Roar Rookie
Joined March 2017
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Sport is life. All the rest is mere details. Freelance soccer writer and professional soccer gambler.
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Socceroos coach Graham Arnold struggled against France. Playing a back four rather than a back five and leaving Nathaniel Atkinson and Aziz Behich to…
Following the announcement from Qatari officials regarding the ban on alcohol sales in and around World Cup stadiums, I’m going to have to pour…
Few things are sweeter in the A-Liga season than a Friday night OG Derby at Coopers Stadium. I love this fixture. Roll home from…
Most of the working world spends the week counting down the days to Friday. We suffer through Mondayitis and Hump Day all for the…
On a weekend where City, Liverpool and Chelsea all avoided potential slip-ups and Manchester United exploded back in to form, Spurs couldn’t afford a…
bookies and sharps will generally have better knowledge and analysis than a journalist or commentator.
one quick glance across the coverage of the league reveals surface-level analysis at best.
Melbourne City are nowhere near as good as the experts think
‘any team can lose’ is redundant.
60% of the league has a negative goal differential. city have a goal differential of +22, more than double the next best. they lead by a substantial margin in basically every advanced metric.
they are miles above the rest. on odd occasion, even the best teams lose.
Melbourne City are nowhere near as good as the experts think
i love this column, because it illuminates exactly how the average joe is thinking about these games.
nobody sharp is looking at any of these games as outlined above.
The Roar's A-League Men tips and predictions: Round 17
mate we’re on the same side of the coin here.
my push for creative thinking doesn’t include making it more ‘australian’, just that we don’t need to be beholden to a euro model, or an MLS model, or any model in totality.
we could easily implement the best bits in to a hybrid style competition model, that would make us unique, but we refuse to do it.
The A-League is back in red-hot form - so where are the crowds?
yeah fair points Marco, but the fact is that the reality of the market is that australian soccer needs casual fans to survive.
we go around and around on all these points, but we’re not the number one sport in this country. we’re competing for fourth or fifth, with the rise of the NBL (on the back of NBA culture becoming a global phenomenon).
since inception, the a-liga did nothing to disrupt the market in any creative way. now the overwhelming suggestion to fix it is…another non-creative, non-disruptive idea of promotion and relegation featuring legacy NSL clubs.
it just makes me chuckle.
The A-League is back in red-hot form - so where are the crowds?
there’s gonna be mergers (it’s the only way), which makes you wonder how the cultural groups that support these clubs will react
West vs rest: Sydney Derby is the most captivating and passionate fixture in the A-League
it’s a catch 22. decision making by APL has been poor, and has lacked any creativity at all.
on the other hand, majority of fans and #sokkahtwitter are clueless beyond belief, and seem to live in a space completely liberated from reality.
it’s a tough one
The A-League is back in red-hot form - so where are the crowds?
crowds are small, APL’s fault, games should be in winter, promotion & relegation, boutique stadiums built by government funding…
when none of this works, where do we go from there?
The A-League is back in red-hot form - so where are the crowds?
my comments around the curriculum don’t stem from where it originated or who implemented it.
it’s simply been the widespread indoctrination of australian football in to a rigid Positionalist 4-3-3 or 4-2-3-1 (essentially 4-3-3) as the only ‘right way’ to play the game that attracts my ire.
Brisbane Roar roll the dice in the transfer window
there’s 5 there that wouldn’t be in my XI, but the options behind them on this roster aren’t great
Brisbane Roar roll the dice in the transfer window
needs scepovic and kruse to work out, as frankly nobody else on the roster scores goals. i’ve seen nothing out of majok other than chasing after the ball. in that sense, he seems to be a direct replacement for dehmie.
with chapman gone, i would expect trewin to move back in to the back 3 with aldred and neville, and gomulka playing as the screen. this is a massive improvement, as it adds ball progression in both lines (trewin being an excellent passer with more space at the back, gomulka a more natural midfielder).
i have to laugh when any coach in australia gets questioned tactically when they don’t play a 4-3-3 or 4-2-3-1. national curriculum has really done a number on the tactical knowledge of those in this country.
Brisbane Roar roll the dice in the transfer window
the idea that fans of clubs like brisbane roar are gonna show up in abundance for a chance at snagging an ACL qualification spot is patently hilarious.
the problem we have is that we either want to follow a puritan euro model, or a model based on australian sporting traditions.
there’s virtually no creative thinking by anybody running any level of the sport in this country, which is why it will continually tread water.
Promotion and relegation needs to pave the way for the finals series to be scrapped
road teams struggle in general in the a-liga. one of the highest home win percentages in the world for multiple seasons now.
roar and perth play well against teams that lean on a Positional style of play, shifting the ball from side to side. when roar and perth can keep things in front of them and set up in a block, they’re good.
mariners under mont have moved to a more fluid style, predicated upon heavy rotations and players instinctively relating to one another. it looks different to what the majority of the league plays and cummings + nkololo + silvera have more than enough to confound and score 2 goals. against roar and perth, 2 goals is enough to secure a win, with their offensive woes.
Who needs promotion-relegation when every A-League team can still play finals?
don’t bring your logic around here mate. it’s not welcome
Who needs promotion-relegation when every A-League team can still play finals?
they’ll beat brisbane and perth
Who needs promotion-relegation when every A-League team can still play finals?
people often confuse mediocrity with parity
Who needs promotion-relegation when every A-League team can still play finals?
i didn’t mean to cause offence, simply reading between the lines.
most a-liga articles re: grand final decision have completely ignored the financial realities of the league to paint it in a negative light. nothing about the reporting has been balanced in the slightest.
any articles providing a glowing endorsement of the NSD similarly ignore reality, failing to balance any positives with even basic contemplation of how it works in reality. it’s simply being used as an arm to assert that the legacy NSL clubs were unjustly ‘shut out’ of the top division.
Could a National Second Division be more popular than the A-League?
whilst it’s a little tin-foil hat, it’s quite clear that some writers on this site along with various NPL writers and a prominent SMH writer have a vested interest in having the legacy NSL clubs become the top tier of competition again.
Could a National Second Division be more popular than the A-League?
don’t bring logic in to this mate. it’s not welcome here
Could a National Second Division be more popular than the A-League?
strikers need to make it out of NPL2 first
Could a National Second Division be more popular than the A-League?
mike has an agenda he’s trying desperately to sell. that much has been clear for a while now
Could a National Second Division be more popular than the A-League?
can a lot of goals in one round of the competition paper over the cracks*
fixed it
Can the quality of the football paper over the A-League's cracks?
i think at that point, we’d have to accept having a league with no tv deal, and games just on youtube 😂
An A-League Big Blue where the losing coach probably gets sacked
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
Melbourne City are nowhere near as good as the experts think