Noticed that this is cahills longest goal drought for the national team I think its 11 games now. granted he hasn't played the full 90 in any of them but outside of goals im not sure he brings a whole lot to the team. It seems crazy to have a national team squad member who isn't capable of playing a full 90 minute game. Something the commentators said stuck with me as well I think Leckie played a pass to him against the Saudis and they said maybe cahill 5 years ago could have got their to receive the ball but not the cahill of today. I guess if he isn't scoring i'm not sure he is bringing a lot to the squad 

Other than leadership he doesnt offer much at the moment. I am sure he will score tomorrow and make me look foolish

While I don't entirely disagree with your point, I remember that pass/comment and even the Cahill from 10+ years ago wouldn't have gotten to it.
It was a shit pass and Cahill was never exactly a speedy winger anyway.

I remember a couple of games ago there was a goalkeeping fumble and our player didn't was too slow on the follow up. I remember thinking god damn cahill would've got to that. Then realized it actually was cahill. cool story bro. 

No AFC hub livestream up yet. Hopefully they'll get it done asap. 

I just dont think we should expect some miracle performance from Cahill. Im just hoping Ange doesnt do something srupid like play some crazy formation hes been "working on" during the week and we just buckle. 

Wasn't his performance against Chile very good? 
He should have scored against Thailand when he hit the post. He lined up the shot to go in the bottom corner and missed.
I feel he brings an urgency to the team that is lacking and for that alone I want him to start. However I am not sure where.

Viduka couldn't score for nuts for the NT but he still played

Was exceptional against Chile, our best game under Ange.

What does he bring? Fight and tenacity when the game is there to be taken. His aerial threat is a massive asset late on, especially when all other avenues to goal have proved fruitless. The question needs to be asked, who else would we bring in (that we haven't got already in the squad) who would add more value?

I still don't understand why ange changed to 3 at the back. We were doing fine before, we beat England convincingly and won the asian cup with four at the back.

We lost 2-1

Lmao, I thought we won 2-1. Either way, it was in front of English fans and we played well, it was just the final pass that was lacking which is no different than 3 at the back except now we are more exposed.  

Honestly Cahill would have been perfect for the Syria away game, we needed his leadership and fight to spur us on. At home we probably don't need him as much but if we get past Syria he'd be perfect for an away trip to Panama and Honduras where they'll kick the shit out of us. Not to mention he is our best finisher, if a chance was to fall to someone i'd hope it'd be him.

he lifted the whole team.  a menace in the centre of the park. worked his arse off. showed class.

you bring cahill on instead of ruka and suddenly markers are having to pull off rogic because there is another threat. 

Spot on. EXACTLY the situation we needed him involved in.

You're right, we outplayed them for large periods despite missing some key personal too. Pretty sure Leckie and Cahill were out and we started with Maclaren up front.

Didn't Rooney and Rashford score for them and our goal was an Eric Dier own goal.

Also with a back 4 we drew 2-2 with Thailand (as well as draws with the Saudi's and Japan), which i think was the game that got Ange thinking of switching formations.

Sainsbury too. 

TBH I think the 3 at the back can work, it is just a formation that needs flexibility for it to work for the whole game and unfortunately ange doesn't offer us that. If a team is dominating us in the midfield, why not pump long balls for our strikers and hit them with the counter attack and go to a back 5? 

Except we didn't. England weren't playing proactive football.

They were set up to contain and counter-attack. This they did. And put two past us. No injuries (as far as I can recall), it's a friendly (so scarcely matters anyway), job done for them. Personally, Roy Hodgson's work on Euro 2016 was awful. But that's another story. We certainly didn't outplay them for large periods.

We had stacks of possession and did bugger all with it. You don't get bonus goals for passing the ball sideways.

Correct me if I am wrong but against Japan we started with 2 strikers which caused a lackluster first half then we switched to our regular formation in the second half and played well.

I really think Thailand was just a one off, it was an artificial pitch and Juric wasn't playing. Even Mooy had a bad game. The only player to play well that game was Burns. 

Saudi Arabia away from home was always going to be tough and to be honest we should have won had Ange parked the bus after our goal. The question is, would we have beaten Saudi Arabia away from home with our current formation seeing as we couldn't beat Syria?



  

I don't think we were doing fine. With a back four (with attacking fullbacks), we've never conceded fewer than two goals against top notch teams. Think about it.

So, statistically, the notion that everything in the garden was rosy before doesn't stand up to scrutiny. But, personally, I prefer to analyse deeper than this and look at individual goals and try to work out where we're most vulnerable (and strong and so on).

Imo, the most exposed that the NT team have looked (during Ange's tenure) was Arjen Robben's goal at the World Cup and Wayne Rooney's goal in that friendly.

Why? Any opposition coaching staff have the benefit of heaps of video footage from which they will infer our main weaknesses; predictability and stubbornness (so much so that we'll try to play a style of football for which we're ill-equipped.

Basically, they'll tend to try to play the ball through the lines as much as possible (no matter how much pressure and risk). They'll have a high line. The attack is the exact opposite of clinical. Imagine a compilation video of some of the misses in this qualification campaign. Seriously, opponents of the Socceroos can just sit back and absorb pressure (and blunt our attack in the process), wait until we lose possession in midfield (let's face it Rogic and Mooy aren't fast and Jedinak can be woeful on the ball). Then just pass to a fast winger and slice us up. We have wingbacks who are either not too flash defensively or too slow. We have some quality in central defence (but not mobility to cover enough ground).

If Jedinak get drawn forward into the hole in midfield which a high press tends to create and then he loses out and if you've got one or two wingbacks up (which a high press tends to have), then you have two slow central defenders trying to contain an attack which can utilise the width of the pitch at speed.


Unfortunately, as we don't have the quality, the trade-off is this...

A flat-ish back four or three central defenders which effectively becomes a back five when defending. NB the three central defenders must be compact and they can't be covering the width of the pitch when we're defending. Then the when we attack, the wingbacks push up (more or less) in the sort of fashion that the overlapping fullbacks did in the 4-3-3 when Ange previously used it.

Our Asian cup triumph is so incredibly overrated, we beat the likes of Kuwait and china on route to the final, we split our 2 games against sthnkorea luckily winning the one that mattered, don't get me wrong winning the cup itself is huge but the opposition was largely sub par bar 1 opponent, and every match was on home soil. This isn't a knock on Ange either, this qualifying campaign is way harder then anything we encountered in the Asian cup, even just byt the travel alone.

Friendlies aside, our opening 2 wc games in 2014 and the chile game in confess cup are our best performances under Ange by a country mile, eclipsing anything we did in the Asian cup.

Getting a bit edgy now. Syria appear so primed but maybe I'm totally wrong.

The visitors are expecting support from as many as 15,000 of Australia's Syrian and wider Arab community at the Olympic stadium and Hakeem said they had the backing of the entire nation back home.

Syria coach backs depleted squad to continue dream run - Football - Eurosport UK

Finally an article mentioning Syria's 3 suspended starters. None of the Australian media is mentioning it. Surely it makes a HUGE difference.

The tin foil hatters saying the ref rigged the 1st-leg for Syria might consider the fact that his cards have almost put them out of contention. Although they could say its possible the ref was micro fixing rather than fixing the whole tie. 

LOL ebtire nation 

Does your inner Leb want Syria to win?

Cant see wider Arab Australians wanting Australia to lose. Strange comment.