Stop getting so defensive eldorado, nobody is judging you.

 Technically speaking I think McKay has a good first touch and good pass, long and short, but especially short passes which he makes a lot of. While his finishing, shooting and heading is below par, and his 1v1 defending is reasonable. 

His main strength in my mind isn't a technical one but a mental/tactical/physical one. That is his ability to get into good positions to receive the ball and support team mates. Combining his good first touch and short passes make him a fantastic link player. This is his best role imo, and in performing that role makes others in the team look and perform better while he will rarely stand out unless you've know about football/have played in the midfield and know what a huge help this is. 

Well, you're not, but Decentric has taken undue exception to a throwaway line, chosen to interpret it in the worst way, and it doesn't warrant a reasonable response
If you read my post that Decentric took such exception to, I agree with everything you've said, and have never said anything different about him.

45th in the world.  well done ange.  the holger years are almost gone.  this time next year we will be in the 30's and by the time the world cup kicks off we might just crack the 20's.  assuming our world cup qualifying campaign is a passing effort.

2nd in asia now.

http://www.fifa.com/fifa-world-ranking/ranking-table/men/index.html

Does anyone remember what our highest ever ranking was? In the 20s?

14 after playing all games in the final round of qualifying for the 2010 World Cup

Quality post.

Under Pim.

Hmm. ..McKay is a good link player,  but some aspects are below par, eh?

Pretty big claim there...

Apparently the squad for October WCQ's is to be named at 10am on Tuesday.

Reckon Mauk will be out and Da Silva in from the last squad.

New Signing, here's my reply to what you wrote in the other thread :)

In ange ball the keepers ability to come off his line and provide a safe outlet for his defenders is every bit as important as making 'difficult' saves.
Ryan's ability with the ball allows ange's defenders to play with a higher line than what they would be able to do with langerak, jones or federici which in turns reduces the amount of room the opposition has to play the ball in. Australia's high press in theory forces teams to either turn the ball over in a dangerous area or alternatively hoof it long for a strikers to run onto and that my friend is where ryans speed off the line and ability on the ball comes into it. At the moment none of our other keepers either overseas or in the A league can come close to matching that.
I still disagree with you about langerak being a better shot stopper however even if i entertain that for a minute, Ryan makes the saves you expect him to make while also allowing the team to play a certain way. As a result even if langerak was the better shot stopper ryan would still be first choice.
If we were a team that sat back as per the pim era then i would suggest the superior shot stopper should be selected as they will be dealing with more shots from around the 30 yard area.

Speed off the lines to sweep up is another attribute. Fair dos.

How it's weighted is, imo, another matter.

I fully agree with the theory of what you say about the high press. In theory, that's how it works. If you have the cattle and the set-up, then it will work like that. It's the practice where I think it falls down (or the practice when we play the best opponents, at least).

You've eloquently described how the high press leads to favourable turn-overs for us in dangerous areas or pointless long balls from the opposition which require our goalkeeper to come off his line. But it's theory, as you, yourself, pointed out. And, sure, the theory is reflected in practice against crappy opponents.

But may I ask what happens when Australia play against opponents who have both high quality footballers and a high press style. What happens when we play against Germany, Spain, Belgium, Holland? As far as I'm aware they tend to play with rather a high press, too.

What happens when both teams have a high press and one is substantially better than the other? Can both teams maintain a high press at the same time? Or will one team dominate and the other sit back (or compromise on their high press)?

I think the latter is what will happen. The problem is that the rosy world of unadulterated Angeball becomes a bubble which suddenly bursts when we play top notch opponents. We mustn't be fanatical, we need to be pragmatic (or Ange does, at least).

You mention shot-stopping from 30 yards. I'm thinking shot-stopping ability from closer than that. When we're good enough to be able to have a high press, yayyy. But what about when we play France? The goalkeeper is suddenly besieged by quality shots from closer quarters from Antoine Griezmann and Dimitri Payet. That's exactly when the goalkeeper's shot-stopping ability becomes far more valuable than his distribution or sweeping.

The variables alter the nature of the equation substantially.

I worry we have a house of cards kind of defence at the moment. Fantastic against crappy opponents but can be easily blown over against a quality opponent. And that's why we need a great shot-stopper. And that's why Ange needs to make them more adaptable.

France, who normally play broadly proactive football, realised they couldn't do so against Germany. They compromised and managed to win. Australia needs to think like that.

As for Mat(t)y's shot-stopping. I was encouraged by that shot from distance he held onto in the recent WCQ. But I, a good proportion of this forum and apparently some Valencia fans don't share your faith in his shot-stopping ability. Somebody made the good point that the fact that we end up debating whether or not he was at fault for such and such a goal is indicative of this. The good shot-stoppers make the saves they ought to have no right to make. We're yet to see much of this from Mat(t)y. As for Langerak... You're free to think he's not better in that respect than Mat(t)y. My view is that he has the potential to be substantially  better than at shot-stopping and has demonstrated this in his cameos. But he needs to be playing a lot of football and shows us this again and again.

I can tell you from watching us play and listening to Ange that we won't be compromising against any opposition at any time.

If the opposition is so good that they can keep possession effectively against our high press and if they have a press as good as ours and make it hard for us to keep possession then good luck to them.

It means that the other team will have the run of the game, more chances etc, but that doesn't mean we'll sit back or compromise. In fact the opposite, we'll keep playing that way with faith and belief that the game will turn. 

I really think people underestimate how good our pressing actually is. It's insanely hard to maintain possession against. Can it leave holes at the back? yes. But thats the compromise you have to make if your aim is to dominate in possession against any opposition. 

Possession Stats for Socceroos game this year are amazing: 

UAE: 61.8
Iraq: 71.4
Jordan: 67.5
Tajikistan 72.1
England: 54.7
Greece: 61.5
Greece: 67.2

Sure Germany last year dominated possession with 59.7%...but that was a LONG time ago with an entirely different back 4 and midfield. 

Decent response above. Re the possession stats... I haven't seen the Greece matches and don't know much about Greek football recently. But for the others, with the exception of England, they're all fairly average opponents. And England don't really play proactive football.

I'm talking about what happens when we play opponents who have quality footballers and also play proactive football.

I think we have to find a way of compromising a bit. Even Germany do that (at least with respect to their backline), by employing 3 central defenders when expedient. Meanwhile, the French couldn't press nearly as high against the Germans but were compact and managed to win.

Against better opposition is the absolute worst time to compromise and experiment with different tactics/strategy. Turn your back on the philosophy/strategy that got you to where you are and you end up getting raped in catalonia like celtic. 

You just need to believe flicky. Believe. 

What we need though is a plan B. If we love Angeball and only play Angeball then a smart opposition coach will find a way to undo us because we will be predictable. In that situation we need to have another tactical option. In fact we should already have predicted how they might try and counter our Angeball and have a counter to that already in mind. 

Haha, I admire your spirit. But I do think you can compromise. It's just what you compromise. Some things cannot be compromised, but others can.

As I say, France didn't play quite the proactive style you might normally associate with them when they played Germany. For starters, Germany's high press didn't let them. So would you say France compromised?

Yet France won.

Possession stats tell you nothing unless you watch the actual game in question.  Knocking it about in your own half for eons and then losing it as soon as you try and push into the final third is nothing to write home about.  (Think Socceroos.)

There's possession and effective possession (Think Japan).  They're wildly different.

Possession without penetration is nothing.  (Surprised QF hasn't pulled you up on this.)  

You're absolutely right. But, based on those matches which I've watched (which wasn't all of them), it was a step in the direction of meaningful possession. Not perfect and we still aren't great in the final third (so it's still not the most meaningful possession).

The only one I can think of from memory where it was more of that meaningless knocking the ball about was against England.

But that ties in with what I'm driving at. When we face a quality opposition, all of a sudden the illusion of relatively meaningful possession may well be smashed to smithereens.

Woe betide us if it's a quality opposition that plays our game. Because they won't know what the hell to do against a high press being applied against them with far better practitioners. Or so I fear. Maybe Ange has made them more adaptable and awake to compromise than we think.

In order to compete with and aim to be the best in the world you have to impose your style on the opposition not set yourself up to counter against it. That's the whole basis of the Australian curriculum, proactive, possession based football.

Yes occasionally as we navigate our way through international football we are going to come up against teams who do individually have players that are better than us. Germany on paper are far superior even with a reserve side but we have managed to stick it to them a couple of times. If you remember back to us beating Germany, we countered their high press by using the pace of Leckie to get in behind them.

There are ways and means of dealing with opposition other than changing your whole philosophy. As someone else mentioned the last time you want to go stuffing around trying new or different tactics and styles is at the sharp end of the wedge in tournament football or against stronger opposition.

Ange has a philosophy that he believes in. In his initial days at Brisbane they struggled with it. Given time to adapt though Brisbane played arguably the best football we have seen in Australia possibly ever and absolutely dominated the competition.

You and i will never agree on Langerak being a better shot stopper than Ryan because i don't see that either one is noticeably better than the other. One is however much more suited to the philosophy of the national team manager at this present time.

Anyway, reports seem to indicate that Ryan's knee injury will have him out of the next world cup qualifiers so with Langerak playing regularly he should get a chance to show his wares and put his hand up for the number one position.

I understand what you are saying Munrubenmuz. The argument i would put forward is that we are playing mostly and effective possession based game by maintaining the ball and attempting to open up gaps in the opposition before playing the final pass where as the Japanese seem to take a few more risks in playing forward more often. Both methods have merit IMO.

If you have the players technically good enough to maintain possession against a press the gaps will open up behind to create quality chances. Especially when we have players with the final ball quality of Rogic and Mooy

the NT were also really slow to transition into attack when the opposition was out of shape and open to counter attack.  i felt like we missed serious opportunities to punish a weaker team because we were playing possession rather than being decisive.  possession for possession sake is a dying fad in football.  i agree with the sentiment of muz that there needs to be more to it.  i felt that for large parts of the game there really wasnt much more to it for our NT

Quality post.

I'm not sure what he said as I've blocked/mutered him, but what you've said seems eminently plausible, NS.

They are.

However, maintaining sterile possession in one's own defensive half against an opposition half press is not that effective. If one  dominates territory as well as possession, UEFA research from the UEFA Champ  League shows that teams with a greater possession in the attacking third   are much more effective than their opponents over a long stretch of games.

The joker in the pack at international level appears to be Italy. In the Euro champs, they often had a lot less possession than their opponents , but had just as many, or more, shots at goal inside and outside the penalty box.

 Italian players and teams are so well coached through their formative ranks to defend without the ball in Ball Possession Opposition. If one wants to observe outstanding defence watch Italy or Juventus.

This is 100% correct.  When the opportunity presents itself Australia fails to go forward at pace.  It is a major failing of all our teams at every level.  

It is very simple.  If you win the ball, look up and outnumber the opposition you should, 99 times out of 100, attack and attack quickly because you have a rolled gold opportunity to create a goal scoring chance.

Waaaaaay too often we win the ball and the first pass is backwards or sideways.  And that's fine if there's more of them behind the ball but in other instances it's not. 

It is ridiculously simple but your KNVB accredited idiots can't see that for love nor money.

. 

That's alright mate.

From someone that posts this sort of thing I'm not particularly fussed on your opinion anyway.

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Iwoz gunna give SBS arfa star for at least giving us one top level EPL match a week. But only three weeks in to our miserly allotment of one EPL game a week we quickly get to where there is no game.

There aint no match on SBS tonight Saturday 3rd September.Wodda crappy load of bollocks from SBS.Fanxalot SBS. Ya give us a piddling tantalizing sniffta of EPL. Then ya chuck on a movie in the time slot instead of a game.Also, while I'm onna whinge......     itza blooody disgrace that we can't watch our Aussie cricket mob play overseas games on Free To Air.

I know we get some One Dayers & 20/20 now anagen, but there aint big eaps of it.

Same goes for the no show on FTA of the recent Socceroos World Cup qualifier against Iraq.Crikey!  All we got on the east coast was a crummy little few seconds on a news sport item showin the goals. 

But I still aint ever gunna get sucked in to the money sewer of pay per view TV.  

Stuff em all.  ZILCHO from me.C'mon SBS...........shine above the rest.  Lift ya game.  Give us more coverage of EPL and other sport!Thass my 2 cents werf!Bring back Pot Black too!

-------------------------------------8<----------------------------

That's what you're dealing with gents.

I'd certainly like to see us be a bit more decisive when the opportunity arises to counter but i trust what Ange is doing and am willing to put my own frustration aside to see us win matches and at the moment that is exactly what we are doing

The first thing Mulvey did when he took over the Roar was to allow the long ball when a counterattacking opportunity arose.  It was a revelation to Brisbane fans who spent 2 years watching tiki taka play.  A lot of it in their own half.  (And it added a new attacking dimension as teams were unsure whether to press high or sit.) 

I'm all for Ange ball just not. Every. Single. Time.

I reckon one of the obstacles in the way of us being more meaningful with our possession is the lack of a quality striker.

It must surely play on the minds of Mooy and Rogic. They can't be confident that the bloke on the other end of it will be do anything useful with it, no matter how good the service.

This is is very disheartening and it's understandable if it stymies things quite a bit.

I reckon we have the tools in the central and attacking midfield to make that possession meaningful. What we lack is the striker and that puts the whole thing out of whack.