Melbourne City are nowhere near as good as the experts think

I totally agree that Redmayne is a weakness at the moment & Caballo plays too far forward & will be exposed . Plus Donachie is plain useless..might as well give Gurd an extended run. If I was a betting man Id bet on City as Wood does great work but the whole attacking unit without Le Fondre over complicates things. However I do think we’re the only team that can match it with City in midfield. Unfortunately you’re right that it only lasts 60 minutes. I think you’re wrong in that Burgess could last longer but he puts so much effort into the 60 that a fresher player is needed. ps Ive been wondering about Parsons..why wasnt he given a shot earlier? Im not saying he wouldve made a difference necessarily but he had disappeared from sight. I can only guess he had some issue.

I would argue that the reason the Roar have such a good defence is the 6 defenders on the park. Trewin was not playing a holding/controlling No.6 role but more of an old school sweeper who played in front of the back line. A very strong defence yes, but leaving only 4 attacking players on the pitch.

Interesting times JB. Reading about the interim coach Nick Green, director of a private football academy and coached Brisbane City for a little while. Just 9 games to go so I'd guess availability was as important as anything in his selection. From news reports, the favored permanent coach is down to a trio from Adelaide, two from NPL SA or Ross Aloisi. That sounds like a potential disaster to me, and showing a rather narrow focus.

I guess I find this discussion about Melbourne City flying a bit too high for me to get my brain into, especially when my working boots are stuck in clay doing my black economy DIY foundations with expert advice from the Bunnings DIY house foundations guide. To talk about the up coming clash flying that high is pretty outrageous even by my titillation standards. Melbourne City will easily beat Sydney FC this time round and will fuel a punter's postmortem like you have never seen. Honest to God. Redmayne is sliding down in form, like last season when he was only saved by his Socceroo coaching mates and a lucky Wiggles impersonation. Brattan, Burgess, Mak and Retrie at the moment are 60 minute players at best. Girdwood-Reich and Segegic are away with the Young Socceroos. Yazbek is gone, sending selfies from the Norway Vikings. Ryan Grant seems to have lost his mojo of late like last seasons standout Caseres and like Patrick Wood in spite of the different hairstyles. The hype about Joel King's return is ridiculous and given his lack of game time for a long time forcing his return from Denmark, his impact until he hits the weights and gets some kilometres in his legs I suspect will be minimal. Donachie is out I understand because he has crossed the line with yellow cards. Le Fondre is injured and Rodwell, is how you might say, forever not well. Wilkinson is 'ho hum' Wilkinson who does his job waiting to retire and Gurd is now a reliable young sub like Kuchowski, Australia's Robert Lowendowski. Parsons who is an NPL regular has some minutes in the A league and gets a poacher's goal has yet to prove his worth. Hollman is yet to hit the bench this season and the reserve goalies are still styling their hair or playing NPL. Now please, does this add up to an inform team that can beat Melbourne City again? Given Corica and what we know of his mentality with a first eleven last week with an average age that might match some age care nursing homes, he will be flogging the old guys as much as he can first 11 with some injured old guys and NPL boys on the bench.

I'll never accept a Blacktown legend like Critto ending up at Eastern Suburbs FC.

Lionheart - a shrewd observation concerning AP's attacking function and Moon's???? defensive function. Only one thing wrong. The game has moved on since Roar dominated the scenario and the availability of certain players has not kept pace with the change. Fowler's efforts in team building showed a direct leaning towards the emerging "back 3 formation" that had exploded in European football. When he came he brought 2 back four centre-backs, a ball playing midfielder and a forward giving him the preferred "spine" of a team. Only 2 of those 4 remain at Roar and with another "import" in Neville it came as no surprise to the watching public that in fact Roar were still leaning towards a back 3 formation as the path to success. With young Trewin doing a good job screening Aldred and Neville and two former "typical fullbacks", Hingert and Brown, it came as no surprise when the 5 man backline was proving hard to break for opponents. And so, by getting low scoring wins and draws, Roar settled for a midfield league standing. However it is in those "full back positions" that the system's better qualities began to malfunction and it is in this area I feel Moon has been made to suffer. Wingback is an extremely difficult position to fill successfully and to the onlooker, Moon has tried to get a mis-firing engine working without addressing where the problem actually lay. A look at how Adelaide's left wing functions with Goodwin and Kitto getting as close to success as you will see in the A-League. Moon's recent signings of out and out wingers ,Mileusnic,and even Kruse,has failed to note that none of those signing have the necessary defensive skills to be good "wingbacks". So we have seen the almost endless changes in line ups made in an attempt to improve midfield service to whoever is playing up front, the other positions that appear to be changed too often to encourage attitude. We can but hope. Cheers jb.

I suppose you call Jelacic a WAusy?

There’s no debate, he’s a Brisbane boy, that’s where he developed. btw, do you classify as South Australian?

baumjohann? moon? :stoked: :laughing: Mark Crittenden? looking around theres seems to be a few worth given a shot..

unsure why you want to try and debate me (of all people) on this subject (especially when it is to do with SA players) borello played with modbury all the way up until the under 15 side, where he was one of the stars of the team with another player who went on to play with mutiple a league clubs - jacob melling if adelaide had an academy, borello would've been part of it - they didnt and adelaide unfortunately had to wait a couple more years until he could join up with the youth team. his parents got a job offer in qld and moved the family, (otherwise he would've been with the SA NTC) brandon went straight into QAS before the roars academy - the rest they say is history you're making this far more complicated then it needs to be. its like me claiming that ben o halloran is south australian - hes not

Irakunda wasn't born here, looks older than his stated age as well.

Im basically aaginst extremism of any form.. nothing wrong with deeper analysis in its place and I misspoke in thats some like it :stoked: ..but overanalyse things and I feel you lose the joy

i've gone very quiet on news related things due to the complaints the site has recieved from multiple people within the sport over what i have said (not to mention some interesting messages i've had from players in the past few week) alot of my recent postings have been brisbane specific and for good reason (i have a vested interest in that club due my relationship with ex/current coaching staff) its not a coincidence that there is a very strong south australian core within that club now. (seeing what adelaide has achieved given its small budget is bound to be copied, similar to how other sides are looking alot more closer to how the mariners are able to continually churn out talent) *although being a victorian and its debateble if the best part of his career was spent in SA, ante learnt how to manage a football department properly whilst in charge of a trophy laden spell with united - very shrewd signing by brisbane, that didnt generate much interest. *several players of the current brisbane squad are south australian born or started there careers in SA *brisbane going academy less mirrors adelaide united *its very unusual to see a qld player move to SA (you may recall i have spoken about mohammed from brissys youth system before on here and how high i am on the player) - hes signed to my local npl club for this season (ill let you connect the dots in relation to how that happened) *cant say much about the 3x sa coaches linked (as theres an article that moderators have been skimming for 48 hours - which im assuming is for validity in terms of things i've mentioned) if it gets published ill be happy to talk more about coaches (i've worked closely with all 3 of them over the past decade) semi on/off topic, i am stunned that Brisbane are not talking to ben cahn over the permanent role, moving to melbourne to try an establish the knights is a difficult task - dont envy him at all. he would be my #1 for a coach if i was in roar management and wanted to try another NPL level coach who deserves a shot at the big time

I would prefer Borello over Goodwin, Borello is absolutely desperate for WSW , I dont know why, when he played for the Socceroos he didn;t display it, he put in a decent effort for the Roar but nothing like this. Without Borello this season I think they would be towards the bottom. Maybe Rudan has brainwashed him. If only Ridan could do a similiar trick with the players he had last season. For my money Ryan Williams for Perth is up there with the best as well this season, has become a real effort. Zadkovich while I still think he is a dumb coach is you can brainwash players into putting in a big effort thats half the job. Piscopo as well at Newcastle.

i actually really enjoy deeper analysis beyond 'this team is at home and should have too much for the opposition'. mcbreen, harper, simon hill, anybody on paramount really...just put them on mute. they say nothing of interest, ever

Read that, bit of a joke. If it comes to that it would simply be the Roar football manager (Ante), who seems quite capable, showing he has a very limited focus, or is just another parochial SA'n.

Ahh but over analysis destroys the pleasure..this is why noone likes Foster as a commentator. Bookies dont care about the game they care about their profits.

Wait until Pezos, Mori or R.Aloisi is coaching them, a South Australian any way you dice it :laughing:

Your imagination is quite the thing. I doubt Adelaide had heard of him until he played for Roar, and Brisbane did not pounce. He was barely 14, hardly mid-teens. But you know that. Parochialism is at its peak in SA.

I put the defensive play of Moon's Roar on par with Ange's attacking Roar. Unfortunately for Moon, goals scored not goals stopped are the ones that matter. Roar's defensive efforts in recent matches against City, Sydney and Adelaide are excellent examples, those sides stacked with credible attacks but really struggled to score against a disciplined defence. Sitting in the stands at Dolphins late in the match with subs, both teams searching for a goal, we bring on a kid with 3 or 4 games experience replacing another kid, City replace Tilio with Nabbout.