It’s become a huge test for him now, and Tony Grant.

The psychological aspects are players starting to second guess both themselves and their team mates - which is a bad place to be if it plays out that way because it will only frustrate every one more and more.

I think it was DWH who pushed the ball over the bar after he’d took a little touch, he’ll be thinking should I have hit it first time? Did it need a second touch?? What do I do the next time?? That’s gping to be mirrored in multiple players. 

Typically this will now follow one of two patterns - either the chances start drying up and results continue the same or it suddenly breaks and the goals start flying in. 

The first half was dire but the second half was pretty good except for the lack of goals. 

If you put three goals on for Roar, which wouldn’t have been unreasonable given the number and quality of second half chances, then everything changes but whether that’s fixed by one of the three players suggested is debatable given everyone in the team was missing barn doors yesterday. 

Come on man, there only so many times you can say that, it ain't happening, Aloisi got shit for saying the same thing. 

Yes he did, and deservedly so. 

In their first four games Roar have created more scoring opportunities than both City and Western United did who are at the top, Fowler just has to find someone who can finish them off

Should have found them before the season started. 

Yes he should. But when Wenzel-Halls is blasting them over the bar from 12 yards as well, who would you suggest? 

I don't get some of the criticism about the team in general.  The defense is light years ahead of where it's been and is the best in the league.  Up the other end, the number of quality scoring chances created are on par or better than the ladder leaders.  The glaring weakness of the team is the lack of finishing - something that has been identified by most reasonable fans.  The rest of the noise is coming from a handful of miserable trolls and a couple of morons that support other teams and have a hang-up with the source of the imports.  Fowler's biggest signing mistake wasn't the 4 guys he bought from the English lower leagues, it was signing a proven A League quality striker who has been crap.  Some of  the misses by the whole team on the week-end were painful to watch, and the biggest culprits weren't the Poms. 

Maybe give him more than a few mins off the bench to prove himself? Something he showed last season when giving the chance by the way, but hey I'm not a coach.
Say what you want about Aloisi but hes recruiting was miles ahead of Fowlers and at least they could you know score goals. 

While I am not panicking about the team, I am certainly not thrilled. 
Yes we aren't conceding many, but I am also incredibly surprised by this as beside Aldred, our defenders seem a bit shaky. 
We are creating a lot of chances, but not scoring. The longer that happens, the worse our confidence will be, and that will spread through the team. Fowler and Grant haven't worked out a way to fix it and seem keen on just sticking with ROD (despite AAH looking better when he has come on), so I don't know if much will change here. 
I think the biggest thing for me is that while there have been portions of games where we have looked like the superior team, there are also huge chunks of games where the players look like they've never met each other (continual passes no where or to the opposite team, long clearances from the back etc). During these times, we look like absolute crap. 
Obviously there is something there that is meaning we can be good in patches, but I don't know how Fowler will get that happening for an entire game. 
One thing I did notice is we look so much better playing through the middle. We need to bail on relying on crosses (if you can even call them that) from McGing and Neville. Let Mauk, O'Shea, Inman etc play through the middle. 

I’d hold the comparisons with Aloisi a bit longer - JA got the attack right but the defence wrong, so far Fowler has got the defence right and the attack wrong ... but jets give him until Christmas maybe?  

I’d start DWH to be honest, ROD with 15 minutes would find himself under less pressure and that will help. 

However, my point was everyone is missing chances - our most likely scorer at the moment is Gillesphey who seems to have a rocket left foot and is good in the air. 

I agree about our defence, I’m amazed we are not conceding many more. Bowles, Gillesphey and Neville all look very shakey, Aldred looks fairly solid when winning the ball in the air or blocking shots but looks like Bambi on ice sometimes when in possession of the ball.
Crocombe amazingly has not had much too do, and has made no real mistakes, but I get the feeling he will not save that many if the shots start raining in, as he seems slightly slow to move across his goal. I may be wrong here, but it is just a feeling I have.

As a defensive unit they’re working okay, that’s evident by the (few) number of chances they’re allowing opponents. But they do have “brain farts” at times where they turn the Ball over seemingly under no pressure. 

Crocombie is harder to evaluate as he’s had so little to do - the three goals he has let in lead to questions over his shot stopping ability but if I was him I’d say that was being harsh. With the ball at his feet he’s night and day over Jamie Young which he showed yesterday neatly dribbling past an opponent close to his own half way line and then getting a safe pass away. 

Last season we basically never looked a chance pretty much every week . It was a case of "I wonder how many goals we will ship this week "
This season our defence is very good .

Teams that win competitions have more goals for than against .
Their attitude is to simply score more goals than their opponents.
It is not to stop opponents scoring at all costs .
They also are a mental threat to every team they play ...ie their opponents fear playing them and concentrate on making plans at how to nullify their attacking threat.
We are not that far off being that team with a slight adjustment of attitude all round .

Our mainly ingredients lacking are sharpness in front of goals and at least one good winger who can get behind the defence and cut it back occasionally.
That is every defenders worst nightmare .We simply have no one who is doing that .

Having said that ....we should have won that game comfortably yesterday .
We are making chances .
Adelaide had very few chances and scored one .
We had quite a few and scored none .

OK Robbie we get it ! You have fixed the disastrous defence of last season...but you can't stick a forward up front with no help and expect him to score .
it appears to me that the plan is strong stultifying defence for 3/4 's of every game to suck the life out of the other team ...then put an extra forward up front to snatch a late winning goal.
Our trouble is at present no one seems confident when shooting ...why?

I think we simply need an attitude adjustment from the coach .
He may need to just say "Ok guys lets loosen it up a bit and get forward more and shoot more"
Relax the whole "no one shall pass" defensive mindset and accept it is OK to concede a goal as long as you score more at the other end !
Sometimes it can be that simple .

I think Robbie can coach, he just signed the wrong attacking/creative players, which is strange considering you’d think he could use his contacts/status in the game to sign decent players. Replace ROD O’Shea Inman with La fondre Ninkovic barbarouses, Castro ikonimidis fornaroli, toivanen kruse and Nabbout and Roar are more than likely sitting top 2. 

You're a Perth Glory fan, what is your obsession with BR?  Maybe focus your attention on Perth this year, I don't see much coming out of them.  Sitting in 6th with a single win in 5 games is hardly something to be happy about and dishing out advice to other teams.

All fair points, and get Amadi-Holloway to be a little more selfish in front of goal.

I think you’re confusing players out of form with ability. Add any if those players to Roars roster and it makes no difference if they too are out of form. 

We can't really say Inman and O'shea are in or out of form, unless people have watched them regularly while they were playing in England to make such a judgement. Based on these first few games, it looks more like a lack of ability. ROD was terrible for Newcastle last season so it could be a confidence issue with him.

I'd still like to see Amadi-Holloway starting with Inman next week. 

I "dish" out advise (good or bad) to all teams, and listen/take on board to what others have to say about my team (CCM were great against us 2 weeks back and I applauded the way they played). The first game of the season i got to watch the Roar in person, they were atrocious (especially the first half) and it was easy to see why...lack of quality. An Adelaide fan yesterday commented saying the Roar were the worst team he has seen in years at Hindmarsh. Unfortunately, for this season, the Roar are doomed, and there is no easy/quick fix.

how was that shot of his on the turn !..if it was a little to the right or left it was unstoppable !

It's good that people support RF and  can see improvement in team performance.But you cant ignore the reality of where we are.
Surely people have seen us play in the first half each week.It's pretty abysmal stuff.I havent seen such a defensive setup before in the HAL.
When we are setup this way we have no control of the game.We look like a bunch of hacks.We just soak up pressure and hope we dont concede.We have no  way to attack because noone is in front of the ball and our counterattack is non existent.
In the second half,for whatever reason we push further up the field in defence and take more risks.
Against PG we did this after conceding a goal.Against MV the same.Against WSW it was more even.Against AU we created good chances in the second half ,but we looked vulnerable on the counterattack.We rolled the dice and AU scored first and we couldnt get one back,eventhough we should have scored.
But we cant ignore that for all the chances we create ,so does the opposition.Blazing over the bar from a mile out is not a chance!
At the moment our players are lacking in confidence and a bit of luck might change things.The problem is if you are relying on a hope and a prayer to start winning you are in trouble and theres no doubt we are in trouble.

There is quite a difference to how we are playing now compared to how we played in preseason.I can only presume this is because RF lost confidence in the players.
The high press ,attacking ,one touch play  we saw in preseason has gone.Why?


We are now a slow build up team ,which sits deep absorbs pressure amd waits for teams to tire.
So players have to be sharp and clinical to score.

Next up...

MC-(h)-------loss
WP-(a)------draw
CCM-(h).......draw
SFC-(a)--------loss
WU-(h)---------draw
BYE....




.

Agree with all that and well said!!!!

”Blazing over the bar from a mile out is not a chance!”

no its not, but blazing over the bar from inside the box with just the keeper to beat is - we did that against Adelaide and Victory (twice). And I seem to remember  Mauk did it from inside the 6-yard box against CCM in the Cup. 

Not creating chances is really hard to fix, converting chances created is almost as hard. Fowler’s got a job on his hands that’s for sure 

Couldn't score in a brothel, score in a brothel.....

Ha Ha. But that’s where the critisism defies logic. 

If Roar are that bad what does it say about how bad Adelaide are?? 

Adelaide got lucky yesterday. 

Adelaide weren't great and still won with quiet ease even though the scoreline suggest it was a close game; should have put the game away in the first half but Roar are hard to breakdown with so many defending. The formation Brissy are playing, it is reliant on the wingbacks contributing to the attacking side of the game, McGing and Neville just aint good enough.

Good teams earn their luck. They also atone for defensive errors by being clinical down the other end. Adelaide were poor yesterday and could've conceded a goal or two, but we still created more than enough chances to also score 2 or 3, and scored from the best chance of the match. That is the key difference between a team like AU and a team like BR. We have the quality to finish off chances. Also worth mentioning that Brisbane's first chance of any significance came a good 10 minutes into the 2nd half, by which point the game could've been dead and buried.  

There wasn’t much difference between the two sides yesterday, the scoreboard in the end reflected the only difference that mattered - one moment of superior composure in front of goal 

However, Adelaide’s performance wouldn’t have been any better/worse had the composure occurred at the other end. 

Roar have a couple of problems running at the moment; the first is the first half can go poorly and Roar can’t string forward movement  together. it happened away to Perth and again yesterday - in both cases their opponents hardly produced many goalscoring  chances (have a listen to what the Fox panel say at half time for example). 

For some reason this corrects at half time and without the need for a change in personnel or position. This would suggest someone doesn’t understand something because it’s not an ability thing otherwise the second half would not be better. 

Roars second half was much better and they were the better team. Cornrhwait on commentary says so along with a comment that he can’t see what’s changed to make it so - I’d agree with that and I wonder if Roar themselves know? 

But then the second problem kicks in - finishing chances. From being starved of chances in the first half Roar now have an abundance of quality chances, but can’t finish. 

Inman goes one on one with the keeper and should score, DWH blazes the ball over the bar with just the keeper to beat, someone else (Mauk?) hacks the ball over the bar from seven yards with just the keeper to best, and someone else - with just a defender and keeper to navigate - finds the thigh of the only defender in range. All good chances, I’d argue all as good as McGrees goal/chance, but all squandered. 

Adelaide's best player was Izzo.  He kept them in the game until they snatched a late winner in the 83 minute.  Adelaide moved the ball around a lot but were entirely impotent in and around the Roar penalty area until minute 83 when a nice piece of work by Troisi was finished off by McGree.  As for best chances, they belonged to the Roar. Inmam was one on one with the keeper, Gilesphie or O'Shea blasted over the from 6 yards out with the goal wide open and I think it DWH who also missed a relative sitter.