In a developing league, it will eventually come, and perhaps it will come some time this season given the amount of mid-week games, but the reality so far is that the four teams that have played three games in a week have all struggled in the final leg of their heavy period.
Heavy legs and heavy minds leading to some tired displays.
The first two teams to face the three games in a week were the Melbourne Victory and the Wellington Phoenix, who backed up a mid-week scoreless draw at AAMI Park in week six with a draw and a loss respectively in week seven.
The Victory, outclassed by the Phoenix on the Wednesday, were also second best away to the North Queensland Fury on the following Saturday, and had to rely on some good work from Michael Petkovic and a slice of luck to come away with a pair of scoreless draws after an impressive 3-0 home win to Brisbane Roar in the opener in week six.
In that respect, the fact Ernie Merrick’s men picked up five points from their three games was decent return indeed, especially considering the likes of Rody Vargas, Grant Brebner and Tom Pondeljak aren’t exactly on the younger side of 30, not to mention the fact Kevin Muscat was missing for the two scoreless draws after limping off late against the Roar.
Like the Victory, the Phoenix also kicked off their three-game-week with a home win, 2-1 over Sydney FC. After the impressive showing against the Victory, in which a motivated Nick Ward was a stand-out, came a lacklustre 2-1 loss away to the other Melbourne, the Heart.
While the games against the Victory and Heart were only four days apart, the fact Ricki Herbert’s men were able to stay in Melbourne between the games might have suggested they would cope with the workload. But clearly they were struggling against the Heart, and rarely has Paul Ifill been so quiet.
Last week it was the turn of the Gold Coast United and Newcastle Jets. They picked up five and four points respectively.
United kicked off their schedule with a scoreless draw at home to the Central Coast Mariners, then had a late John Curtis bomb to thank for ensuring the home mid-week clash with the Jets didn’t finish the same way, before procuring a fortunate point on the road to Sydney on Sunday.
There’s little doubt Miron Bleiberg’s men struggled in the most recent match, given the run-around by the mercurial Alex Brosque for much of it. Little wonder he was named by Holger Osieck yesterday.
If United were fortunate to escape with a point, it was the same story for the Jets a day earlier, who had to rely on a couple of timely interventions from Ben Kennedy and some out-of-character wastefulness from Carlos Hernandez to kick-off the Nathan Tinkler era with a home draw.
After a very up-tempo home showing against the Perth Glory a week earlier and the last-minute loss in Robina, it was little wonder Branko Culina was so delighted to come away from the Victory match with a point after such a tired display.
Given the heavy schedules of those involved, it perhaps comes as no surprise we’ve seen a few draws, many of them scoreless.
If anything, it suggests managers are happy enough coming out of these intense weeks without too much damage, and while this might lead to some conservative, attritional football, it’s perhaps another sign of the growing tactical maturity across the competition.
The fact these A-League teams have hitherto struggled to see out the three games shouldn’t come as a huge surprise given that the norm, for most of the players in the competition, has been a game a week.
On top of that, squads aren’t exactly as deep here as they are in Europe, where managers have the luxury of rotating players across the respective competitions, meaning most players only need to front up for two out of three games.
Here there is no such luxury, especially with players being called up for the youth, under 23s and senior national teams, further depleting resources.
Meanwhile, the travel remains a factor, although the FFA have down their best to look after clubs by scheduling back-to-back games in the same city, cutting down on travelling.
The Victory and Gold Coast, for example, had two home games before travelling away for the final game, while Wellington were home before travelling to Melbourne for two games.
Only the Jets, who started at home to Perth, went away to the Gold Coast four days later, then finished back at home had to travel twice in the week. Little wonder Culina was delighted with Saturday’s point.
This week it’s the turn of Sydney and the Fury, who play in a crucial match at the SFS tonight. Rooted to the bottom of the table, you would hardly know it based on their respective performances over the weekend.
While the Fury made two howlers early to gift goals to Wellington, they were their usual dominant self thereafter, controlling much of the match, even without strikers Chris Payne, Eugene Sseppuya, Dyron Daal and Isaka Cernak.
Franz Straka’s luck will turn.
Sydney, meanwhile, dished up their best effort yet, with some lively early combination between Brosque, Mark Bridge and Bruno Cazarine.
But, with points crucial, the three games are a tough ask for both club, especially the Fury, who have drawn the short straw, with all three on the road. After the 2-1 loss in windy Wellington on Friday, at least Straka is able to base his team in Sydney, from where they can shuttle up to Gosford for the clash with the Mariners on Saturday.
Sydney, meanwhile, have the luxury of three home games, the third against table-toppers Adelaide United on the public holiday Monday, all on the back of the rest in week seven.
Whether the fact Sydney don’t have to travel during their heavy period has an impact on their overall performances and results will be interesting to observe.
Indeed, watching how clubs, managers and players adjust to coping with the increased workload throughout this season will make for fascinating viewing. While the early signs have been mixed, I’d suggest we might soon see them coping well.
Ben of Phnom Penh
Guest
Certainly the teams that have featured regularly in the ACL have a better feel for the heavy work load. Heavy legs due to a flight to Melbourne is one thing, heavy legs due to a flight to Tashkent or Tokyo is quite another.
David V.
Guest
Back in 62/63, 78/79 and 81/82, there were mass postponements of games due to severe weather. Everton played 9 games in April 1963- we didn't lose a single one, and we won the league that year. In Scotland in 1979, Dundee United completed their fixtures on top of the league, but Rangers and Celtic had to play catch-up games. Celtic defeated Rangers in a famous match in which Celtic were down to 10 men to win the league. To top it all off, Rangers needed 2 replays to defeat Hibs in the Scottish Cup Final! Let's not forget the heavy schedule Arsenal and Nottingham Forest had between 1978 and 1980.
AndyRoo
Roar Guru
The cap also plays a part in that it means most opponents are difficult/important and there's no games that you can obviously use to rest players.
Griffo
Roar Guru
Seems squad depth is the issue more than conditioning training, but one factor over-looked here is the salary cap. You would expect that to have a quality starting 11 is going to eat up a good chunk of the cap, leaving little to add depth to most of the remaining squad. This is where quality marquee signings and imports/guest players might come in to play in these mid-week fixtures, adding quality per buck and fresh legs to back up. With more mid-week fixtures likely, the coach who spends wisely, finds the balance on the team sheet and using them mid-week could gain some extra points over rivals. I would expect increases in salary cap to help here for squad depth but cap increases are not favoured you would think by the FFA. Which leaves the suggestion of either increasing squads above 23 players, or using players from the youth teams to bolster mid-week squads as smarter options.
Fussball ist unser leben
Roar Guru
Eamonn- I think you have to also factor in the travel. Based on a quick look at Google maps, the longest distance travelled in the EPL is from Newcastle to London, which is approximately 450kms! By contrast, every 2nd week, Perth Glory has to travel between 2,700- 5,300kms to play a game of footbal ... and, then they have to travel backl! Every 2nd week, the Nix players have to grab their passports and the 3+hr waiting, customs and immigration formalities that accompanies international travel at both borders ... and, then the process is repeated when they travel back! To give you some idea of how massive the travel for Perth and the Nix, here are some potential UCL travelling distances this season ... and these teams only travel these type of distances 3-6 times a year!!: * Arsenal v Shaktar Donetsk = 2,200 kms * Chelsea v Spartak Moscow = 2,500kms The longest distance travelled in the UCL this year seems to be around 4,000 kms for Barcelona v Rubin Kazan & Hapoel Tel Aviv v Benfica
Phil H
Guest
Phoenix "outstanding" against Victory? Well, I'll concede that they looked dangerous at times in the first half and generally suffocated Victory, but above that they played a significant part in making this one of the most boring and forgettable games of football I've seen. Maybe my Victory bias is showing through and they were at their most frustrating in that game, but overall it was very poor fare from both sides. By the way, I think you've caught the Ernie Merrick disease. His over-use of the term "outstanding" especially post-match does grate :)
Midfielder
Guest
All in good time... I played in the world masters last year ... 7 games in 9 days... I can tell you towards the end it got tough ... but me thinks it's all about squad size and clever use of the bench...the problem I see is coaches are a tad to timid to use their bench as run on players... This was our experience.. we knew players strengths and weakness and played different styles with different pl;ayers .. but kept to a similar shape... BTW Tony in HTH I have written about a mid week format... would love to have your opinion after you read it...
Axel V
Guest
The way that European clubs deal with tight fixturing is that they have an indepth squad as mentioned and are able to rest key players and still be able to win their games. E.g Arsenal, Manchester United and Chelsea etc have reserve players that are a class above the clubs they play. A-League clubs don't have this luxury and are lacking in depth. If there is something like the Carling cup then the big clubs tend to field a full reserve squad, same with the FA Cup until they get to the final it seems. It just depends on the priorities of the club in which games they value more in the tight fixturing, usually they put the European Champions League first, EPL second, everything else is tertiary.
Tony Tannous
Expert
Provocative Eamonn. I don't think anyone can question the durability of AFL players to be honest. I remember being astounded to learn, over a decade ago that then Saints midfielder Robert Harvey did over 30 kilometres a game. I'm sure it's become the norm since then. It's little wonder you see AFL players retiring about the time they hit 30. The game is just incredibly physical. Football is also very physical, with the most dynamic midfielders clocking up 10-12 kms a game. The thing in Europe, as I noted in my piece, is that they have much bigger squads, meaning players invariably don't have to play three games in a week.
Tony Tannous
Expert
Good comment agga, but I would beg to differ on the Phoenix. I thought they were outstanding on the Wed against the Victory and should have won, but that their performance fell away a bit in the final game against the Heart, who I felt were good value for their narrow win. Agree with your comments about the use of the Victory squad. You touch on Hernandez, but I was equally suprised to see Vargas play all three games, he looked to be strugglng to see them out, and you can add Brebner to that, although both showed the right type of mental application. Tough characters, great professionals, no doubt, but was it sound business to flog these guys for three games straight? Methinks not. No doubt it explains why Brebner was absent against the Jets, while Vargas was also struggling to make that trip.
AndyRoo
Roar Guru
I don't think it's strange given it's relatively new to the league and even in Europe they rotate players a lot more. A league teams depth falls away a lot after the starting 11. The team that's leading the Bundisliga (Mainz I think) rotated arround 4 players a game int here last 3 fixtures.
Eamonn Flanagan
Guest
It's strange that these guys can't "back-up" effectively. They play so few games compared to their European counterparts. Mind you the AFL boys were whingeing about playing another game, another Grand Final after such a long season last saturday. 21 games or so for AFL with 18 on the park and 100 interchanges per game and the lads can't back up! These guys men or mouse:) Is this an Aussie thing?
agga78
Guest
I went to both Wellington games against the Victory and Heart and to be honest I thought Phoenix coped well with their 3 games, they out played MVFC on the weds night, on the Sunday Phoenix were the better side in the 1st half, probably should been a goal up at half time, Heart then changed formation with big bird going into the middle which changed the game for the 1st 30 minutes of the 2nd half allowing Heart to get 2 goals, but Phoenix got a goal and then finished strongly, I thought they were unlucky in both Melbourne games not to get a win and a draw. I watched Melbourne Victory aswell and like Most teams they struggled because they didn't use their squad wisely, I would not even have taken Hernandez to Townsville, his form has been ordinary and a big trip like that didn't help against Fury or the next week against the Jets, guys like Ward should of been kept in the squad for situations like this where there are 3 games in a week, where squad players who are fit and hungry to impress can come into the team. Teams need to make at least 3 changes for midweek games to freshen the team up, I would think it would be better to go into a game with 3 really fit squad players eager to impress and 8 starting eleven players , than to have 11 players who just want to get the 3rd game over with.