Current Mood: Confused & Idearich

Finland is out of Euro2008, that became clear last night when we draw the game against Portugal with 0-0. We were the clear underdogs whole game and were barely able to get the ball to 3/4 of the pitch.

Finland review

I’d say the best Finland player was Kallio on left side who completely stunned me with his defensive ability against Ronaldo while still providing support in the attacks and helping Daniel Sjölund. Daniel was pretty good last night challenging the full-back and still providing support defensively and taking Bosingwa’s runs even though the Portuguese full-back got to 1-on-1 situations with Kallio quite often. But yet, a solid game from this late prospect.

Right side on the other hand was a huge disappointment and I yet again declare Kolkka too weak for the national team. Sure he’s quite fast despite his age and shows his work-rate by closing down the opposite attacks, but he simply doesn’t have the technique or courage when it comes to attacking situations. All I noticed last night from him was the shot from approximately 18 meters that went wide of goal.
Also on right side, Pasanen played a decent game defensively, but his free-kicks and overall performance was below average which caused me being disappointed.

Central defense with Tihinen and Hyypiä had a very good and safe game throughout the 90 minutes. Tainio and Heikkinen were able to close down the central attacks and most attacks game from sides and the rock solid couple had no problem clearing them off the area.

Jääskeläinen in goal was propably the next most important player among Kallio making a few really nice and important saves. This sort of a game is exactly what you’d expect from a Premier League top goalie. No surprises and no let downs. Just pure class.

Tainio and Heikkinen had the role to take down Maniche and Veloso who both made quite good attempts on goal when coming up to 2nd wave. Both players, especially Heikkinen, did some great work from time to time helping the sides and taking control of the ball from the Portuguese players. Tainio was a bit invisible throughout the game and was eventually substituted. But whenever he had the ball, something was ought to happen. Safe play and a couple of tricks in the offensive play, that’s what we saw from Teme today.

The King, propably the most injury prone player world has ever seen, Jari Litmanen, was in the starting line-up as well. For his defense I can just say that he hadn’t played for quite some time and was clearly a bit off his game. Went carefully to any challenges and made quite a few faulty passes eventhough a few of them were nice attempts. But sometimes those pass attempts were useless as he seemed to have a chance for a shot himself as well.

Forssell did his share of the work in attack the whole 90 mins, but was unable to provide decent changes for himself. The Portuguese central-back Pepe was marking him the whole 90 mins and gave Forssell no room. A couple of tricks was seen, but that’s about all the positive points I can give to him. Johansson (damn) came on to pair up with him on for the last 15 mins, but he’s not the caliber striker that could provide the winning goal for Finland. So a goalless game was clear, for Finland…

Player evaluation (rating):

Jääskeläinen - a few good saves (8)

Pasanen - invisible and disappointing even though taking responsibility in numerous free-kicks (6)
Tihinen - solid game (7)
Hyypiä - solid game as well (7)
Kallio - surprisingly good playing a very good game (9)

Kolkka - did nothing worth mentioning apart from the shot (6)
Tainio - helped the central defense, controlled the tempo nicely at times..hasty passes occassionally (7)
Heikkinen - really good defensively, doesn’t have the technique or the eye for attacking (8)
Litmanen - old and rusty, a few good passes and a few missed passes. Certainly match his ability (6)

Forssell - a shadow behind Pepe, created a couple of chances, but wasn’t able to convince (6)

Subs:
Väyrynen - solid game defensively (7)
Roman Eremenko - clearly needs more experience (6)
Johansson - played 15 mins, nothing worth to mention (5)

Portugal - brief review

Portugal came on with 4-5-1 as well, yet the tactic could easily be converted to a 4-3-3 with Quaresma and Ronaldo providing support to Nuno Gomes. Attacking full-backs caused constant threat to Finnish full-backs and time to time especially Bosingwa was able to cross balls from deep in the Finland half. Other than that, the central midfield with Veloso, Maniche and Meira were able to take out any attempts Finland tried to make through the centre.

Player evaluation (rating):

Ricardo - played in goal and could have applied for social welfare, that’s how unemployed he was throughout the game (6)

Alves - a solid game and due to lack of Finnish attacks, was quite unemployed as well (7)
Pepe - rock solid game from this Real Madrid player. Kept Forssell off the ball and won at least 75% of the 1-on-1 battles (9)
Caneira - supported attacks on left, but caused no problems (6)
Bosingwa - really inspiring in attacks (9)

Meira - less familiar position as DM, but a solid contribution to the team (7)
Maniche - supported attacks and controlled the tempo in midfield (8)
Veloso - set piece specialist created a few good chances (8)

Ronaldo - good game eventhough didn’t manage to score. Best player with Pepe (9)
Quaresma - a slight disappointment, tried curve balls often (7)
Nuno Gomes - caused no problems (6)

Subs:
Meireles - took Maniche’s role in midfield and did well (7)
Makukula - no difference to substituted Nuno Gomes (6)
Nani - inspiring, but only played less than 10 mins (7)

Summary:

Even though Portugal was controlling throughout the game, Finland’s defense was able to stop the attacks and therefore a draw is justified. No great chances in the game apart from Maniche’s two chances from approx 10 meters. Both shots failed failed and caused no problems to Jääskeläinen.
Kolkka’s shot early in the game and Kallio’s (?) shot in the last minutes were the best chances for Finland. Both went off the goal and caused no problems.

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Current Mood: Cool & Esctatic

Finland is playing tomorrow and all that is good is a win! But what makes it difficult is the fact that we’re playing against Portugal, away! So crap hit me in the nuts and call me a jackass if you think we’ll be able to win. The only factor defending for our win is the fact that we’ve played really badly against weaker teams and the performed a lot better against bigger countries. So since I think most of the football fans think Portugal is one of the biggest football countries in the world, we might actually have a chance. And here to give the prescription for a win, is the world famous football analyst, Tonsku Daigle:

*applauses here*

So, in order to stop the mind-blowing attacking play Portugal is able to provide, we need to stop the attacks mainly coming from the sides. The likes of Cristiano Ronaldo, Nani and Quaresma are extremely dangerous and will surely provide troubles to our backlines. Usually Finland has played Kallio and Pasanen as full-backs, but in this case I might give Kallio a boot in the ass. He’s tall, but his agility is nowhere near the likes of the Portuguese names mentioned earlier. Their technique and ability to challenge a defender is world class and in every way a threat to any defender in the world. So in order to have any chances tomorrow, our defenders need to stay focused! Tihinen and Hyypiä will most likely be playing in the central defense and are less likely to fail against the likes of Hugo Almeida, who admittedly is a strong guy and a good goalscorer. But I believe Tihinen or Hyypiä here are able to provide such strong marking that he should be lucky to get more than 2 attempts on goal.

Midfield is of course the center of attention. Deco, Maniche on the Portuguese side and Tainio, Litmanen and Väyrynen (I think Finland will come with 4-5-1 tactic tomorrow). Apparently Eremenko Jr is still sidelined due to that streetfight attack in Moskov past week and broke his nose. So he’s not playing. I am sure Tainio is able to provide such raging defensive play as well as attacking support that not many in the world can. Väyrynen has been a bit down lately due to lack of chances in PSV line-up, but I assume we will be using this versatile midfielder tomorrow or at least I hope Roy Hodgson sees what I see in him. And of course we have Litmanen though I doubt he will be playing for more than 45mins so assuming this is the case, Finland will go with 4-4-2 since we really need to win this game and to win a game, at least one goals is required.

As for the wingers, we’ve been relying on Daniel Sjölund the past games which has been good. I wrote earlier on this blog about the generation that should step in for Nurmela and Kolkka. Now Sjölund has been placed on the left side and Kolkka has been playing on the right side. This has been good and it finally seems that Kolkka is enhancing his performances. So I will go with these guys tomorrow.

As for the attack. I’d strongly recommend going with Kuqi and Forssell and leave Johansson out of the squad. Well some people know about my “appreciation” towards JJ and to tell you the truth, he sucks. Not di*k… well I don’t know. But he’s not worthy of the Finland National Team squad.

Finally, expected Finland line-up for tomorrow:

Jääskeläinen
Pasanen - Tihinen -  Hyypiä - Kallio
Kolkka - Tainio - Väyrynen - Sjölund
Kuqi - Forssell

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Current Mood: Alarmed

It was a big day today for us Liverpool supporters. A game against Arsenal who had 6 consecutive wins before today’s game. Liverpool on the other hands, has been struggling with the wins and the team just hasn’t been playing the way they should if they wish to battle for the championship.

So Liverpool 11st eleven today:

Reina
Finnan - Carragher - Hyypiä - Riise
Gerrard - Mascherano - Alonso
Kuyt                                  Voronin
Torres

It didn’t look too good for me, but surely some might like it. Yet just after 8 mins we got a reason to celebrate as Gerrard took a cannon freekick shot from the edge of the box, Hleb moved away just enough and the ball found its way in the back of the net! 1-0 to L’pool.

The whole match was quite nice to watch, but the Finnish commentator on Canal+ sounded more like an Arsenal every now and then criticising Liverpool’s actions and defending Arsenal’s good acting skills.

Just around 40mins, Torres got a knock and even though being sort of out of the game the whole 1st half, it wasn’t too pleasing to watch him being substituted for the 2nd half. Peter Crouch marched in and from that point on the tactic was clear - play it long to Crouch’s head. I don’t support this as I know Crouch’s a good player with his feet as well so unless trying to get a freekick after Crouch is fouled outside the box… this is pretty useless.

Around 80th minute, Hleb had the ball in 20 metres, played it through past Carragher to Fabregas who nicked it past Reina quite easily and the game was 1-1. Disappointment was huge! I felt I just had been raped by a group of squarrels… not saying that I know what it’s like though.

So a 1-1 draw… In the end it doesn’t feel that bad as we were the clear underdogs in this match and considering the past few matches’ form, it’s ok to get a draw against someone who’s been winning the past 7-8 games in a row. But yet… It’s always disappointing to lose a 1-0 lead

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Current Mood: Idearich

According to various sources, Man City is prepared to make a move on Peter Crouch to sign him in January transfer window. The reports indicate that Eriksson is aiming to strengthen his squad with a new striker after Bojinov injured himself until March and Samaras is still struggling with his performances.

Rafa is rumoured to let the player go and apparently he’s got £20 million reserved for new transfers in January which would mean that if Crouch goes, a new signing comes in.

As for the strikers… Now with Torres arriving this past summer, I don’t think we need a really big name striker just now. I myself am very disappointed in Kuyt, but I hope to be wrong and he would get his game going soon. Voronin has been a pleasant surprise as when Crouch has been a slight disappointment.

Rafa is set to make a bid for Bilbao’s Amorebieta in January. This 1,90cm tall defender might be a good signing. Somehow reminds me of Agger. Young and tall

Get Quaresma, damn it!

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Current Mood: Playful

Even though I haven’t been around the scene for a while, it still usually reaches me when a new version of this super-mega-trend game among all wannabe managers comes closer to release. The demo was released today and surprisingly the big expected buzz is even calmer than Newcastle’s trophy hunting. So surely I had to check it out and I got the demo via torrent. Installed the game which nowadays takes longer than it should, but a part of me understands it as there’s so much data to extract. Finally the game installed itself and I was ready to give it a go so here’s a small review of what I saw in it with my 10 year experience within the scene and the world of Football Manager and Sports Interactive:

You Got The Look?

Of course the first thing that really pops out is the new lighter look. From the previous dark grey/green look it has moved to a really light, even white look. It looks soft and even though there’s plenty of new shortcut links, it somehow feels nicer and gives you a quick access to wherever you need to go to. Yet the number of shortcuts, that are by the way located below the menu now, is somehow disturbing as you really need to get used to it and learn which one leads where.

Hey, are you a new user? Here’s a tip anyway…

First thing you get is the new Advisor popping out in low right corner giving you tips. For me it’s pure annoyance so I try to find out how to disable it. Couldn’t a simple tickbox around it so I let it be and hoped it wouldn’t come back any time soon. But the next screen I open, had it again. I closed it and it finally asked if I wanted to disable it once and for all or just remind me on certain issues. I think this is a good thing anyway. More experienced users shouldn’t mind about closing it a couple of times before getting rid of it as the new users or managers, whichever you prefer them to be called, stumble upon the world of Football Manager, it is quite handy.

Next I went on to check my news and I was quite glad to see that the main window actually showed 2 news in one view. You had the active news in the main area and then two small boxes below it. The left one being a news selection box and the right one showing the news that occured prior to active news. A small change, but one of the many nice ones that will be explained as we go on…

Looking For New Life Forms

Of course I had to have a quick look around the places that usually have new features so I headed over to Preferences to check out the settings. They were nicely arranged just like in previous versions, but wait! There’s something new! I couldn’t help to notice that since to us Finns the British or American 16/1 like odds are quite weird, or at least to me. So there was a possibility of changing it to decimals. Oh mama, that’s nice!

Right after confirming the settings I hovered around the shortcut bar looking for something special and what did I find - a calendar. Now that sounds nice so I headed over there to see it and I must be honest. I think it’s so far the best new feature presented in FM08. The chance to have a weekly, monthly and even a yearly view in your calender really keeps you up-to-date.

So right after seeing that I had a friendly match against AC Milan coming up in a few days, I decided to have a look at the squad. Clicking on one player opened the quite familiar view of a player profile. The main view only had the order of player details changed + the player picture is ‘a bit’ larger now. Checking the personal tab gave me two new ‘features’. International happiness indicating the general happiness playing for the player’s national team. Simple, but quite nice if you’re managing a national team. Then right below that there was something that many of us have wished for years - ‘days to gain nationality’. A table showing the potential new nationalities, days how long you had to wait for it in total, days passed by since it started counting down and days left until it was possible.

Premier League 2007-2008

I headed over to main screen of Premier Division. And yea, the game doesn’t have most of the licenses in this version either. One link pops out immediatly on the left, league news. So I head over there and I get the news regarding the league I’m looking at. Pretty neat to be honest… No more going through the news page looking for things that could take ages.

Going to stats page was even something more cooler. A general view on some of the stats for teams and players. Team stats now show stats in one page about the goals scored in total, conceded, average attendance etc. I like this quite a lot!

Rubbing The Good Old Sugardaddy

I heard and saw screenshots about re-sizing of the home pitch so I headed over to Boardroom. Now finally we have the chance to actually negoatiate the transfer budget while playing instead of waiting until the season changes. Now by using a simple dropdown box, you can select how much money you need for transfers by reducing the wage budget at the same time. This will surely make some managers happy and get the feeling of realism of some sort.

Game Time!

Time for the AC Milan game. I couldn’t bother to play with the tactics or selection so I asked one of my staff members to do that.

Post match info about previous games against eachother… The game looked as sweet as expected. Smooth moving was a pleasure for the eye even though there was not much difference to FM07. First highlight when Torres got the ball around half line. Both central defenders from Milan in front, Torres took a few steps, launched a high shot towards the goal. I was already questioning th decision to shoot from that far and that high, but my face was amazed when I saw the ball go in the back of the net. In FM07, a high ball like that would have gone over 2 goals without even being close…

The game engine was quite solid if you ignored the moments where the guy with the ball stood still for like 5 seconds until actually doing something. I know this is realism, but not with every player. Then I noticed more goals being scored…1-1, 1-2…2-4. Okay, this is the first match so no worries. But a 4-5 game in the first match? Come on, that’s just ridiculous!

Conclusion

In my humble honest opinion. I don’t see FM08 that much different than FM07 based on what I saw in the demo. Sure there are a few things that are nice and useful, but there’s nothing revolutionary really unless you like lighter skins or just arse to change the skin to a custom made one at some point later on.

I’d say this was a small disappointment, but however… I do think if you’ve never played the game before or don’t have FM07, get FM08. Surely there are us devoted FM fans that will get the game no matter the price or updates in the new version. But in general: FM07 owners, try the demo and decide yourself!

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