Armenia - Iran

[Doctor DOOM]

first half

New low in terms of spineless coaching: 4 defensive mids!!! Nekounam, ashoubi, haddadi and pejman nouri!!!!

Not having a creative mid means the usual lobs from our defense or at best half-line, which usually reached nowhere and our attack looked impotent (except the individual brilliance of ansarifard who struck the post).

But 4 def mids? That’s miles beyond overkill! Two are too much. Now, 4? No wonder our team looks all confused, incoherent and all jumbled up when they have the ball!!

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Nekounam is far from his best days who argues a lot and lost his temper on many occasions. His bad passes that gave the ball to the opponents on 3-4 occasions right in our own half is another worrying issue.

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And let us not forget. This Armenia team is not a strong team by any means. They haven’t shown anything worthwhile and are at best an average, run of the mill C grade team. And yet, our players play like amateurs in front of them!!!

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and dont get me started on rahmati's positioning on the goal!!
but I call this a freakish goal that 95% of the time dont end up in the net. so rahmati has some excuse.

but defensively we're very shaky ... and these are our best defenders !!!!


bottomline: this half didnt help ghotbi's cause one bit.
as usual, a very weak team performance. weak player selection and arrangement. ghotbi fans shd perhaps wake up and smell the stink, coz this kind of team management really stinks.


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Second half:

With inclusion of mobaali and zeneidpour, the midfield looked a bit more balanced with pejman nouri (mu choice for M.O.M.) covering the ground behind them and nekounam continuing his extremely poor game, which got completed with his unnecessary red card.
Mobaali immediately justified his inclusion with direct influence in both goals. His shot that the Armenian keeper could barely push over the bar culminated in his corner which resulted in the goal. And he also had a hand in the second goal which was just as freakish as armenia’s goal. Lol

Armenia had a good patch from the start of 2nd half up to our 2nd goal with quite a few blistering shots that really troubled rahmati. But after our 2nd, they just crumbled which underlines their low ranking in fifa. From then on, the game didn’t have much to talk about except our 3rd goal.

it is quite worrying that rahmati was forced to save us on one too many occasions against this crappy team, which only makes us look at the future with a very worried look!!

While the same pisspoor Armenia exposed some of our weaknesses in defense on a few occasions, I think if we had played a better team, we could have learned far more about where we need to focus and correct our defects.

What lessons can ghotbi learn from this game? That he shd show a little guts and spine and ought to stop thinking “the more def mids, the better” like an idiot.
Our defense wasn’t pushed real hard, but even then, it showed quite a few holes that really need to be looked at.

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point of ponder:
when rahmati got injured, even slightly, why wasnt he subbed?
thank god it wasnt a bad injury and he got back up , but he showed it was bothering him and there was a chance it could have got worse.
why call up 4 keepers and still not have the guts to sub your main keeper , even if he gets a knock, which had a chance of becoming worse?
risking rahmati, this close to AC is plain foolish and spineless

[Paradigm]

Solution: bring Branko back and in turn he will call for Daie's return from retirement as the team captain.

[Doctor DOOM]

^ moosh nado'woon pesar

[Paradigm]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Branko_Ivankovi%C4%87

[Martin-Reza]

Starting with Ashoubi, Nekounam, Pejman Nouri and Hadadifar was a bit exaggerated in my opinion. Still we played a quite acceptable first half.

In second half we completely slept in the first 15 minutes and only thanks to Rahmati we remained in the game.

But then the Armenians ran out of steam and I think in the end it was not an undeserved win, though a draw would have been more fair.

Nekounam had a horrible game, but to his defense, don't underestimate his shape as being in the middle of pre-season preperations in opposite to the IPL players. As for the red card, I don't think it is much of a big deal, rather a reminder for him to be more careful with nagging in competitive matches.

I overall liked the referee who gave cards for complaining easily but on the other hand didn't whistle every time our sissies fall down.

As for Mobali, it's not like he had a bad game today at all, but I still always feel the urge to go get myself a beer whenever he gets in possession, as everyone knows that in the next few seconds nothing will happen but him turning around himself or gazing around the pitch. I just don't like him .

[Doctor DOOM]

^ come on, MR ... you can tell us here.
no need to be coy, mate. say it.
say you were near orgasmic and in rapture when you saw four def-mids walk onto the pitch.

I just hope you're ok now. since being in a constant state of orgasm for 45 minutes does a lot of damage to one's physiology and nervous system
thank god ghotbi removed two of them in the second half .. otherwise god only knows what you'd have gone through!!!

[Martin-Reza]

Lol, but no, that was a little bit much, although I don't know Hadadifar that well and think he is not a classic DM. Still, that was pretty heavy.

Btw, talking about stupidity in regards to cards. I was also shocked about Mobali who got a yellow card for complaining about the pk shortly after coming on and then being in the midth of a tumult, pushing an opponent. I really thought he'd be sent off in that scene.

[Paradigm]

I am sure Ivankovich too is mad to see Mobali get TM playing time nowadays, after that bad tackle on Daie in 2005.

[toofan]

im getting pretty tired of seing goals after goals that dont include a striker's
name it it.1 stiker and 3 DMs just pisses me off.

[Keano]

Unlike many PFDC folks, I believed Aghili's performance was somewhat acceptable, true he had few mistakes, but who didn't? I thought Khosro Heydari was by far the biggest flop on the pitch, how funny his horrendous display went by unnoticed and pretty much overlooked by some harsh and fanatic PFDC critics!

Mobali playing in TM matches is beyond me, his contribution to TM matches has almost always been next to nothing.

Most you guys complain about our defense, while the bigger problem Lies elsewhere "our offense" , I mean y'all nag about our shaky defenders, however these same defenders are the only ones who've been scoring goals for our team. Our strikers lack intelligence and precision, it feels like Borhani has been spreading the contagious virus to all other strikers in Iran, thus all miss goals and disappoint accordingly!

[Paradigm]

Well Iran scored 3 goals after Mobali and Zeneyedpour came in the 2nd half. That must have made a difference.

[purple_haze]

Aghili and Hosseini have always been slow and even have had positioning problems since their TM debuts when they were younger and more quick, now imagine the same players with those aforementioned flaws getting older as they are now when their best qualities, physical attributes and heading are letting them down too. Just review the match and see how many one to one battles they lost when they tried to use their physique and hustle the ball, to players looking smaller and less physical than themselves.

The festival of mistakes they do commit in every match can't be blamed solely on them though. Apart from team defense, the blame is on their coaches (both TM and club level) too for having gifted them everlasting guaranteed spots no matter what, without their competition having the slightest chance to see any playing time.

An example: Sheys is without a doubt PP's best defender, but when he didn't perform at a level expected from him, Daei sent him to the stands in PP's last match! Now this was when he still played a decent match and in comparison was much better than many Iranian defenders, but still Daei disciplined him in order to make him improve and more importantly eliminate any complacency by him.
Aghili and Hosseini on the other hand don't even get subbed no matter how bad they perform. Put yourself in someone's shoes that feels assured of not having to worry about his place no matter what he does. Surely you'd have no motivation to improve yourself or work on your flaws, would you?

The forward problem, apart from the obvious lack of goal scoring talent is very much due to the lack of creativity and game plan in creating chances too. With Ghotbi's favorites always getting invited and getting played in the midfield as seen in the first half, there's not much hope for expecting blistering attacks as the forward(s) are simply no fed with enough decent balls to work with.

The midfield yesterday was more like an unbalanced mismatch of a failure than anything else. P.Nouri and Ashoubi are 2 known Ghotbi favorites and it's mostly based on old merits from his PP days. Sure P.Nouri fought and ran a lot as always, but Ashoubi doesn't even cut it in Esteghlal nowadays let alone TM where he was invisible! I haven't seen any recent games by Hossein Kazemi but one thing is for sure, that he at least makes his physical presence felt on the field. Nekou was simply out of form and Haddadifar simply didn't know what to do, when 3 similar players where occupying the same space he's used to play at.

G.R.Rezaei is speedy but unfortunately still too much of a ball-hog and his style of play is only useful when playing either a shadow striker role of on the left up the field (since he doesn't pass much and doesn't do crosses, he can do his dribbling, cut in and shoot with his favorite right foot). So at the position he was handed, he didn't have anything special to show for other than some useless dribbling! To make the matters worse he wasn't subbed until very late.

The useful subs and chances to test players that didn't happen or happend very late without any effect were:

- Another GK for Rahmati when he got injured!
- Omranzadeh for either Hosseini or Aghili.
- M.Nouri's inclusion in midfield.
- either Noroozi or AliAskar who were both subbed in late, in for G.R.Rezaei at the start of second half or at least early in the second half.

[dvader6]

Unlike many PFDC folks, I believed Aghili's performance was somewhat acceptable, true he had few mistakes, but who didn't? I thought Khosro Heydari was by far the biggest flop on the pitch,


Our strikers lack intelligence and precision, it feels like Borhani has been spreading the contagious vir.......

1- I agree that aghili is unnecessarily attacked to this extent. he did have some problems, he also did have a few bright spots.

2- I also agree heidari was a big flop and this level of game was never expected from him, given his games in ss last year.

3- but I can not agree with the intelligence of our strikers.
I think ansarifard has shown great intelligence in the past year or so in his club as well as team melli.
if we see gholamreza rezaei keep coming back deep into the half to receive a passes shd tell us the supply-line is defective. but I agree, he shd pass the ball more often and not hog it so much

it is a different matter that our strikers are not aided by the midfielders, who are usually selected from defensive minded ones.

[maij]

I don't think the duo of Aghili & Hosseini could be categorized as disaster , however for a team that is going to be a championship contender, their standard falls short.

Yes , they were not that bad...hell , how can a player be bad if he scores two goals...and he is a defender .....But we all now that Aghili is vulnerable , erratic and short of reliable.

I believe he can be easily caught out specially with pacy forwards. He is NOT top class and can be a liability in a bad day , while in his good days , he isn't that bad !!!

[dvader6]

I don't think the duo of Aghili & Hosseini could be categorized as disaster , however for a team that is going to be a championship contender, their standard falls short.

could it be a case of "too many cooks spoils the broth" by putting 4 defensive mids whose games are very similar and end up stepping on each others' toes, and instead of forming a wall in front of the defense, they just get in each others' way and as a result neither is able to mark the attackers coming from deep or those attacking midfielders (taarof mikonand be ham digeh!) .... and lose the actual battle in the middle?