The A-League needs to hold on to its best players

You also forgot about Mark Schwartzer and Curtis Good - they may not have played as much as Mile but they're rego'd EPL.

The 2014/15 season will be a disappointment? Smeltz at Sydney battling it out with Archie for @aleague platinum boot status - our Archie just pulled ahead in the final weeks of last season. The season before we lost Marco Rojas - you are mourning WSW's losses, but as a Victory member (a) I totally disagree that some Sheik from UAE buying 80% of Heart is good: they got Chapman, James Brown, Mooy, another youngster - these kids wont all get games. Seeing as they are all about 19 years old it makes me wonder: why would you move to "City" and warm a bench in the cold when you were at least warm in Newcastle? With Mooy arriving (and he wont be the last) that club is going to have the highest rotation going, or the most players left out in the cold. They may be under the salary cap, but they'll be buying facilities, doctors, psyche - all that "elitist" stuff. BUT. None of it matters. Why? 5 words: Archie Kosta Finkler Berisha Milligan (fingers crossed) and that man Pablo Contreras - the improvement in the young Victory backline was astonishing. Without ACL distractions, Melbourne and Adelaide are going to be powerhouses, and if Ernie had stayed I'd include the 'nix in that mix. So: what you mean to say is this: The A-League in 2014/15 will be a disappointment for anyone who gets to waltz round in t-shirts and shorts most days of the year. Victory is coming!!

Towser- Extremely good logic with reasoned back-up.Will someone read it -----and act, only time will tell. jb

Fuss - If nothing else you get full marks for persistence. Lets look forensically at some of the examples you have given. Wilkshire- After playing 112 games for Bristol he did move to Twente in 2006 where he stayed for 2 years playing 59 games before moving to Moscow where he has played 143 games.To compare this player's,experience,314 games in professional leagues with the three you mention, Sarota,Oar and Davidson who between them have clocked up 174 games in Holland ,is a bit more than tongue in cheek.Was Culina at PSV a better player than those 3 ?,I'll leave that for you to assess. Using the same criteria Sterjovski and Chips played at FC Basle in the Swiss league. Before joining Basle Sterjovski had played 91 games in France with Lille and went on to play 73 with the Swiss, Chips played 269 games with the Swiss team.The 2 lads you mention Bozanic and Vidosic have run up 45 games between them at Lucern and Sion. I'll finish there for Kallc, played 241 games in Serie A for 4 clubs so experience wise would more than cover Ryan and Langarak,not to mention Schwartzer and Cahill who only played in the lower echelons of the EPL including Chelsea this season.!!!!!! Now to finish,I most certainly am not putting down the team,or squad, of 2014 simply pointing out that the "miracle" worked by master coach Hiddink involved the use of vastly experienced players,whereas the task facing our "novice" international coach is all that more difficult due to the make up of his squad,not because they are bad players,simply the fact that they are relatively inexperienced at that level. Cheers. Still your mate jb

jb I did have a bit of tongue in cheek - I don't want to diminish the quality of Team 2006 - but, I did also want people to forensically examine the actual data. Let's ignore the EPL lads for now & concentrate on the others you've mentioned 1. Culina &Wilkshire in Holland Yes, to Culina. But Wilshire was playing England Division 3 with Bristol City. Team 2014 has: Sarota, Oar & Davidson all playing Eredivisie 2. Sterjovsli and Chipperfield in the Swiss top league . Team 2014 has Bozanic & Vidosic playing in the same Swiss top league. 3. Aliosi in Spain Agree - Team 2014 has no players in Spain 4. Beauchamp moving to Nuremberg just after the World Cup finished. Team 2014 has Langerak at Dortmund and, if not for an horrific knee injury, would have had Kruse, who is at Leverkusen Team 2014 has the GK who was named Belgian GK of the year & James Holland played 6 UEFA Champions League games with Austria Vienna. So, yes, Team 2014 doesn't have the same number of players at EPL clubs, or in SerieA as Team 2006. But, let's not totally dismiss the clubs & leagues where our lads from Team 2014 are playing.

No. They are still recruiting and have recently signed Dino Djulbic and Hersi. I think Smeltz wants to be closer to home, eh? And Arnold suits his style of player better, the good old centre forward.

I think Shinji Ono has helped establish WSW and boosted crowd numbers as well.

You would say that, you work for the AFL Media Department.

Fuss - Not your best debate.Some of those "plodding,mid table teams" you mention are still plodding away in the EPLsome 8 years on, but I think if Everton were to meet Utrecht in a European tie tomorrow I know who I ,and I suspect you,would have our money on.Lets get real,the 2006 squad ,yes Viduka was in it too,were well into their careers and had been playing top football in different countries for a number of years befor the 2006 World Cup.We are talking about Neill,Emerton,Moore,Viduka Cahill and Kewell all playing in the Epl,Culina,&Wilkshire in Holland,Sterjovsli and Chipperfield in the Swiss top league,Aliosi in Spain and Beauchamp moving to Nuremberg just after the World Cup finished.Now you have cared to point out that in your opinion none of the EPL teams were of high standard. Culina and Wilkshire were playing with PSV &Twente in the Dutch leagues and I suppose we could compare Beauchamp with the injured Kruse who has not been included as a result of injury.You care to mention Triosi as a Serie A player a bit weak when you consider he has been playing in Oz all season. Your summation of the difference in the 2 squads is actually a bit below your intelligence and I suspect has been done with your tongue firmly stuck in your cheek. Your mate jb

Exactly. Players like ADP can be really useful to bring people in. But in that situation you want to try and create a situation where people come for ADP but they stay for Sydney FC. Same with any other Marquee and their A-League club. It's especially good as a way of trying to reach out to the many people in Australia who a mad football fans but never got into the A-League. The right Marquee can be a carrot to get such people along to A-League games. And while some will just come to a few games to see that player, others will get really into it and become fans of the A-League club itself. The importance then isn't keeping this same player, but making sure that as the player turnover happens you keep trying to find players at least as good, if not better, to keep improving the overall performance of the club. Bring in the next hero. I doubt you'll find any WSW fans saying, "Now that Ono has left, I'm never going back to a Wanderers game"!

"The A-League needs to hold on to its best players" Just who are the best players? Excellent thought in theory ,but as others have pointed player movement will continue for dozen's of reasons. World football is a merrygoround, footballers get on and off it all the time. What we need to be doing more of is retaining players like Broich and Berisha,who didn't enter the A-league as international marquees ,but ended up that way & indeed are still within our league. In other words there are players around the world good enough to be International marquees that significantly add to team play. We should if were street smart already be able to pinpoint the Broich/Berisha player the secondary marquee before recruiting them for an A-League club and indeed treat them as a secondary marquee to the Bums on seats primary ADP type marquee. Currently there's 5 foreign players allowed, soon to be reduced to 4,if it is then let's allow the clubs to hire as many Broich,Berisha,Carrusca type players as they can afford ,then we wont have a Berisha type scenario,Victory would already have hired an equivalent secondary marquee ,because it could and Roar would have hung on to him. Scrap the Aussie marquee,scrap the youth marquee and bring in the two tier primary and secondary marquee rule with no limit on either category. Of course most clubs couldn't afford 2 del Piero's but a club might like the idea of 3 or 4 Broiches at one third the salary. The whole salary cap is too inflexible needs some drastic rethinking if we want to keep improving the standard of football, in the League.

Ono and Hersi both did well in that ACL quarter final match, but both had seasons where they weren't up to the standards of the previous season, certainly not the consistency of the previous season anyway. They are both at the age where they are starting on the downward trend of their careers. ADP is well and truly there, and while he showed plenty of class, he sprinted as fast as most of the other players jogged and missed plenty of games with injury, and that's unlikely to get better next year. Signing a big player of that sort of age is only ever going to be a short-term thing. I don't think losing those players is in any way a bad thing. They were short-term signings. Trying to hold onto an ageing player too long would be the big mistake. At the other end of the spectrum, I think for the sake of both the A-League and Australian football, the young Australian players need to keep being produced, play a couple of years in the A-League, sign for a good overseas club and then the A-League clubs have the next batch continually coming through to replace them. I don't see any real issues with loss of players. The Salary cap is required to keep the A-League viable. The clubs don't have the money of some other Asian clubs, yet WSW still managed to beat the Japanese champions. So it's clearly not all about money.

Hersi might've been able to give us another solid season, at least half. But he wanted good money and 2yrs. I wouldn't have signed him either. How he goes for Perth in season 15/16 will be very telling.

JB Yes I should've mentioned Polenz he played exceptionally well although Hersi I feel missed some howlers the other night.

Just off topic Smeltz has left the Perth Glory appearing disillusioned is there trouble brewing in the West ?..

You also forgot to add in the Asian Champions League (Melbourne Victory's group match against Evergrande had a TV viewership of something like 6 million) We shouldn't discount this, I know you were only looking at HAL but if RL can include SOO, I think it is remiss of us to ignore ACL

Agree 100%, I think the issue is most non-football Australians don't quiet understand the 'International Market' Cricket doesn't really have it, Rugby is just starting to, RL has 2 English men and 1 guy from PNG every so often as for AFL well it would be just rude to laugh at them. We continually produce young players, that if good enough move on to teams o/s, if their isn't quality available domestically, then we can go os and look to fill it that way. I can't see how it is diluted or unsustainable at all.

asanchez - Again I admire your debating style,you bring up valid points to back your opinions but there are 2 things to consider that you did not touch upon,The success Frank Arok had with his team of home grown & home performing talent over a period of 7 or so years.Sure they didn't get to the WC to face the final & biggest test but some of the results they did achieve against top teams,both international & club leaves the mind wondering,"How did he manage"? He had had as a guide the magnificent achievements of Rasic's "74 Socceroos but the thing that amuses me is the tactics Arok introduced in 1983 for the 3 match tournament against England.He played with 3 centre-backs,Ratcliffe O'Connor, & Yankos, with Davidson and Jennings working the wing back roles. He had 2 out of 3 ball playing midfielders who could play a bit in Katholos, O' Connor & Watson and 1 out of 2 workers in Cant & Murphy supplying the muscle. Up front two recognised goal scorers Kosmina & Mitchell. Imagine 3-5-2 being played by a Socceroo team 30 years ago !!!!!!. By the way 2 games were drawn 0-0 and 1-1 ,& 1 lost 0-1.Now the England team did contain some youngsters ,no doubt, but John Barnes,Trevor Francis,Paul Walsh & Mark Wright,were youngsters who went on to make big names in the game.while the rest were all established top division players given a chance to excel. It was to be 6 years before Arok began to use players based overseas,mainly Mitchell Farina & Krncevic. You also mention Kewell leaving Oz at 15 & I assume you think that was important to his development' It is now almost 40 years since I attended my first coaching course in Australia where it was stressed to us that the most important development age for youngsters were the years 7 to 11 where they were to be taught & practice skills.It was also suggested at that course that our junior football needed to be changed radically to include small sided games,smaller exercise groups, smaller grounds on where the kids should play, (3 pitches across the normal field with smaller goals at which to aim.) Yes. I repeat,that was in 1975. I am not a cynic, I am ever so hopeful success will come ,but at that level there is much to be done. Cheers jb

I see where you're coming from. My understanding of A-League isn't extensive enough to say whether teams who have lost players have necessarily struggled the season after. CCM lost basically their entire team plus coach last season but still managed to make the semis, be competitive in the ACL and qualify for it again. Crowds were pretty consistent as well. In WSW's case I don't think any players have been lost because overseas clubs have taken them away, in half the cases they've been let go off because the club is looking at the long term and hopefully at some youth.