Thought this could use its own thread

Some interesting stats about our all age teams in asian cups

U17 points per game: 1.8
U20 points per game: 1.7
U23 points per game: 1.4
socceroos points per game: 1.9


u17 goals per game: 2.1
u20 goals per game: 1.7
u23 goals per game: 0.8
senior goals per game: 1.9

A couple of thoughts
1) there is clear decline in relative quality until our players trodge off to europe and close the gap. In the last window there were a lot of u23 players unavailable due to clubs not releasing them. I don't remember this being much of a problem for underage teams in the last 10 years now
2) at 0.8 goals per game for the olyroos it isn't that much of an outlier to go goalless in a tournament
3) extrapolating back to u15s (an admittedly dodgy assumption since there are only 3 data points I'm using to form a trend!) our u15s would be as good as japan and perhaps the best in asia

What do you think are the key needs of u17s, u20s and u23s to stop that decline?

The more Asian experiences at a younger age, the better. The players need to understand the conditions they could be playing in to make a world cup one day.

It's unbelievable we still can't get rid of the naivety and haven't set up a plan to deal with the conditions, antics and tactics most of the AFC play. Poor coaching also. It's tough to play in Asia but a lot of the mistakes are home made. 

There you go in the end - a lot of mistakes is home made more than anything else.
As our fellow neighbours have progressed no matter how whilst we have a disjointed least competitive vibrant competition top to bottom it no matter how much intel and analysis we absorb it’s about competition games games games and long term deep rooted connection that will account to something.
Sideline academies, limited pro competition we are being left behind where it counts at NT levels and Jnrs.
Its there in the background but hamstrung l.

Another quality thread, Grazor.

Thanks!

Some damning stats

1) we are the 18th best at the asian cup for converting touches in the 18 yard box into goals
2) Striker is the worst of any position in terms of euro careers for those born after 1984

Our best 3 goal keepers played a combined 452 games in a 2nd tier league and 168 games in the big 5
Our best 3 cbs played 442 games in the 2nd tier
Our best 3 fullbacks played 517 games in the 2nd tier and 2 games in the big 5
Our best 3 defensive mids played 734 games in the 2nd tier and 95 in the big 5
Our best 3 central mids played 403 games in the second tier and 120 in the big 5
Our best 3 attacking mids played 498 in the 2nd tier and 27 in the big 5
Our best 3 wingers played 503 in the 2nd tier and 181 in the big 5
Our best 3 strikers played 280 games in the 2nd tier

Strikers have been so much worse than any other position for us. To stress just how bad the striking position is, our 3rd most succesful euro career for a striker is karem bulut who managed 52 games in a 2nd tier euro league (top league in czech for the most part). Giannou is the only played to hit tripple figures for games played with 138 in the greek superliga