfeit and is currently ranked #4 with 2 games left and the same W/L ratio than Iran and Indonesia. If China finishes #3, we should avoid them while if they finish #2, we should play them in the next group phase.

Last edited by Nico4nicolas at 9/14/2015 4:59:34 PM

I remembered it wrong, thanks for correcting me. China will play against Iran and Australia for their last 2 games, if they lose against Australia, they may end up finishing 4th but looking at the draw, it doesn't make sense.

So we will probably end up in the same group with Australia and Philippines, that's bad news for Morwood as we will beat Philippines ;)

I know you don't underestimate us, on the contrary, I believe you overestimate our team as we never manage to beat you. I don't remember us being even close to beating Philippines but there is a first time for everything. If the group ended up today, the semi-finals qualification would be between Australia, Taiwan and Philippines. Malaysia, Indonesia and Vietnam can't compete with those teams.

One big prospect on the transfer list with Habibul Shabbir (37332782), good potential and awesome outside skills for a future inside based player.