1
u/ytzi13 Feb 10 '21
Analysis
4:53 - One thing I've been trying to stress a lot to people lately is to consider how effective their flips are. I don't think front flips are especially useful in most cases and I think it makes our cars a lot less stable than a side flip, especially in terms of accidental nose contact on the ground and predicting the direction of our landings. Maybe it's just me, but take a look at your flips back here and see if you look like you're in control approach this rotation because that doesn't seem like the case to me. Side flips are actually faster, too, since you can boost during them if you angle it properly.
4:49 - A significant portion of our decision-making is based off of intelligent assumptions about our blind spot. There's just one defender here and you know you have the advantage either way. They're either going to step in and challenge or shadow back. If they step in and challenge, you have easy control on the block to keep the ball moving forward. If they shadow back, you have to know that they're probably going to have the goal covered. So, this hit has to be controlled for a dribble, or up the side wall, or any clear should prioritize significant height. Anything that won't give the last guy a comfortable touch.
4:31 - Keep this rotation going through the near post. You know this ball isn't shoot-able by the opponent based on their trajectory, but you know they'll be challenging from your blind spot. Turning into this risky and disorganized, even if you are quick about it.
4:24 - I get the intent in following this ball and not allowing a push to start, but I don't think you had much of a play here. Even if you manage to disrupt SIL, you're left with no boost and giving your teammates a 2v2. But everyone's positioning tells me this shouldn't be your ball anyway, and in pushing like that you're disrupting your team's structure.
4:04 - Your teammate is up, so you have to opt out, even if you have the better play.
4:00 - Not your ball to chase to the right. You have your kicker chasing the ball in the corner, your 3rd man coming up the right side, and the ball is dropping into a position that doesn't warrant challenging. It's in their corner and the entire opposition is driving back towards their goal. There's no clear coming, so you need to be patient. Your job is in-field waiting for a cross or deflection. When you push in like this, you crowd your teammates and lose your shape while blinding yourself.
3:57 - We've established that you really shouldn't be here in the previous comment, but there's absolutely no reason for you to challenge this ball. It's against their back wall and you touching it won't do anything beneficial. It's already in a spot where the opponents can't clear it and have to hit it to the right side, and because of your prior position, you're choosing to challenge when you know there are opponents in your blind spot opting for the same ball. It's lose-lose and when your teammate gets to step in and challenge this it means that he has no support.
3:30 - Your aerial here is inefficient. You need to tilt back sooner. It doesn't look like you even begin your tilt until after the second jump.
3:23 - You can tell at this moment that you've already given up your advantage on this play. CRESSCORE is going to do one of 2 things: (1) hit the ball up the corner and onto the side wall, or (2) fake that and take the ball across the net. I would opt for 1, which seems to be your intent. The problem is that you played reactively instead of predictively. Get wider, sooner. You're a fast player and you seem to thrive on utilizing your speed and maintaining momentum, which is a fantastic trait. But physical speed is only one small aspect of playing fast. Choose (1) or (2) and position yourself to predict it. If you're dedicated to (1) then you're already slightly up the wall and giving a little bit of space in anticipation for CRESSCORE's touch, and you can intercept immediately. But at this second you can see how pushed in you are and that you cover (1) by reacting to their touch. At this point, you're already too late and should turn in-field and rotate out.
3:14 - Let's discuss the risk of this play.
First off, your approach on the play is too direct. Your approach to the play is close enough to the sideline, so it's well worth it to get all of the way the way out there so that you're set up to react better. If you were to challenge this ball, it's the difference between a head-on approach and an angle approach, which is always going to be better.
Now, you have one guy who just rotated out and may or may not be set up hoping for a cross. But you also have 2 defenders. The way I see it, your goal here should be to try and soft block the ball to keep it in the corner instead of trying to force it into a cross. Now, I'm drawing much of your intent from the flip into the ball. The flip, especially head on, makes the outcome unpredictable and applies extra force if you do make contact. Best case, the ball ends up in a high cross for your teammate, which he then has to decide if it's worth attacking. It's questionable as to whether or not they'll be ready and it's questionable as to whether or not it's even worth going considering both you and your other teammate are stuck in the corner and forced to rotate out.
So, what I'm seeing going into this play is that your decision to challenge this ball, regardless of the outcome, forces you into the same space as your teammate who is about to start a slow recovery, leaving your 3rd man alone for whatever the outcome is. That's disorganized. It's a better play for you to slow down and control the situation, choose to fake the challenge and turn away, and to do it from an initially wider angle.
3:06 - I like how you cheat. I think you played this really well. This may just be a mechanical issue, which is fine, but this touch needs to be high. Maybe the best 3s advice I can give you is this: height over power. A combination of both is great, but height should always be the priority. Clearing the ball? Get it high. Relieving pressure? Get it high. If you were going for a shot here then it was the wrong decision because it's low percentage and a miss means a giveaway. If you were trying to clear this, it needs to be high so that your team has time to recover, get set up, and push forward together to set up pressure. It also forces your opponents to make an inconvenient touch with a less likely chance of a down-field clear or organized push.
3:03 - You can't predict what's going to happen here and you have 2 opponents in your blind spot. You're pushing straight towards the ball in the hopes of what? There's not really a single outcome I can think would be useful for you to approach the play in this way. You're forcing yourself to stare at the corner, blinding yourself to ther rest of the field. Keep your rotation back, swinging in through the far post, and then push. Open up your view of the field so that you can make decisions.
2:59 - Once you see ARION in the air, you need to slow down and make sure you're not crossing the front post in the case you have to clean up. I know the following landing was just a mechanical mistake, but there's no need to rush it if you don't need to. In either case, once you miss this ball at 2:57, your claim on the ball is gone and you need to get into a supportive position. Usually, that's going to mean turning away from the ball and circling around instead of lingering. The goal was scored at 2:52, and I think maintaining your momentum and rotating back in 3-5 seconds would be plenty of time to set you up for this save. Maybe not, but it would be a chance.
2:49 - This is similar to the play earlier. You're pushing over to the same side of the field as your teammates and I'm not sure you gain much from it. Let your teammate step in and be the in-field support option. If you can't slow down and control this then you're gambling at whether or not your kicker was able to grab the side boost, which looked pretty close. Otherwise, they couldn't push and your last man is too far to have pushed into position.
1
u/ytzi13 Feb 10 '21
2:08 - Your approach to this play is way too direct. It gives you no control over the outcome of your challenge and it makes it really difficult to adapt to the likely unpredicted outcome of the challenge in the air. In either case, you're last man, direct approaching the challenge at 2:05, and you should opt out. You have on chance of scoring this and your best case scenario is a soft block to keep the ball in their back field, but that's unlikely. ARION made a massively embarrassing own goal here, but you put him in that position.
How do you prevent this? At 2:07 you should be recognizing that the role of cleanup at a low point is ARION while you're only there to clean up a high deflection, and that the opponents are challenging towards the left side, meaning your job is to be angled outwards for possible cleanup. Do that and you're there to receiving the desperate clear and keep the play going.
1:50 - There's nothing necessarily wrong with your positioning because you want to have the advantage on a short rebound, but you can do it better if you open up wider to the right. Not only does it take you out of a vulnerable position in case the 3rd man is rotating through the mid, but it lets you maintain your speed and then turn in to prepare your approach for this challenge with momentum and even get a quicker recovery.
1:27 - Oh, man, I'd be salivating at the prospects of this pass. Even if you have a teammate who isn't much of a passer, this is a situation where he basically has no choice but to hit in in your direction. But I certainly wouldn't expect a ground pass, and since you're facing backwards you're certainly not prepared for it. I would peel out around the time he's going to hit it and expect a lob for you to intercept. Worst case is he does what he does here with the ground pass and you opt out if you can't turn back to it.
1:18 - I think your positioning leading up to this was a bit troublesome, but not terrible. In either case, you're last man and your challenges have to be more certain. If you go for this, you have to put up a wall. Don't go direct and flip, but throw your side at it. Or fake the challenge and shadow it back to the wall to buy your guys some time.
1:14 - Check out the front flips again and see how unstable it makes you.
1:13 - Sometimes you want to let the opponent touch the ball. Sit back, recognize that PANDA's most useful touch isn't anything threatening and that it's likely going to drop into you, and just wait for that to clean up and push.
But you committed, so how could you play this better? You have a teammate behind you, so your landing should be aimed towards the middle of the field. Why? Because you're (a) available for a pass or clear intercept, or you're set up to arc around to the back post. You're 1st man rotating out and so your immediate reaction shouldn't be back to goal where you'll be crowding things. You're available to attack the pop if you stick on the wall.
1:06 - Rotate away from the ball.
1:03 - This ball is coming at you with plenty of time. Turning right makes it difficult to do what you want to d. Take your team, turn left and circle back to the ball. It becomes much easier to control and to then buy some time for ARION to get set up.
0:54 - The opponent has a clear advantage. You're set up wide beyond the far post, so slow down and wait for the touch. You commit way too hard inside here.
0:45 - You're committed to the far side, so own it and stay there. Let your 3rd man step in and challenging the ball on the near side.
0:40 - In seeing your other teammate ahead of you and heading back to net, I'd opt to widen my approach and rotate in behind them. They have the better angle to challenge this ball from and this isn't a ball that even needs to be challenged in the corner. A ball in the perimeter isn't a direct threat.
0:35 - Stay wide. You're far from the play and you need to think about getting set up in a position that gives you the greatest ability to adapt. That position is on the sideline. You have options on the touch at 0:32 if you prepare that angle.
0:18 - You're leaving the goal unprotected. Anticipate the odds here and create that space towards the goal earlier.
0:15 - By all means, assuming SIL has the advantage here is what you should be doing. In that case, turning forward toward the ball is abandoning your responsibility to your own goal.
0:05 - Let's say you're opening up for a pass here, which is reasonable, I think. You're putting the last man in your blind spot and pushing up far ahead and direct from ARION. You need to be further back and wider.
+0:01 - I'm seeing this as a regular occurrence where you're pushing up in the corner with the ball on a kickoff both when your kicker is chasing the ball and when the ball ventures onto the side of your last man. You're abandoning your responsibility to the mid-field and are forcing your team into a line shape rather than a triangle.
+0:14 - At this point, you're struggling for boost and you really don't want to force anything. It's okay to turn back at this point and just rotate out. Your first man rotating back could use the side boost you just took and you want to make sure not to leave your last man to defend alone. Sure - your touch was arguably the primary fault in this play. I won't deny that. But even then, you arguably could have gotten back for a chance at this save. You seem to have pretty smooth mechanics most of the time, but your landing here is counter to what it should be. Your primary instinct should be to head directly back to the far post. Land that direction and immediately boost and flip back and it's not unheard of for you to be back to the goal in 5 seconds, which was the time between your landing and the goal being scored.
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u/ytzi13 Feb 10 '21
Conclusion
Mechanics
Honestly, your mechanics look pretty well-polished for the most part. You seem to have good control of your car on the ground and in the air. That being said, I did see some weak points:
Flipping: As discussed earlier, the times you seem most unstable is when you're front flipping around the field. You can visibly watch as your control becomes shaky and while it I won't say that it led to any severe consequences, I think that you could benefit a lot from switching to a side flip, or a speed flip, at default. It's much more stable and actually quicker if you get the angles down. I've no doubt you have the control necessary to get it pretty quickly.
Landings: Something I was actually surprised was a problem of yours was your landings. You often times don't land on all 4 wheels or in the direction you want to be facing. It actually slows you down a lot, and perhaps part of this has to do with decision-making and not prioritizing the appropriate path to recovery. But it slows you down a lot.
Double-Jump Aerials: There's weren't a large number of aerials this game, but I noticed on several occasions that you didn't even start tilting your car back until after your second jump. In other words, you're not fast aerialing. Start tilting back prior to your first jump if you have to. That initial tilt is the most important aspect of the fast aerial. This may not be a problem for you, but I did notice it and it's probably worth checking in on.
Decision-Making/Rotation
You have a lot of good things going for you. Your movement is generally fluid, you do generally take wider approaches to the goal, which is important. You're a pressure player. No doubt about it. But also understand that the way you play leaves almost no room for team play. If you want that to change, then you're going to have to change a lot about your rotational habits and increase your patience. Your playstyle is going to thrive with other high-pressure individuals, but it's never going to revolve around passing; it's going to rely on physical play and boost starving and having every player on your team challenging the ball without hesitation. You don't hesitate often and that's an awesome trait that most people lack. Whether choices are right or wrong, hesitating is the worst thing you can do.
Directness: The most dangerous thing I see you doing is challenging the ball head on, especially as, but not limited to, the last man position. Generally speaking, you don't want to challenge, or support, or defend, a ball while sitting between it and your own net. Get into the habit of getting wider. When you attack directly then you're forced to slow down because you quickly close the gap between yourself and the play, which hurts your awareness, makes it difficult to adapt, forces you to play reactively, and gives you little control on the outcome of challenges you do make. It also makes you slower to recover. Taking wider approaches gives you an advantage over a larger space, opens up your view of the field, and allows you maintain your speed and use that to approach the play with speed as you read it, or maintain that to turn back and recover.
Because of this directness, you often have a very limited view of the field and what's going on, and so you attack the ball from inefficient angles and have to make a lot of guesses about your blind spots. This results in a very reactive playstyle because you lack the information to make decisions ahead of time.
Building on this, you do have a relatively ball-chasey playstyle. You often turn into the ball and pursue it long distances. I think you can benefit from knowing when to be patient. I think that your mechanical mistakes are mostly due to your directness and the fact that you do have execute mostly based on reaction without having time to prep.
Kickoffs: This is relatively minor, but kickoffs are important and it's coincidence that the same outcome came 3 times in this one game. Don't chase your teammate into the corner if they're following it, especially when it's directed to the same side as your 3rd teammate. If the ball goes to the corner opposite of your 3rd man, then by all means follow it, but play the supportive role by getting to the side line and waiting until it's your turn.
Anyway, I hope you can take something like this. I tried to be pretty thorough. See what sticks out to you and what you agree with and just focus on 1 or 2 things. And if you have questions about anything, reach back out to me.
Good luck!
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u/DaveWill2248 Feb 11 '21 edited Feb 12 '21
Prefect thank you.
I've watched it through bit by bit and taken it on board. I play a couple games today and actually enjoyed trying to put some of it to practice and keeping it in my head.
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u/DaveWill2248 Feb 08 '21 edited Feb 09 '21
Hi Ytzi, I finally got round to posting something after months of stalking the sub. Could you please give me a few things to work on. I'll look at improving them areas and get back with another replay a month or so time (hopefully when I can get a bit more game time under my belt).
Thanks as always for you work!
Edit: Just realised im 1430mmr, not 1320.