Theres another thing I cant get my head around.
The defensive approach to the game was taken because apparently we werent good enough to compete with Japan and that we didnt have good enough players.
There have been massive strides forward in the womens game in the last decade or so. I forget the numbers but before John Herdman was in charge our womens team had gone 19 years without scoring a goal against a non Oceania side and 16 years without having scored a result (they drew with some team I forget) against a non Oceania side.
I remember the womens team playing the USA in the US a few years ago (4 or 5? 2013?) and they came desperately close to pulling off an upset in front of a huge crowd, only giving up the lead in injury time (from an awful ref error). I think at the time the USA were ranked #1. We also drew with Japan in Japan that year. The last couple of years we have stalled a bit but there was a period of 3 or 4 years where the team ( with many players still current) scored really great results in games from the Cyprus cup to friendlies. We even held a ranking at one point of 13 from memory. I think we beat Brazil a few years ago as well as China?
Again many of the players involved in those results are still around the current squad so how come this coach thinks they cant compete?
didn't do basic research - yes we've never beaten Japan, but our last 4 games against them have been 2015 0-1, 2014 1-2, 2013 1-1, 2011, 1-2! We beat Brazil 1-0 in Brazil in 2015 the last big loss we had was 11-0 v North Korea in 2004 or 147 games ago. At the time North Korea were ranked 2nd or 3rd and we only had caretaker coaches - things have changed a bit in the last 14 years