A little over 12 months ago, the Perth Glory had just begun a downward spiral through the 2010/2011 A-League season that would ultimately lead to the sacking of Dave Mitchell.
Fast forward to the present day and it’s almost like we’re seeing history repeat itself, with the only change being a different figurehead bumbling his way through it all.
Mitchell was sacked – or ‘re-assigned’ depending on which view you want to take – in early October last year, just after a loss in Week 10 to Brisbane.
Ian Ferguson was his successor, and despite results only dipping further into the abyss after he took the reins, it was hard to criticise him too much due to the fact he was inheriting a squad that wasn’t his and a situation that was extremely hard to rectify. It didn’t stop me doing it personally, but that’s beside the point.
Over the winter, Ferguson cast his net high and wide to sign quality players across each line of the field, with the likes of Danny Vukovic, Bas van den Brink, Liam Miller, Travis Dodd and Shane Smeltz all signing with the Glory. Adding those players to existing talent such as Chris Coyne and Scott Neville meant that the nucleus of a solid team had formed.
Despite my doubts over their season (which you can find here in my season preview), the early results for Perth were promising; three wins from as many games to start the season had the Glory looking down on the majority of the league. However the positive results masked some bigger flaws that were close to being exposed.
Early in a season – especially in a case like this where it was so easy to have significant rust in the initial weeks – teams can get away with ‘out-talenting’ others. Despite that phrase being completely made up on the spot it’s a fair description of what Perth carried out in their first three wins.
In Week 1 they played an Adelaide side struggling to remember the names of their teammates. The following weekend saw a Heart side that decided the aim of the game is to pass it to Shane Smeltz, while their third win came against a Wellington side that could consider themselves extremely unlucky to not come away from the longest trip in domestic football without at least a point after dominating large periods.
The flaws in their extremely limited game plan weren’t quite exposed in those wins regardless of the performances not being regarded as the greatest going around. However, it’s been in these last three losses that everything has begun to crumble around the Glory.
While it’s overly simplistic to nail everything down to one specific problem, the fact of the matter is that the majority of Perth’s concerns spring from the centre of midfield. It’s also no coincidence the losses commenced once Adam Hughes returned to the side, meaning that Liam Miller was mystifyingly shunted out wide to a wing.
This isn’t meant to be a stinging criticism of either Hughes or Jacob Burns, the duo that have formed the centre of Perth’s midfield for the past three weeks. It’s just a simple fact that with Hughes and Burns at the helm of those positions, there is next to no attacking impetus because they don’t possess those qualities in their game. From there it has a flow on effect to the rest of the game.
Both Hughes and Burns have often resorted to long balls up towards the strike force of Smeltz and Mehmet; but with their limited quality even that doesn’t end up a successful strategy.
Now with that in place, effective wide play has been basically eliminated, meaning not only is the play very limited when Perth are in possession, there is the added problem of retaining enough of the ball to threaten the quality sides.
All the while, Liam Miller is sitting out wide on the right wing, as lonely as the face from the Forever Alone comic. His creativity and ability to control a game single-handedly can’t be wasted out on a wing waiting for rare touches from the boots of the central midfielders; it’s borderline criminal that it has been wasted these past three weeks.
Yet in the second half against Sydney it all seemed so clear that once he does take it upon himself to drift further towards the middle, Perth look a different side.
So it’s clear on exposed form so far that Miller centrally is critical to Perth’s fortunes. The question is, what’s a realistic solution to the problem of getting him there while still appeasing Ferguson’s overly defensive tendencies?
The simple resolution – a 3-5-2 (or 5-3-2, depending on how you look at it). The three at the back are Coyne, van den Brink and Josh Mitchell; the benefit of this being that Mitchell is no longer stuck out of position at left back vulnerable to attack from the pace of opposition midfielders out wide. Depending on the state of the game the wingers can drop back to become wing-backs (let’s be honest, we all know what they’d be all the time).
This allows Ferguson to keep both Burns and Hughes in front of the central defenders and also means Miller can move into the truest of true central midfielders in position. In theory he’d have wingers on either side of him; those two options adding to the strikers up ahead in advanced positions.
Is it a perfect situation? Of course not; yet it’s the best available option that doubles as realistic enough to see under an Ian Ferguson-led team sometime in the near future. Because let’s finish on this note – if formations and players in the same positions remain the same (or very similar) as the last three weeks, Perth will be looking for their third coach in a span of less than 24 months.
A team with the talent and history of the Glory doesn’t deserve to be led in such a way.
Twitter: @rickm18
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