I'll give credit. Defence and the ability of the team to work as a defensive unit has massively improved since JA and should hold them in good stead.

Away to Adelaide - Loss
Home to City - Draw
Away to Phoenix - Loss
Home to Mariners - Maybe a win. 

I am not panicking at all.
As opposed to last season,we have structure and are very hard to score against .
We have had just two away games and one at home.
In away games you first need to not lose . We succeeded in both.
We lost by the odd goal at home to the Victory.
If I had come in to coach this season my idea would have been to stop shipping goals firstly . Then to start scoring secondly .
Fowler has half of that on track so far.

I do think once we get a few goals we will get plenty. 

....as for that journo asking Fowler if he felt under pressure ?...after 3 games ...two away draws and a narrow loss ...seriously ????

If we follow our form,we should draw the away games.It's just about winning our home games.
Against MV we came off the bye,so we can hope against MC  and CCM we will be better.
If we can average one goal conceded,then we will be a chance in every game.Sooner  or later we will win a few,which will build momentum and confidence.
If we start leaking goals people can justifiably start to panic.
In my opinion from what i am seeing so far Fowler has built a team for a long term strategy.Compare this to WU.They appear to have a short term strategy.Hence they have older quality players so they can  get results early.
For Brisbane,we have a younger team,from which to build and improve.We should be competing all season and in summer away teams will really feel the pinch.
WU have an older team that will have to be replaced long term and could struggle as it gets hotter.The MC game gave warning signs as did the MV game.

Jesus - and I get accused of being negative 😂

Fowler/Grant have done a brilliant job with the defense (arguably the goals have come from mistakes made by only one player - and he isn't an import).  The defense has stood up well against some good attacking teams.  With regards to the attack, they still look like they need a little time (or slight personnel/formation changes) to gel.  I know that strikers can't bury every chance, but FFS the chances being created should be enough for a decent striker to put more way they we have.  Hopefully ROD spends a little less time having his eyebrows and facial hair sculptured and some more time at shooting practice. 

Before I get too excited, I just want to wait to see what the real Roar experts have to say. Could someone please let me know when sub007,thekingmb and AJF have posted their insightful and balanced assessments.

Just realistic :laugh: I just don't see what others are seeing, but happy to be proven wrong.

Gotta give credit where it’s due, defensively, very structured and huge improvement on last year. Didn’t see last nights game so can’t comment on the attacking side of things however 0 goals suggest a lot to work on in possession/front third.

Pessimism from any supporter is understandable - the last two years will do that to a man 😬

i dread to think what the pressure will be like on Fowler if we got to 6 games with no wins. Amoy got to 8 (no wins, 3 draws, 5 defeats) and went on to win the double but that’s been the exception not the norm - poor stars typically become costly. 

On to next Sunday and we wait to see if a looming goal drought will be broken. 

There's some pessimism on this forum or rather knockers but from what Im seeing there's much to be optimistic about. 

3 games, 2 goals against Roar. One a skewed clearance that Castro capitilised on and he's one of the best players in the league. 
So that's one goal from approach play in a game Roar should have won. I was there so don't tell me any different. 

This is is a decent improvement already on last year. 
Goals will come. 
When ever I've built a team, I get defence sorted first then Build from there. Maybe thats not what everyone does but its a strategy and maybe that was RF first task. 

Who is more expert out there to say he's wrong. 

Agree with all that. 

The other thing to mention is Roar are creating plenty of chances. On aggregate, in the three games so far, they’ve created almost twice as many chances as their three opponents. 

Its just the goals thats missing. 

Could be 4 losses now, City scoring with out JMac and Mariners looking good against Perth lol

No easy games.If CCM can win in Perth,they can win anywhere.Also WP will improve,now they have a decent striker.
PG showed today that any team off their game can lose.

If it's any comfort, Adelaide never play well against BR at Coopers lol 

This week confirms my view that Brisbane have the weakest starting 11 in the comp. CCM are really coming together under Stajic. The Nix likewise under Talay.

Fowler has screwed the pooch with his visa players. 

Remember Bleibergs first two seasons?  Same problem. It's a season killing problem. 

@charlied

We just went up against the '3 wins from 3 games' competition leaders (who have been playing some great football) on their home turf; held them scoreless and looked the more threatening of the two sides.

And that confirms for you that we have the weakest starting 11 in the comp?

I would simply add Roar to your list of CCM and Nix as a team that is coming together at this early stage.

I do not say your opinion of the Roar being the weakest starting 11 is wrong - that's obviously your opinion - just questioning why you chose a week with such a positive outcome to confirm your view.

A season of pragmatic football with no flare

The next home game vs Melb City at Dolphin Stadium is forecast to sell out. The 10k capacity has less than 2,000 tickets left for sale according to the club - anyone wanting to go is advised to purchase tickets ahead of time. 

A 0 - 0 draw against a team that is over achieving, by a long way, is nothing to get excited about. Fowler thought that a team full British f/ ballers whose best attribute is their superior fitness levels, was all he needed to win in this league. Where are your goals coming from.

I think the logic starts with the conclusion that we are rubbish, and then people needing to find a suitable explanation that leads to that conclusion (i.e. other team isn't fit, other team has been awful despite being top of the ladder at the time, other team was just having an off day etc etc). 
Now I am not saying that we are playing fantastically, however the signs are there and I am hoping that it all comes together. Victory, Central Coast and Sydney FC all conceded goals to the Wanderers, yet we were able to prevent them scoring. That is already a massive improvement on last season. 
If we can start putting away a few of the many chances we are creating, we'll do well I think. Certainly a finals team at least. 

Agree. There’s a fair amount of people who dug trenches in their opinion preseason and now seem incapable of revising where they stand; 

Its not to say they are wrong - it might be these signings are a bunch of British hacks and Fowler has underestimated the A League. Time will tell. 

But on the evidence of the first three games it would seem Fowler is at least having a decent start albeit a goal-shy one. 

Aldred and Gilesphey are part of a very solid defence. 

Jay O’Shea is receiving plaudits and even made this weeks team of the week. 

We haven’t seen enough of Holloway but what we have seen is exciting enough. 

Theres only ROD that’s cause for concern and he was supposed to be the low-risk, HAL proven player amongst the five. But he’s just out of form and it’s a question of what can RF do to help him find it? 

Fowler has proven tactically astute even changing formation to good effect on Saturday. There’s questions over his substitution timings but other than that he looks a competent coach so far. 

No way!!!

We are good enough to not concede many goals against anyone.So AU,MC,WP and CCM in the coming games shouldnt scare us.
The problem is scoring.If we continue to not score then we could draw most games and lose a few as well.O doibt we will lose all four games.If we did .then it would be disastrous.
Against WSW though,I would say we played our best game so far.So we continue to improve.But WSW is not a fast team,so AU will really test us with their speed.
The next few games will see if we have any chance of climbing the ladder.We are already way off the leaders.But a few wins and we are midtable.

Crimson - we have played one less game than the top 5. Make that game a win (no guarantee) and the gap is down to 5 points. Nice t have those 5 points clear, but that is not a huge lead over a season if we hit our straps like I expect us to.

CCM and Adelaide are the other teams ahead of us with a game in hand - we win and they lose and we are in 4th place on the ladder in relative terms of games played.

I saw a lot of flair in the game. A lot!

Did you seriously watch the game and see none?

Never like Adelaide away, we do have a bit of rivalry, at least when the Aloisi bros were in charge, always a bit feisty lol.
If you score two goals I'd say its in the bag for Adelaide unless Roar finally click of course in the attacking sense. 

One thing's for sure, Mauk will be super fired up as usual and will be involved in some sort of incident. Yeah I'd agree. Roar have looked stingy defensively, but definitely don't look like scoring 2 or more (they've struggled just to score at all) so if AU score twice I'd say it's game over. 

1 goal in 3 games would suggest that comment is right. 

However, Roar have created more chances in each of their three games than their opponents. In total they’ve created 50 scoring chances in those three games but lack the finish; ROD is partly to blame (he’s missed more than one sitter) as is ROD’s isolation where he’s playing solo up front. 

Sooner or later those  misses will start going in. Question is, when? 

Great news about the Roar v City game looking like selling out.  What a pleasure it will be to see Brisbane in front of a packed home crowd.  Suncorp has done more to hinder the Roar's development than any other single factor, in my view.

Big test for Fowler and his boys. City are looking increasingly like Championship material.  Jag a result here, and Fowler will turn a lot of doubters around.  Another loss will not be good, no matter what RF says.

Looking forward to it.

In the meantime, there's the not so small matter of a Red side looking good, and the Roar desperately need some points.  Must confess, hard to see them coming against Adelaide at home.