I think WU have had some comments about the age of their squad, but offsetting that is that they have picked up quality older players (Kone, Diamanti especially). Whereas Roar have picked up players with significantly less quality and pedigree, and evidence so far suggests those lower quality and pedigree players are, in general, far from spectacular.

Also Halls  needs time on the pitch a talent who did well last season . In saying this the last two A-League season , have been poor from a general play position to attendances. 15/16 was the best personally for myself. Five strong teams. Brisbane, Victory, Melb-City WSW, Adelaide.
My belief this season will be better, the influx of overseas managers and players will make it a pleasure to watch. 

Come on mate, you are turning into decentric with this crap. The fundamental objective of every coaching system in the world is to win games. Anyone who pretends otherwise is deluding themselves.

I said after the Perth game Brisbane are garbage and some of you clowns were saying I was a “salty” Perth fan. Brisbane ARE trash, only got a point against Glory due to Glory’s lack of fitness and only lost 1-0 to Victory because they struggled in the humid conditions, as evident by Brisbane dominating territory in the 2nd half, just like they did against Glory.  Zero idea how to breakdown a team except to “hoof” it to that Holloway chap. Zero creativity and  Terrible signings by Robbie. These lower league poms are an embarrassment to the league and there are probably better players in the NPL. 

Unnecessarily inflammatory language but hard to disagree 

It wasn’t humid on Friday evening in Brisbane , also very hard to break down a team that parks the bus , just ask SYD FC fans

Still sound salty to be honest, coming to the Roar dedicated part of the forum to cry again, most unsalty people would keep it to the match thread. 
You can make all the excuses you want but it doesn't doesn't change the fact that the premiership winning team couldn't beat the so called trash team as you said at home.

We have a six month long off-season.  Why are Perth's players unfit?

Great to see this kind of discussion on the site.

As per Tony Popovic, several injuries in pre season.

I wasn’t making excuses for the result, just facts, was just pointing out it was evident the Brisbane are going to really struggle this season. To be fair I didn’t think that they would have been that bad at home, even if it was against victory. I think the cup win against Sydney has given fans false hope, class always prevails and unfortunately Brisbane is loaded with “British hacks” which is a shame for their fans and also the league. 

Brisbane need a “Matty McKay”esque ball playing midfielder. Calletti even.

As an exercise its interesting  to look at each team and compare them based on the number of new players they have.History suggests the more new players the harder it is to gel as a team and finish near the top.Then you have the exceptions like WSW.

In order of least to most new ,i think it looks like this.

SFC,
PG,
AU,
MC,
NJ,
WSW
MC,
MV,
CCM,
WP,BR,WU.
You can move teams up and down the list based on quality of new players,depth,the coach,age,etc and there will always be a surprise team.
The teams above their new recruits positon are WSW and WU.Both have absolute quality in recruits.
Teams below their new recruits postion are AU,NJ and PG.Although a win for PG today will put them near the top.
WP,CCM ,BR and MV are where you would expect long term.

Time will tell how close to this list the final positions end up. 

Mate - it's great that you can read my mind and tell me what I am really thinking. But you are wrong. It is not BS that I think those things. It is not BS that fans don't have to see a winning team to be supporters. It is not BS that watching quality football is worth it even when your team loses.

I have said it before and I'll say it again. I was a Canberra Cosmos season member for years and loved it. We went to cheer our team on and any goal was a win, let alone winning a game.

You sound like someone who would ditch their team when they are playing poorly, or call for heads to roll if you lost several. I am saying that fans don't have to see their team win to be happy watching their team play.

There is only 1 winner in a season - so you would rate all other teams losers? Win or you are nothing? Not how sport works,and not how I think.

If we had relegation I would still rather watch my team play well and lose than play crap every week to survive. I also think that having a team play attractive, skilful football will, on balance, mean that they would not be relegated - regardless of whether they win the comp or not.

But that does not justify the rest of the team being unfit - surely the whole squad trained and only the replacement players would be unfit...?

I guess he means game changing players unfit disrupt the flow of attack as they tire - but again, surely he has fit subs. If Castro did not last a whole game and Perth were not ahead when he was subbed, it did not mean Perth would automatically lose.

I do not understand how a team can all be unfit because of some players getting injured in pre-season.

Hmmm - maybe they got hurt because they were training too hard and Poppa backed everyone off for safety. Like when we had constant injury concerns due to training ground and backroom issues.

The line ups in the pre season games were very odd, which had to be due to the injuries. As it is an ageing squad, maybe Poppa is trying to ease the team into the season with the ACL later in the season. When you look at the Two Brisbane games, it is clear to see they are extremely fit, (which they should be) and have controlled the games in the 2nd halves. 

I can never tell whether you’re just in it “for the sport”, sport being arguing for the sake of it, or whether you’ve just misunderstood?

Looking at a couple of your comments there I suspect it’s the sport, but i’ll play along for a bit ... 

What i described, that you may have misunderstood, where they edit the goals out of games and ask coaches to assess the game based on what they see is a very common training tool. It’s used in UEFA training and I’d be surprised if it wasn’t used in AFC licensing as well. If you challenge that you’re just challenging a fact - it’s just what they do amongst many things.  

The reason they do that is go reinforce the link between performance and result and to detach the myth that a result must have come because of the performance - ie you can win a game but not play the best. 

If you think this technique is used by A League coaches then you’ve misunderstood. That would be stupid - first of all they already know the result of the game they’re analysing (😂) and by the time you’ve got your Pro licence this type of thinking is already embedded. 

A good team to use this thinking on right now is WSW - they’re top of the table with 3 wins from 3 and 9 points; but plenty of people think they could have lost to CCM and to SFC which would have been just 3 points. 

So how good are WSW - are they a three point side or a 9 point side?? The answer lies not in the results but in the performances which the various HAL clubs will be pulling apart using their video analysis teams. 

At the end of your statement you say “The fundamental objective of every coaching system in the world is to win games”. 

At a HAL level (or any first team level) that is correct but at many coaching levels it’s just wrong. Plane and simple wrong. 

Youth coaching is about player development not winning games. The measure of an A League NYL/NPL sides coaching team is not how many games they win last season or this season, but how many players they develop that are good enough for the first team. 

Its only normally the first team coaches that has the focus on winning, all the other coaching teams are in development mode - winning is nice but it’s secondary to what they’re trying to achieve. 

Hope that clarifies. 

Cutting out all the fluff, considering we are talking about first team football (specifically BR’s first team) then it appears you agree with me. Thanks for clarifying.

Ha Ha ... in it for the sport.

The fundamental objective of coaching is to improve and develop players. 

That has been the focus to any coaching course or conferences I have ever been too with pro coaches doing the lectures and demos. 

Possession over the first two games averaging 61% and chances created of 32 vs opponents 18 are stats that say you should be winning games, not drawing and losing. 

Two changes I’d make would be O’Tools out to improve the defence (I’m not sure who to play there though?) and DWH to start alongside ROD, with Holloway on after an hour. 

Other than that they just need to fix to fix the slow starts and the odd sloppy turnover. 

Why isn't DWH playing? I would think teaching a young centre forward to be a goal machine would be right Robbie's alley.

@Waz,CCM under Okon  had great possession statistics also.But......Roar have to convert possession to goals.Only conceding 1 goal per game is still a 100% improvement on last year.

You got a bit of positivity back again Waz, after last Friday :)
________________________________________________

  Waz - 25 Oct 2019 10:43 PM
Fowler got lucky against Glory and he rolled the dice again and it didn’t work.

Crocombie needs to be dropped - he’s not bad but Young is a better shot stopper and we need that while the back 3 sort themselves out.

Inman also needs to be dropped. He’s no striker and it showed against Glory and again tonight. He can score against NPL opponents but not A League.

O’Donnovon is next to useless (next to Inman .... who is useless) and so badly out of form it’s not true. Put DWH along side him and who knows?

O’Toole needs to be dropped. He’s not useless, because he’s not even that good. Move him on, he’s NPL grade.

And Fowler pulling an Aloisi - clearly things aren’t working and he waits until the 76th minute for the first sub. Has nothing changed in the football department?
________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

What I would say is that stats are far from meaning everything. We all know why the possession stats are high (big contribution from meaningless possession in own half), and I am surprised at the chances created stats. The chances created numbers don't take into account the quality of those chances (how likely a goal is to be scored), and without having the opportunity to look again at all Roar's and the opponents chances over the past two games, my gut feel is that most of Roar's chances were lower quality chances compared to our opponents.
I think there are other issues we have, particularly in defence (lack of speed and technical ability - I think we got lucky against Victory with Nabbout going off and being replaced by Athieu), and in creating chances in the front third where O'Shea is not a consistent playmaker.

That’s an incomplete comparison re Okon. 

The link ink is not possession - goals but rather possession - chances - goals. 

Roars possession has created an astonishing number of chances. WSW have created 40 chances in 3 games so Roar are slightly ahead of them. 

So yes, it’s about finishing them off now. 

I was probably a bit harsh in Crocombie there, 

You should run those thoughts by AJF and thekingmb.  Both seem to be very interested in how the Roar is travelling and have very helpful, insightful and positive suggestions.

He he heee.

So Roar have conceded 2 goals in 2 games , one a skewed clearance from Neville and the other route 1 from victory when we had 1 of our 3 centre backs in our half of the field . 
Our possession and shots have been miles ahead of both Glory and Victory 

not sure how how to fix this but I’m sure some will.