Friday, February 18, 2011

Reflections against New Town (Lhu Wen Kai)

Today, I rate my performance at 9/10. Generally in the match, I did not make any real saves except the simple parry and catch from the opponent’s tight angle shot. Same as West Spring, I counted my rating from demerit. I minus one mark from my rating because of my drop kick and my positioning.


My drop kick went half the field but I feel that I could kick it a tad further. Also, my positioning could seriously be improved as there were many situations when I was facing the attacker. When I faced the attacker, he came from my left. So I shifted my whole position towards the left. I managed to cover the whole left side, but I did not manage to cover the whole right side. If they were Arsenal, we would have our names written in the history books.


I did well in one area, coming out. In this game, I did not make a single wrong call and I came out fast and at the right time. I remember there is a time when Niklaus was shielding the ball from the defender and I rushed 6 yards out to catch the ball before Niklaus loses out to the attacker. Also, I feel more confident after not making a blunder goal for 3 games in a row. Although during training, I do not kneel when picking up the ball, I did that during the game shockingly without me knowing, which was quite amazing in fact to me. I also managed to secure those balls when ‘they are going to bounce on the floor and fly over your head and if you do not catch the ball it will go thru your legs’.


What I need to improved is in paragraph 2 in this reflection. In this game, the defence was almost flawless except that the defence always like to leave this tiny little gap at the centre for their offence to exploit. Ironically, we always leave a tiny gap in the centre when we are crossing and passing. A lot of chances we created can be finished off with maybe just a simple control and shoot if somebody was in the centre. Also, a lot of times, our defence are ball watching during throw ins. There will always be a guy that will suddenly run out and get the throw in. We seriously need to improve on that as they had three long throw chances, one hit the bar, one saved by Elgin Low’s feet, and one got a very crucial tap by Darius. The one that Darius ‘saved’ was because we left a gap in the center again.


There is also a serious lack of communication between the attack and midfield. In this game, the defence communicated well but there was serious misunderstanding of who should get and shoot the ball from my goalkeeper’s view. Jia Le was off form in attack today, but was quite commanding in defence, especially the clearing fake that left the opponent frustrated. Matthias need to improve his control as he let the ball roll past him and New Town’s speedy defence will pounce on that weakness.


Rayner was superior in his right back position (goalkeeper’s view). He dribbled pass 3 attackers before weaving a pass to Darius that caused havoc in their defence but shame that Matthias cannot complete the counter attack. He was extremely calmed and composed. One of the things that he did that shocked me was that he literally shielded the ball when there were 2 attackers behind him. He then did a crossover and a 360 to tread a pass to the right (goalkeeper’s view) over and over again. For that, we cannot deny him the match ball.

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