Gutsy Socceroos move closer to Asian Cup finals

Kewell playing up front negated the long ball options. If I do give credit for that match, we certainly kept the ball on hte ground and before the send off, we were playing good football. I mention before that Pim should neither be criticised for this match. You can't really judge a fair performance with 10 men However Md. one of our goals was offside and the oman had plenty more chances on goals. We were lucky to pim. this ;ucly victory was neither to the detriment or to the credit of Pim Verbeek In any case, most of the complaints about Pim Verbeek is referring to previous performance from the socceroos.

AAARGH. People. The break 50 metres down the beach always looks bigger than the one you are surfing at. It's something to do with the Grass. Greener. Fence. Apparently. Replay the Oman game in your head briefly. Then ask how you think the Socceroos would have responded to the same situation under Frank. Graham Arnold? Or even under Gus. Then think how they responded to that situation under Pim. Oh shit. Somewhere in the last 2 years Australia became a side that passed the ball halfway effectively, and managed to score goals against fast, technical teams by ball movement and player movement. Even playing with 10 men. Away. That's 2 away goals. In a must-win game. Against an agile and well coached team. Boasting the only other world class keeper in Asia. With a shocking ref and a malevolent crowd. Hmmm? Still don't believe me? Ok, count the actual long-balls we played last night. Not the clearances under pressure, the actual long balls. Now poke yourself in the eye with the two fingers you are holding up. Because you deserved that. When your sight returns, go and take a good hard look in the mirror. Cheers md

Your Grandmother just wrote you out of the will! Poor woman!

As I said Tom, a personal view. I am old fashioned and perhaps idealistic in believing that in football results aren't everything - particularly not in Australia, where we compete with NRL, RU, AFL and cricket. Thus, from my perspective, the team is underperforming, because if you take out an extraordinary series of wins that can only be put down to our opponents poor finishing, the team under Verbeek plays the most boring, uninspiring football I can remember an Australian team playing. I actually don't care whether you take me seriously or not: your views do no impinge in any way on my universe, nor mine on yours. I simply think that Verbeek is defensive, unimaginative mediocre coach who has our national team playing in his image and after Hiddink I think that is a real lost opportunity for our game. Not only that, I believe that in the end, unfortunately, the tv ratings and more recent crowd stats indicate that a great many people agree with me.

'This is a chronically underperforming team in every aspect of the game except results.' Just so you know, this is the kind of statement that makes it difficult to take you seriously.

Realfootball, there was a team once that believed it had a divine right to progress to the World Cup, because of it's great history and footballing pedigree - it was ranked #18 and had to qualify against a team that was a lowly #49 - do you remember what happened to that team?

You are right das, a ten man performance makes it hard to judge the fluency of what could be a possible first eleven team. I was surprised that Chippers didn't get dragged, that is the coaches perogative...but it was baffling that he played the game out, imo. But the subbing for Cahill/Bresc for Holman was either a tactical masterstroke that undid Oman, or he was counting on Emerton having the hunger to put this game beyond a draw. Holman offers some harrassing as a striker cum defensive forward, but perhaps more importantly he offers a great decoy in the 18 yard box. That is perhaps PVB's masterpiece of tactics. One can speculate. And yes, I agree we are certainly playing below our promise.

Point about Verbeek remains: the team consistently plays poorly under him, outplayed by teams from countries with tiny populations so far below us in the rankings that there is many days of light between us and them. Oman, with half decent finishing, would have won by several goals. To infer that Verbeek influenced this result is self evident nonsense, as dasilva has pointed out. Verbeek has had everything - time, resources and plenty of games. Neither Farina nor Arnold had these luxuries. If we look back the games in the Verbeek period, how often can we say Australia deserved to win? Asian teams are chronically poor finishers. Verbeek's CV has been a MAJOR beneficiary of this weakness in the Asian game. The team is awful to watch - slow, ponderous in transition, failing to create more than a few chances per game (luckily our conversion rate reflects the leagues the players play in from week to week). My point is that the players are better than this - just the leagues they play in supports this view. This is a chronically underperforming team in every aspect of the game except results. And I do not believe that in this country, dire, ground-out results are enough. I believe Verbeek is harming the code in this country and that he did so earlier in Korea, which is why he was fired. Apart from that, what has he done to justify his astonishing level of conceit? Nothing. We got the coach we paid for, I suppose is all you can say. If you consider that what he dishes up is worth 2.5 million per year. I don't. That is obviously a personal view, but it comes from someone who has done everything to see our national team play since I was a kid, long ago, and for the first time in my life I really would rather not. And I put that down to a dour, baselessly arrogant coach who has not done the work he needed to do to understand the context of the code in this country.

Yeah the funny thing about the over-physical reputation was that it was an omani player who were thuggish that match. His stouch with David Carney should have been a red card.

Agree, dont know why Chippers kept trying to overlap into attack when he wasnt prepared to track back and defend. When Carney came on it plugged up that hole quick and there was far less penetration off that wing. Took Pim 60mins to figure that one out? Putting a little too much faith in Schwarzer my friend. BTW, who reckons Schwarzer is world number one keeper ATM? Maybe Gigi Buffon but no other name comes to mind. He was incredible.

Yes he is not a racist, but im getting quite fed up with this bias of the Socceroos being regarded as an overly physical team. It is quite obvious the referrees have been instructed to stamp this out. Yet its a shame the ref tolerates the theatrics, this is not what we want to see in the game. The ref is the only one on the field capable of controlling this.

If Carney was called offside it would not have been consistent with all the other bad calls.

Fair enough Horza I'm not exactly anti-pim but I'm not pro-piim either. I do believe that Australia were unlucky to lose away against Iraq and the criticism he got for that match was unfair (it was a much better performance then the victory at home). I also thought the performance against China at Kunming wasn't bad. I also agree that Australia had outplayed Oman at home. However it just that we had Pim for 2 years and I'm expecting some degree of fluency to develop when the team is attacking. However I don't really see any real progress in that area Really, our plan is mostly get the ball to the flanks and do some deep crosses to kennedy whilst he takes advantage of asian teams aerial weakness Sure that's going to work in Asia but can Pim adapt the style of play for better opposition. The Oman game would have been a good test for that as the goalkeeper was excellent dealing with crosses. Unfortunately the sent off robbed us the opportunity of seeing where we are with that.

The differences being that some people seem to only count the 'ifs' when the other side has them - we were solidly ahead of Oman at home, in posession and chances - streaks ahead of our 2007 performance. There seems to be this attitude, still, that these teams are just slightly better than Vanuatu, despite the defeats and near-humilitations they've inflicted on us. I don't understand that. Kuwait haven't stayed static - their 2009 side is better than their 2006 side while the A-League team assembled (brace yourselves, I'm about to criticise Verbeek) was an abortion of a side, featuring Dean Heffernan the left-midfielder. That's clearly one area where he needs to clean up his act, and soon. As for standards and expectations - I think in general they've both risen, but the latter has soared through the roof, without a lot of justification. We have a good manager, who has guided us through a long, difficult, hazardous AFC WC qualification process with great results, beating sides that had skewered us in the Cup only a year ago. That's what was expected of him. That's what he delivered. Somehow along the way though, people seemed to decide that because we were winning these games we should be winning all of them, in style and denying the opposition a shot on goal. That our conservative, safety-first qualification formations were shackles on a team that had previously played flowing, one-touch, high scoring football. This team doesn't exist outside of a highlight reel. But apparently it would if Verbeek would just play two strikers or one DM (he has, sometimes it worked, sometimes it didn't). Our Asian Cup campaign languished and needed urgent rescuscitation -- but we just did that, after a horror start and yet some are hanging shit on him. There are better managers out there - they're also a buttload more expensive and unwilling to take up what is effectively a middle-ranked side from a weaker confederation with some big logicistical problems when it comes to assembling a full squad. The other coaches we were after shafted us or went off to coach 3rd tier Japanese club sides before retiring a month later. In comparison I think we got the right guy.

I do understand when people say that if you take your chances then you deserve to win (although saying that, one goal should have been ruled offside, so at most we can say is that we deserved a draw if we are going to disregard the amount of possession and chances) However as much as we can say Australia deserves to win because we took our chances. How does that reflect on Pim's ability to coach. Pim's coaching ability has no influence on Bahrain players missing clear cut chances. Pim's coaching ability is reflected from how fluent the team is playing, how many chancesdid we restrict from the opposition due to good tactics, how many chances the team created. These are the things that Pim can control not that the Bahrain team are poor finisher. For the performance indicators that can be influence by the coach. there is a question mark over Pim's coaching.

Can't really make up my mind whether Pim's actually a good coach or just lucky. What the socceroos recent games show is there seems to be little difference in standard between teams at the pointy end (Holland) and teams like Oman and Kuwait. It's a cliche but there's no easy games in international football anymore. Unless you're in Oceania.

I certainly disagree with the view that Verbeek is a rubbish coach. Like all of us he has his strengths and weaknesses. Coaching is a results oriented game and to date he has been successful. Last night we took our chances & Oman did not. That involves both skill and luck.

The point I was making was one of coach comparison. You seem to think it's all the players and Verbeek is dragging on them - counterpoint: Graham Arnold. Same players, lucky to even draw with Oman. This time we clawed one back inside half time and went on finish them off. We were organised, constantly seeking to get forward and I thought both our starting lineup and the subs were spot on. We could easily have been shanked in this game. What that has to do with Pim I'm not sure - he wasn't bellowing for Willliams to body-check, and our vulnerability to fast-breaking Gulf sides is a constant, structural problem which Verbeek has handled better than his predecessor. To be honest, I don't know where this negativity comes from - I would have thought most fans would be pretty chuffed at a gutsy ten man win away, especially against a side that has form in slicing us open.

In 2007 we drew a match where we had no right to In 2009, if there wasn't for the referee blunder where we had scored an offside goal it would have been the same result. Really this performance was no better then the 2007 match against Oman and arguably even worst. Also remember that in 2007, Arnie has coached an a-league team and defeated Kuwait at home. this is a task thatt Pim Verbeek found too hard to do. In any case, I do believe that Pim is a better coach then Arnie. However I just don't think that's the standard we should be expecting.from out manager.

Horza, hypotheticals like that are a completely pointless exercise. What counts is how this team is playing now. The undeniable fact remains that except for extraordinarily bad finishing from Oman, Australia would have lost this game by 3 goals. So here's an idea, Horza: if you like hypotheticals, ask yourself - if a player of Kewell's quality had been up front for Oman, would Australia have won? (God forbid if they had someone approaching Luca Toni's quality as a finisher.) No way. We would have been done like a dinner.