Upthehill

I'm interested to see the structure Babbel goes with this weekend. Playing 3/5 atb means we will be pitting DG against Retre which will mean we get a lot of attacking balls into the box for AMFG and the Duke of the West. The flip side is Wilmering is going to have his work cut out for him against Grant, though Grant is going to have to run all day because Sydney also plays without a natural winger. 41212, like we used against Victory, is going to be a more defensive unit as Mcgowan and Jurman will play closer together and Schwegler will have 2 CMs helping him shut down the attack. There's more goals in the 5212 but so far Mcgowan has looked pretty open when he has to defend the extra space left by the RWB pushing high. I'm also concerned Sullivan is going to be out of his depth against Brattan and Oniel, who are by far the best DM pairing we have faced this season/preseason. Meier, Adam and Duke against Wilkinson and R Mcgowan is a match up heavily in our favour. Wilkinson is not the defender he used to be and is going to struggle containing Adam or Yeboah coming on with 20 minutes to go. Biggest take away from last week is we CANNOT start slow. That victory outfit couldn't hit the side of a barn from inside the barn, but Sydney will not be so kind. We cant ship 2 goals in the first 15 minutes then expect a come back. Prediction: 2-1 win. Another Meier bomb and a Duke header

Lets not hope for too many reds if we are basing it on karma. DG is about to get hit with the Karma freight train if the timetable is on time this weekend

Direct translation is Shootfarken. Bit bummed there no Muller this weekend. Found myself actually looking forward to the games on the weekend ever since we signed Duke, if only just for the chance of goals last season. Now we have to wait a whole extra week to see him in action

@mack could I suggest a general form thread? Or a season thread maybe? Theres plenty of discussion to be had outside of specific game threads

NO! Weve pretty much already won the league.

Not concerned about duke not being suited to the midfield. He’s best in the final third when he’s allowed to be super direct.

Last time I felt this optimistic about a season, Jason trifiro was schooling the best midfield units in Asia. Dont break my heart

It’s gonna be a 433. Betcha wilmering Jurman Mcgowan and DG at the back Slivan at cam. Baccus and Schwegler at DM Mo, Meier and Duke front 3

Is that the actual line up? Baccus at WB would be a massive waste. Surely we have 3 fit CBs. Babbel always ****s with the team sheets to. He’s listed people in random spots probably just to **** with the oppo coach’s head

L. Thomas, C. Brown, T. Deng, J. Donachie, S. Roux, L. Broxham, J. Poulsen, K. Dobras, E. Kamsoba, O. Toivonen (C), A. Nabbout. SUBS M. Sutton (GK), K. Athiu, M. Basha, B. Carrigan, A. Traoré, A. Lesiotis, B. Lauton. thats not the victory of old. Nullify nabout and we’ve got this

I doubt we’ll see a significant formation shift. Im guessing Babbel has gone for signing a type of player (top flight, long term performer) to adjust to the CAM role rather than a bargain bin midfielder who will have no impact. He knows where the goal is an seems to play with shot loads of intensity. I don’t think he’s going to disappoint us at CAM... i hope

Holy **** that was fast. Straight from the Bundesliga too (Sorta)

You’re not wrong but in S1 we didn’t have our starting 10 out for the season with no replacement in sight. We didn’t have 3-4 other starters out on month long injuries either. I recall how long it took us to hit our strides, that actually makes me more worried since our starting 11 isn’t going to take shape for another month. Nor did we appear to have a pretty obvious systemic fitness issue.

Of course it isn’t. We have kids appearing on the bench in r1 who weren’t even in the first team picture 4 weeks ago.

There were voices in here suggesting that our injury issue was purely coincidental. Those people should never enter a casino because of what they believe is true they have the worst fking luck Weve just suffered two more month long injuries. Also an injury to Yeboah but that’s completely normal in his case. Best we take the Allies approach towards the nazis I think - “not a problem yet, let’s wait for it to get a bit worse first lol”