Looking at nomeans list I came up with this team based on the
idea of having your best 11 players on the park.
There’s a few issues I see in this squad;
1 – The glaring hole in midfield depth.
I have Themi out of position as backup
to Tuiloma & Riera at DM and I wanted to play 1 DM and 2 CM’s but just couldn’t
come up with anyone to fill the role alongside McGlinchey. My other option was
to drop Thomas into CM with Kosta coming on at wing and dropping one of the DM’s
to the bench.
2 – It relies on a couple of players with questionable eligibility (marked (?))
to be available for selection.
In Roux’s case it’s no biggie, bring in
Doyle. But with Riera this excentuates that lack of midfield depth. I’m basing
this on the idea that Riera will be elegable from December, but I am by no
means certain that he will be, and based on current evidence have very little
faith that NZF will sort it properly. At least we have a few friendlies where
we can do what we did with Dura (play him and get the opposition to challenge)
3 – We have an abundance of forwards.
There is a whole front three who didn’t even make the bench who I would
consider picking (Appiah, Brockie, Boyd). Obviously they aren’t my top three,
but they wouldn’t be completely out of depth at international level. At least
we have some depth somewhere on the pitch
4 – Thank Fudge Ricki found Smith and Reid