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Pacific Premiership - 46, Round 1

Written by YamahaR1

The headline of the first round is the 1-3 home loss for reigning premiers Waverley Hawks to last seasons #2, Arms and Legs, which sets up a fascinating season.

The two most obvious challengers to the reigning premier are now both a match clear of Waverley, and in the case of Arms and Legs, a 6 point turn around, and a home game to defend the return leg with. Mofs, the other obvious challenger, won heavily against the Mariners and has a nice +5 goal difference banked if it all squares up at the end.

In other results, Candy managed to shake off a persistent Bondi at home with a late winner, and Shire ground out an important away point, and prevented Woburn making an immediate break away from the general vicinity of the relegation and qualifier zones.

Tactics.

All away teams elected to counter attack, which has become virtually standard PP strategy in recent seasons to mitigate home field advantage. 3 different takes on the away 5-x-x CA formation. Remarkable formation diversity on show really, 4-4-2, 4-5-1, 3-5-2, 5-3-2, 5-2-3, 4-3-3 all seen at some point this week.

Hawks v Arms - andyhaggis chose a 4-3-3 CA and to drop midfield below that expected of an Arms 4-4-2 CA to employ a home counter attack. The final game ratings under estimate the ratings of Arms, due to a substitution of a 13 star TDF for a 9 star defensive midfielder to ride the 2 nil lead home - ie the result isn't as much of a match engine barf if you look through the minute to minute compared to the final ratings.

Mofs v Mangrove - Happens every season if you play CA a lot - the dreaded day where the opponents just don't miss, the match engine hates you, and therefore your CA rating doesn't matter (the one reported miss immediately turned to a CA). Although mariners defence leaked through the middle it shouldn't have - so perhaps there is excess rating there that kab can move about or use to rebalance with - always difficult to assess when the match engine canes you.

Candy vs Bondi - away CA by Bondi. Scoreline looked like an arm wrestle, but in practice Candy was a ratings monster in this match, with very hard to defend attacking power. Scary stuff if you had an eye on the title!

Warriors vs Shire - away CA by Shire - Read the match report - 5 CAs! This is the flipside match to the Mariners match, when your opponent is firing blanks and you have the massive CA rating to get event after event. Warriors fielded sufficient attacking power to be somewhat miffed by that many misses but the result was probably fair.

Interviews.

This week, I chose to ask a few questions of armsandlegs, and of GM-Jebbyc, who were both kind enough to spend quite some time on the answers.

Managers on the round and season.

GM-Jebbyc

1 - mofs have put a big GD problem in front of mariners, and you've taken a fairly precious away point off another potential struggler - do you think you'll be in striking reach of the top 4 all season ?

Well, I don't know about Umaga being a struggler. Generally I have a strong start to the season then drop off (which you mightn't expect from a CA based team), but this season I don't think there will be much to drop.

2 - In some ways, home 479 hatstats vs 441 away CA seemed just about within reach really (CA is not accounted for in hatstats) ?

It was a 50/50 game and got the result I think it deserved. FWIW the replays gave it a 3-4-3 w/d/l stat with average goals slightly in my favour. That said, I still don't think my defence is good enough to be playing 523, my defender's primaries just aren't high enough.

3 - At the moment, you are spending ~500k less per week in salary than Waverley, and your away point + cup bot thrashing will cement you a good home crowd - ie some fortnights you'll be pulling 1m back compared to waverley. If you get to say 10m midseason - will you crack open the bank, get on the market and do some trades ?

I don't know if it will be all that soon, but I'll certainly spend the money when it comes in. I've got the smallest fan club in the PP, 163 less than andy.

armsandlegs

1 - Congrats on the first up win. You've done the whole of oceania a huge favour (and me - made my job easier) - since you've set up a chase scenario with you, mofs and candy all ahead of waverley, which could make for a close and interesting season. Do you think you can hold a 3 point advantage on waverley to midseason ?

realistically, i have a slight chance of PP title. Any away points are gold and better to lose one, win one than have any draws.

2 - in the light of the first weeks ratings - do you think your next opponent - Candy is in the contender zone, and not merely a survivor ?

Candy has a gun team - prob one of the 3 title faves. Who will be lucky?

3 - at 17 mins in you had a sub set for 2 up, that pulled Mad - the TDF. Had you been online would you have been regretting that ? its obviously a fine move if expected to fire at 60 minutes ?

No probs to change formation at 17mins. anytime you have a defensive formation and are 2 goals up, i am happy to go defensive. Would have been happy with a draw from the match, so for an opposition to snag 3 goals without reply when i add to midfield is difficult.

Managers on players - this is a section dedicated to getting interested managers insight into the kind of players a top gun manager will use - bearing in mind of course that a PP manager mightn't give away all their secrets!

GM-Jebbyc

4 - one for junior hattrickers learning how its done - all your wings and wingbacks play neutral - and you got everything - attack ratings, defence ratings (with a hand from CDs and goalie) and what appears to be 3 levels of midfield off the wings alone - and no TDF support for the ratings either.

The WBs are a couple of years too young to have benefited from the faster training their entire lives; they could have more winger. The wingers are equal pm and wing, but not much passing and little defence - they were bought not trained. This build I trained IMs and CDs from 17; I might try wingers and WBs next time - defence on normal wingers is a great counter to the current metagame

armsandlegs

4 - This is one for the up and coming young hattrickers, Mad the TDF alone appeared to contribute 3 levels attack to each wing when he popped off at 17 mins, - so your wingers AND wingbacks appear to roughly give 20 levels of wing and the 2 forwards contribute roughly 12. That would make them passing primary TDFs yeah ?

Both my tdf's are very high standard. They have a little bit more passing than midfield and scoring, but are pretty balanced.