Season 84 - Are you ready?

[Al Svanberg]

@ Al
Maybe he has to work? Maybe he has a game at ~11pm, so he can't set it better?

I also changed playtimes of important games last season a few times, because I wasn't able to be there. I think, it's okay to change your HOME time... you play at home, so you can choose, whatever you want. Away, you have to take it.

Yeah, and I have changed my mind about this guy. He is one hour ahead of me over there and sat the game time to 02:30 AM (3.30 AM for him). I thought it was some lame attempt to screw us both and that he wouldn't show. But he showed, and had all his friends with him (this is what I call devotion!! Damn!):



And like you say, I can't fault him, its his option. But I do maybe think that -- since watching games is so important -- it shouldn't be possible to move them to the middle of the night.

But Al FC, with its modified 5-4-1 formation -- inspired by Åge Hareide's Malmö FF's approach that took them to two straight CLs -- is a tough nut to crack and my guys got the job done again:



I am not sure what happened, but I would guess at that I had a slight advantage which gave me a 2-0 lead early thanks to a lot of luck basically, then he started to pressure too hard which exposed him defensively.

I think that is a good lesson to learn in this game. Its hard to win a game, I don't know how many times I have taken a 2-0 lead in an even game, then in the end the opponent comes back and ties it, or the other way around. BUT, a game is very easy to "loose". A red card. You start to pressure to hard offensively. Stuff like that. Best approach is probably to just try to hang in there. Like even if you face an opponent a bit worse than you and the game is close, say you are only up by a goal after 45', don't start to push hard to put the game away. Most of the time it can cost you a lot.

But Al FC is a bit like this. Sure it has the odd stinker, but most of the time its a very hard team to beat and good opponents tends to fall apart against it.