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Having seen his team routinely beaten by Heidelberg, Kenny Lowe must have felt a foreboding shudder rumble through him. Ken Athiu’s goal, punched into the top corner, may not be the only serving of public embarrassment served up to Lowe and Perth this season.
It feels as though the Glory will be in for a tough 2017-18 season. They have lost key players in key positions and are yet to significantly add to the squad.
The Glory were an extremely volatile team last season, and though it made for some astonishingly entertaining scorelines, it was not a particularly reliable formula. The potent strengths of Lowe’s kamikaze-like football were on show in the opening 2-0 finals win over Melbourne City only for the team to be obliterated the very next game, with every pallid weakness exposed, 3-0 by Sydney FC.
This was, conveniently, a neat summary of Perth’s season generally: explosive but fragile, a textbook glass cannon.
Diego Castro, Perth’s best player, was absent from the Heidelberg loss, but the team fielded was otherwise fairly well-stocked with first-teamers: Adam Taggart, Chris Harold and newly signed Scott Neville were all there, among others. Andy Keogh was there too, although the unconventional manner in which he haphazardly kicked the game off was rather emblematic of the the team’s subsequent performance.
Naturally, with Castro in the team, Perth always have a chance to create something positive in attack, but it’s down the other end, in the defence, where the cause for concern lies like a seeping wound. Rhys Williams and, as just a few days ago, Rostyn Griffiths have both departed the club. Williams, a Socceroo, was welcomed by the Melbourne Victory, whereas Griffiths has apparently found the lure of the Uzbek league too attractive to resist.
A national-team calibre centre back and a linchpin defensive midfielder who also happened to be their captain have both hightailed it, and precious little has been done to fill the voids they’ve left. It bears remembering – generally with a wince – that Perth had the equal-worst defensive record in the league last season, conceding a staggering 53 goals over the course, the same as bottom-placed Newcastle. This was a defence in need of help then, and it has been significantly weakened since.
Josh Risdon, one of the league’s best right backs and the second-best tackler in the entire league last season, has also left the club. His jaunt over to Western Sydney has been mitigated somewhat by Scott Neville making the reverse trip to the Perth, but Neville doesn’t represent anything more than a slight downgrade at the position.
Additionally, defender Aryn Williams – brother of Rhys – was also released by the club, having played 22 games for the Glory last season. Lucian Goian, perhaps best known for his horror Glory debut last season, has also left, less a matter of lost talent than it is simply lost depth. Dino Djulbic left in early June as well, bound for Malaysia.
Jacob Poscoliero and Neville are the extent of the defensive arrivals so far this offseason. They both play in the same position. Mitch Nichols has been brought into the attack, and although he’s an extremely diligent covering attacker, his tirelessness in the front third will not make a significant difference to the goals-against tally.
Marc Warren, widely identified as one of the A-League’s least capable defenders, is still on the books, and may well see game time next season. Heaven help them.
A centre back needs to be acquired before the season begins. As of now the squad list on the Glory website only names four first-team defenders – one side of a lopsided scale – weighed down egregiously on the other side by seven first-team forwards. Is it possible Perth are revving up for kamikaze football mach 2.0?
Could their outscore-the-opposition game plan be cranked up into a breakneck beta version in 2017/18? What fantastic scorelines will be wracked up then?
Perth spent the entirety of last season swinging back and forth violently, conceding and scoring in bunches, utterly punch-drunk. Lowe seemed incapable of sorting out the defence with the players he had, and with that group reduced significantly one wonders if they’ll even manage a single clean sheet next term.
“We’ll roll with it,” Lowe said after the FFA Cup defeat. “Things happen for a reason, and we’ll just have to do things differently now.”
Yes, they’ll have to do things differently, both from that defeat and from last season generally.
Their recruitment needs to be adjusted because the areas of concern are gaping and in need of urgent attention. Good defenders are not easy to find, but they are out there: the way Jordy Buijs fit seamlessly into Sydney FC’s title tilt midseason last year is the most recent example, though that may have been more to do with Sydney having, unlike Perth, a clear defensive system firmly in place. Still, one wonders why Perth didn’t investigate Alan Baro when he was released by the Victory.
There is the real possibility, lurking like a gloomy spectre on the horizon, of Perth suffering through a truly harrowing season. They’ll need to act quickly and diligently if they’re to avoid it.