No handball then, eh?

Deng didn’t do a lot wrong there. Just too good.

Still only one sub used, and that was forced.

EDIT: Theo and Ingham standing by to come on. 84th minute. I'm sure they'll turn it all around.

Theo will have played an accumulated 90 minutes by the time he's 28. Then we will let him go to newcastle or ccm.

Genuine question: how much is Theoharous actually going to develop when playing 7 minutes a week?

Mixing it up.

Lawrence Thomas. Not at fault for any of the goals tonight

Neither is Troisi

A lot of pitches these days have a synthetic grass mixed in with real grass. I've seen and been on it at Melbourne City's training pitches. It's quite remarkable actually.

You'd be talking about GrassMaster which is used there, and also at Wembley and the majority of EPL grounds as well as the Nou Camp and San Seiro etc. Great stuff from what I've seen but I can't find anything that doesn't say that there's just grass at Shanghai. Their season hasn't started yet, remember.

Suspicion confirmed

I was more interested in talking about grass than this game, in the end.

Troisi MOTM provided a lot of chances in the end for himself

2 matches, 7 conceded.

Barbarouses should have taken the shot and Berisha should have passed more

Eh there's not many teams in the world that wouldn't have conceeded most of SIPG's goals tonight.

Illuminati.

@paladisious

Nor could I find anything about their pitch, which is why I suggested it may have been some sort of hybrid grass.

You have to say HAL teams are just not cutting it in the ACL.It makes me wonder how long before we fall into the AFC Cup.
Victory just have too many poor players.
Last week they conceded 3 .Tonight 4.That's Roaresque defending.
Williams is not that good anymore.
Valeri must be getting close to retirement.
Antonis ,geez he has wasted his time sitting on the bench or injured overseas and is a shadow of the player that first appeared on the scene years ago.
Barbarousis,used to play much better and so did Berisha.But Berisha has always been found out as too slow in the ACL.
Brox is just a stop gap player.
Troisi is hot and cold as always .
Apart from George and Donighie trying hard.Not much too write home about.

The best Australian players from yesterday are getting too old amd slow and not cutting it at a higher level anymore and there just isnt the quality coming through.So we are sliding big time.
People say the clubs arent taking the ACL seriously,but the truth is we just arent good enough.

we arnt cutting it at all and we are too far behind technically and financially. its a matter if time before the asean clubs just replace us in the ACL

Lmao why so reactionary? Our standards would literally have to drop below 8 other countries including Myanmar before Australian clubs would be replaced.

We're in real danger of losing an automatic qualifying spot to Thailand I believe

Not really since there's a 22 point gap between Australia & Thailand

I agree with most of this, williams had a poor game but hes been great this year, especially with having a want-away milligan and a valeri that is just so cooked its not funny in front of him for most of the season its a wonder we haven't shipped more than we have.
Geria poor and could see deng replacing him even though he is a cb.
Brox should never be a starter but that's kevs fault. Troisi and bes are suffering from having no competition.
Kosta had a decent run for a bit but has gone cold.
Donachie is only going to get better after his injury. 
George is class.
Antonis needs to play out the season get a good preseason in and get ready for next year.

But most of all... the "kids" (who are all push 20 years old) should be getting more than 7 minutes!

Well those above posts seem to answer the question on whether these matches help our gauging of Williams, Troisi and others regarding Russia.

The ACL is a massive opportunity for those players to stand up and get on the plane. 

i honestly believe australia needs its ass kicked. we dont deserve automatic spots. i reckon we should be forced to qualify via play offs 

It would be nice if there was an objective way to tell if it's a case of Asia improving or the a league going backwards

The a league looks to me to be improving but looks can be deceptive

On what evidence? Its clearly not.

If sydney holds up its end tonight we could be getting some bozza gold!

what evidence beyond naked eye do you have that its not improving?

We only have 3 ways of gauging the quality of the league objectively
1. asian performances (going up every year until the last two where there has been a crash)
2. how well do a league graduates do relative to how dominant they are here (hard to gauge in a single year. Borello is doing well despite being not too strong here is promising. Jmac struggling is more a worry but strikers have often been weak)
3. non-competitive friendlies (also improving over time but there haven't been enough recent ones to tell)

So its actually really hard to objectively tell whether acl is harder or the a league is getting worse

Ask yourself this, Without shitting on them because it's funny to shit on Australian football after a loss. Do you actually believe an all HAL Socceroos wouldn't compete against China?

The only difference between us & the CSL is their teams all have 3 players on fuck off wages