JustWandering

I can't help but think that we play back 5 purely to allow Russell to be a starting player. Development of our young players trumps winning games.

We have a good selection of Aussie players in our squad, but our list of foreigners are probably of the lowest quality in the league. Only two worthy of starting, and those two are just solid players, not of the class of Fornaroli, Castro, etc. Whoever our manager is next season has to bring in some quality foreigners if we hope to be consistently competitive. The foreigners are pivotal in every squad competing for a finals place except for ours. I don't see this situation as CRs fault as he had no time to address this problem in the last preseason.

Cacares to Wellington, Davila to Wanderers then. Problem solved.

Except for when they played us

I think Ziggy is too short to be a centre back if we are playing with only 2 (i.e., a back 4). We would get slaughtered aerially. He's fine as a centre back in a back 3 when we have some height in the other 2 positions. In a back 4, Ziggy has to be a fullback.

In the post match press conference CR praised the academy players in the first team, and mentioned that a few more will be introduced to the first team shortly. I expect that Ali Auglah will be one the academy players promoted to the first team, as CR has mentioned his name a lot in previous interviews.

They flew done from Brisbane. The issue was that because of the Sydney covid case, they didn't fly down until the day of the match. That is far from ideal for match day preparation to be fair. Agree that he has no grounds for complaint regarding the match scheduling though.

Shouldn't he be happy that he broke his drought?

Ibini looked grumpy after his goal. Don't know whether he was auditioning for the next voltaren promo or whether he was sore for being dropped to the bench after a good derby performance. It was nice to see Ugarkovic get a smile from him though.

Thank God we have abandoned playing out from the back. Margush goes long now most of the time.

After this game I'm less concerned about whether we play back 4 or back 5 at the back if EVERYONE is working hard in defence, keeping pressure on the ball and getting back in numbers to defend the goal in transition. I realise that WUn were lethargic and their transitional play was not lightning quick or anything, but the effort from our boys to disrupt their counterattacks was great nonetheless. It was telling that CR named names in his onfield post match interview, he criticised Baccus for his weak cover defensive effort on the edge of the box late in the game. It's a good sign, laziness in

Aquilina or Wilmering for left back? Different skill sets, both have a bright future. I think Aquilina suits our style of play more. He bursts forward without hesitation and beats his man with speed and physicality. He has developed a nice combination with Kamau, getting the ball to him early when the opposition is on the back foot. I don't think we get this from Wilmering, who is more hesitant and tends to look for the back pass rather than taking his man on. Both players need game time for their development. When both are fully fit and available for selection, I'd be playing Aquili

I'd love to see the same starting line up as v SFC, except bring Ugarkovic in for Mutch. No that Mutch did anything wrong, Ugarkovic will do a better job at distributing the ball forward. He and Dorrans are the future, the future starts now. Not very keen to see the formation we played for the last 20 minutes any time soon though. A defensive block of 8 with Baccus, Tass and Dorrans sitting right on top of our back 5. Absolutely no avenue for attack apart from our wing backs, basically just setting up camp in front of our goal and hoping for the best. I wondered whether this formation was

I expect that our centre backs will have less work to do when ugarkovic and dorrans are our CDMs.

From mattys progress tables, 6th place has ranged from 1.44 to 1.54 points per game. This equates to 37 to 40 points by the end of round 26. We currently sit on 28 points, so it looks like we'll need at least 9 more points for any chance to qualify for the finals. 12 more points would be much safer.