I think Kossie summed it up with his comments that if you gonna play with back 3 plus 2 WB's and they sit back far to often in a back 5 you gonna limit your options when you try to go forward cause there's no width. 

I thin against Wellington we gotta go 442 or a 433 of some configuration. 

Agreed that IMO jos isn't a 6 but with O'Neil away that where his job had been. Inman is looking like a 10 to me now. 

With Inman looking like a 10 I think JOS should be pushed out to give width. Kinda like the position Broich played??

Maybe that wasn't word for word from Kossie but it was to that effect

I didn't hear what Kossie said because I was at the game and my comments come from what I saw there, but it sounds like Kossie agrees with me ;)

I have trouble taking anything Kossie says seriously - he’s got such an anti Roar bent it’s not true and it clouds his judgement 

There is a reason you’d play a back three and then have your two wide Mids sit back - it’s called MacLaren and two fast wingers. 

Yep I'm not normally a fan of Kossie I've got to say, I guess I just don't like a back 3, as you probably guessed by now, 

but as you say the game plan, if that was the game plain, almost got us a win, but happy with a point from a team sitting second. 

Hiwever my question is if you gonna play a 3, ffs get 3 decent cb's, not just Aldred and see who else fits? And then I'm all for it. 

I don't want to keep seeing that tactic become a pattern of our play. But to be honest I don't think it will. 

Im a big fan of width and getting in behind, turn the back line, make them face their own goal, I don't see enough of it in the team. 

Good thing I'm liking tho is we are starting to see Inman run at players and take them on. We have largely been lacking that this year. 

This is where players like Btoich, Henrique, Bautheac and others have been great for Roar over the years. 

But im hearing ya. 

Rojas mite fit that bill but doubt we'll get him. 

I gotta say also our humid  climate doesn't help attract players I'm starting to think. 

The whole things not quite working for RF, he’s maybe realising that a sound plan on paper doesn’t survive R1. 

This might be OK from a defensive point of view, and maybe Fowler thought it was necessary to have so many defenders because of the lack of defensive quality Roar have, but it leaves little scope to attack with any width (and even sometimes little scope to attack with any more than 3 players, as we effectively had 7 players in defensive positions yesterday, with the back 5 and the 2 defensive mids playing quite deep). Playing against a team with a central striker and 2 wingers, even if they have pace, I'd rather see us play with a back 4, probably in a 4231, which would allow us to have wider players in attacking positions while still having enough defensive cover. A back 4 should be able to cope with 3 attackers stretched across the pitch.

I wouldn’t blame the lack of attacking options or width on the formation. 3-5-2 is one of the most attacking options you can have but the width does not come from those wide Mids/wing backs, they don’t overlap like they used to in the 1970’s, the dusty comes from movement of the central three Mids interchanging with the two forwards. 

Team of the week:

Macauley Gillesphey (Brisbane Roar)

On three occasions, the left-sided centre back made crucial, last-ditch saving tackles to deny Jamie Maclaren a clear sight of goal. Were it not for Gillesphey, the Melbourne City hitman could have had a hatful.

It’s those kind of challenges that often go unnoticed as Gillesphey barely put a foot wrong while City dominated possession and territory at Suncorp Stadium.

I did not miss his great work getting in and shutting down attacks - my problem is the times that he doesn't do that.

I could not tell you how many times, but it was enough to notice when he got beaten and either did not chase or just jogged back. He is the last line of defence - he needs to run his guts out to at least add pressure when he gets beaten.

When teams walk through our defence and score those tap ins, Gillesphey and Bowles are most often the two players in the vicinity and neither of them has done a thing to track the runner or seemingly recognise there is even a danger. I don't know enough to say it is Gillesphey's fault - but it has to be one of them as either could have stopped those goals.
It is not enough to have a CB who is great most of the time or even a lot of the time - we need someone who rarely makes a mistake and always gets in when he is needed.

I sit pretty close to the pitch but on the opposite side to Neville - so I might miss some of his involvement or lack thereof.

Hingert did a fantastic job of shutting Noone down on the left - to the extent that Noone had to run into the middle to cause damage. I don't care that Hingert then might have gone missing in attack - he was doing his job and doing it well.

Neville runs the wing well and he can control a ball coming in (from Gillesphey especially) on the run.  He has a great work rate and is one of the players in the back half of the field who will do everything he can to get back and put pressure on the opposition. Going forward he both looks for a forward pass and offers an option. To my eyes when he went off we became more vulnerable and at the same time less effective going forward on the right. Neville is one of our players I particularly like to watch in games - maybe I don't see bad things that you see, but the good things I see stand out for me and as a team we are less effective when he goes off.

I am happy with Aldred at the back - for much the same reason as Waz was talking about Gillesphey. He shuts down a lot of dangerous situations. Even when he has been drawn out of place to shut someone down is still looking to defend and conscious of threats to our goal. I also would like to see a good CB to pair with him and maybe he can then trust his defensive team more and stay where he should be rather than going to problems he sees elsewhere.

Just as a footnote - we scored enough goals to win that game, so I am not worried about needing more players in our front half (while acknowledging that it was still missing a lot in the first half and fell away badly in the second half).

Our problem is the defensive side - tighten that up and we win because we actually put the ball in the net twice and both City's goals were stoppable if we marked players closer/better anywhere near our box.

I disagree with this although I see where you’re going. 

The problem with Neville is that he is no better than hingert. I was very harsh on him early in the season but have warmed to him since he moved to right back (instead of right center back) it has shown that the early season troubles we had was more mcging then Neville's fault. Saying that though Neville is best at RB and I think recent genres have shown that hingert is better suited in that position. That would usually be great, we have 2 reasonable quality players vying for the one spot, the problem being that they are both starting meaning one of being played out of position, which means or squad is unbalanced. 

Really one of Neville and hingert should be a bench player. Mcging should be a depth player only rarely making the bench. Bowles should be a bench player, same with pepper. If you are assessing the squad there are 4 players that have made the majority of starts this season that should not have and that's a problem.

My point was I don’t see how you could commend Neville for his game on Saturday when he came off after 25 minutes.

Every time they came down the right as we looked so vulnerable. The Neville/Bowles and then McGing/Bowles right side of defense is not good. Unless we can bring in a better CB, I think I would prefer Neville moved back to CB, Hingert moved to RWB and JCP put back in on the left. 
My observations regarding Amadi-Holloway from being at the game were that he often had no one in support to lay the ball off to. 

That was the first "humid" game this season...also we had no problem attracting ..and keeping Broich, Berisha and others back when it was humid all the way .

agree with that but I also blame our midfield . We do not have anyone dominating defence in midfield nor do we have anyone dominating attack in midfield  .JOS is not up to it .His attack is just Ok and his defence is non existent.Waste of a visa spot for me .
I thought Mauk was invisible when he came on .
Someone said earlier that we have too many players below A-League starting level .I agree .

Yup, I’m with you in the midfield. 

I understood that - and I am making the point that he played well for that short period and we suffered when he went off.

We were lively down the right with him there and more solid in defence. Given how many supporters do not see the same value in him that I do I wanted to acknowledge when he does do well and how much poorer we were when he went off (even after only 25 minutes).

I watched Mauk when he came on - and he was one player in midfield who was making space and offering himself between the lines - but they would not pass to him. Back and round, back and round. When a pass finally went towards him it was off and went to a City player (from Bowles I think).

Sydney (and others) will pass a ball into the middle then back to the backline just to create movement in the opposition defence and every now and again choosing to turn and bring it through the centre. All too often we will only pass into the middle if the player is completely unmarked and has room to turn and run. Maybe we have no trust in our midfield not to turn the ball over but Mauk did try and be visible.

I agree with all of this - except it is a shame to lose Neville going forward as that and chasing back are a big part of his game and we tend to lack that in our team collectively. Sirhcdobo is right in saying Hingert and Neville should be competitors for the one spot - but the players we are carrying do not allow us that luxury. I would go so far as to say that where other teams have fallback players for every position in their squad, with our brittle defence we need a fallback player on the field for some of our defenders - Bowles and Gillesphey (sorry Waz) particularly.

Holloway was particularly isolated this game. There was so little movement off the ball and he was by himself when he could have done something constructive. I also thought we waited until an opportunity was clear before running rather than anticipating the opportunity and be moving already. Quite a few attacks went to nothing because our front line were on the back foot waiting to see what came up.

It's pretty hard to bag the offensive players when there is barely any meaningful ball to them.
As Kossie said,When there are five players at the back there are limited options to play out.So many times the Roar deep defence couldnt control the ball because they literally had noone to send the ball to.
All this is a coach issue.
See WP  and SFC for how they get the ball forward.

the way i see it is we are 3 players away from a very good team, unfortunately they are 3 right in the spine, where we currently have 3 players that are depth/bench players starting and playing regularly. these are CB in bowles, DM in pepper/oniel, and striker in ROD/AAH. we dont have a DM that can dominate the midfield and stop attacks by himself, this means that we have had to dedicate extra midfield players to defensive positions (JOS, Mauk, Inman) just to cover, and given these players defensive frailties it has caused trouble for our CB (particularly gillesphie who i think would be a great CB if he was not exposed by the midfield so often). it also stops our wide defenders getting forward as quickly as the DM isnt covering them when they do get forward. 

a stronger DM who can hold the middle by himself strengthens our CB's and allows our wide backs to get forward.

even with a strong DM our right CB is still weak and gets exposed. this stops our right back from getting forward (because he is constantly having to chase back to cover the right CB) if you improve the CB then you have more options getting forward as the wide defender can get forward more. 

finally our striker is weak, whether it is AAH or ROD, they are not scoring enough we have one of the highest chances created/balls in the box of any a-league team yet we have a dismal conversion rate. so even if we do sure up the defence and midfield we would still be under-performing up front. this needs to be addressed unfortunately we are carrying too much dead weight.

3 players and i think we could have a title winning team

----------------------------young-------------------------------
------------CB?----------Aldred---------GIllesphie---------
Hingert/Neville------------------------------------------JCP
---------------------------DM------------------------------------
-------------JOS-------------------------------------------------
---------------------------------------------Inman--------------
----------Mirza/Rod-aah-------------St----------------------

As I said earlier, watching at the game I thought Neville was poor before he went off.
I just watched the game again up to the point he was subbed, and that hasn't changed my mind. Twice in the first 5 minutes he allowed Wales to get in front of him around the six yard box, the first one Wales got the shot in which was saved by Young, the second Wales got to the ball first but had a poor touch and shot wide. Both could easily have been goals. Then Wales beat Neville easily near the byeline to set up a dangerous attack. In attack, three times Neville gave the ball away with poor passes when under no pressure. He had no positive contributions to the attack.
So I can't agree with you that Neville played well for the short period he was on.
I do agree that we were poor after he went off and McGing came on, but we were also poor while Neville was on.

the "others"  were not really fought for. I think Brisbane does struggle attracting the most wanted players, as in if they are up against a Sydney or Melbourne. Brisbane has been successful in the past in picking out experienced foreigners who have played at a high level with little hype, something I feel would turn Brisbane's fortunes around if they were able to do this season. Brisbane should be able to attract more in the future with how much work has been done in the city. Even as a Melbournian I have to say Brisbane (especially that 10km radius of the CBD) is the best and arguably most aesthetically pleasing cities in Australia. 

Vladimir Weiss, Marco Fabian, Victor Rodriguez, Marcelo Cirino all off contract right now. Surely can cut one or two Visa players and bring in improvements? Outside of Weiss I doubt the others would require crazy salaries. 

This team is a side hovering around a finals place until seasons end. Waz was right in the past about teams from 4-10 being pretty similar. Brisbane needs some more game winners, Inman has been clutch the past few weeks which is good to see. 

Everyone here can see it, hopefully they will find a way. Is ROD becoming an Australian??

That all sounds rather hideous - and mostly passed by me unnoticed I must say.

I will accept he does not warrant commendation on the strength of that.

From the far side I see his energy and his involvement going forward and I miss a lot of individual players' direct involvement - much like I saw a lot of Hingert's because he was in front of me - whether the ball was there or not.

Thanks for the effort of putting me straight.

And yes Brisbane are 2-3 players from being a good team. As are a few other sides in the competition too, worst thing that can happen is other sides strengthen and Brisbane hope that this side makes a big improvement. 

I also don't think Fowler is a bad manager at this point, he must know that it's the squad he has signed up and I hope he is just trying to steady the shit put points on the ladder until Brisbane can strengthen with new players. There is a picture/game plan that I can see. The cattle is the problem. 

No problem, it's good to have the discussion and I know it is difficult to take in all the game, and we all have favourite players who we like to do well.
I agree with what you are saying about Jack Hingert, I think he has done well since returning from injury, and played well against Noone on Saturday.