They said he had done a hammy in the chatter before the game.

Is Rojas injured? Anyone know?

Clockwork —today will be the test…is the ´squad really not that bad ´ or is it ´terrible.´

Well put Booney. Thanks.
yes we need the points more than you but gotta say I like watching Mariners play.
You guys got some class acts and they new lease of life for Nisbet has been impressive.
What a champion player!!!

i was so happy with GF win last year for you guys and all the stars at MC couldn’t deal with it.
And you guys continue on without Cummings, but he played for the shirt while he there.!

As a Mariners fan I can sympathise with the Roar's plight.Our club had many dark years before Stajcic and Montgomery took over the coaching reins.
I think you have the right coach(Ben Cahn is well respected  by Mariners fans ) but he needs time to implement his strategies and tactics and obviously needs the squad to go along with him.It surprises me that the production line has petered out when there is a whole state to draw on.

Cahn works well with young players and Hore,Trewin,Waddingham ,etc should benefit.As for a striker maybe the Roar should look at Latin America( Brazil,Colombia,Costa Rica,etc) for young u23 strikers who are not getting chances at their clubs but could come on loan transfers to see how they adapted.Portugal is also a good league to look at for promising strikers.

However this Saturday coming you will be the enemy but apart from that game I hope your season can pick up.

Neville is very underrated and has been through this career. It’s impossible to tell if we need a Taggart-like player until we understand what style the coach wants to deploy. But we definitely need an experienced striker - it’s like we’ve just gone “oh, striker is not important, we’ll make do with youth players, and Parsons can fill in even though he’s never played there.” It’s a mystery to me how our Plan A includes a striker like Waddingham (who I don’t rate at all) and then when he’s off we have no other striker who plays remotely like him. 

Yes I think Hore and Neville helps. You look at the team and it’s not bad really…just leaking too many goals…and it’s not to blame the defence on that so much, it comes down to the defensive midfield area as well.
Im no expert but I’ve done a lot of coaching and always looked at that area as integral at disrupting play before they become a chance in target.
We do need a Taggart like player to lead the line I believe.

I think we ran too hard from the start of the season and that caused our injuries. We ran ourselves into the ground with high pressing and high intensity which would have continued to work if we had the legs and bodies for it.

From what I have seen so far, Ben Cahn is not looking for the same intensity and is going to work instead on smarter positional play and structure. My ignorance of technical structure and strategy (who goes where and when) blinds me to anything he has specifically implemented so far. We do not seem to be playing better yet so I call it a work in progress and will continue to look for the bits I like about what we do until the overall results come.

The style of play certainly improved when Hore and Majok came on - but that just makes us one injury away from dropping again until the team plays better together in both directions.

If we start with Neville, Hore and Burke-Gilroy against mariners I think we will look better than we have been and that will be enough for me to see progress at this moment. Just some better bits to latch onto please...

Nothing has changed…sinking to the bottom…..again!!
And now we lose O’Shea our best player in yet another loss….
So so so disappointing.
For a brief period there was high hopes earlier in the season but it’s long gone now. 

WTF?!

The world is going weird.

I guess Ben Cahn liked what he had seen from Ruben. I can imagine "I have asked you nicely once - now Ruben is going to ask you" will get a run in the locker room.

Juric gone to a club called 'North East' a club from ISL perhaps. Why is Ruben Zadkovich the new assistant coach at Roar now though?

Random Question

Where are the Roar currently training? What has happened to the Brendale facility?

Juric always looked like he was gonna break through at some stage but never has
.
I’d like to be proved wrong but once again I think he’ll be very underwhelming.

i just wish Roar would stop getting 50/50 Strikers and get someone decent asap.
the season is quickly fading for us. 

I am under no illusions about Juric's form but I do think he would improve our squad - even as a bench player. I did not think he was the answer to our prayers.

I like what Rojas brings and would be happy with him in our squad too. An out and out striker is what we have needed for an eternity though and every time we look we find players who are not that.

He's barely kicked a ball in 2 years. Only played 46 minutes total for MV last season and only played 181 minutes for Macarthur the season before that. He did score 1 goal last season, but it was from a complete defensive error and any player would have scored it. He barely even made the bench at MV. Roar could do better. Not a striker, but Marco Rojas is currently without a club. He's always been a proven goal scorer here and usually provides a good number of assists too.

I think it would be an improvement for us, and that is something in itself.

When you look through our forwards he would easily fit in among the best of them. We never did get the 'proven goal scorer at this level' they were looking for at the start of the season - bringing in NPL scorers who had a lot to learn to step up and are still a work in progress.

Anything that improves our depth is a good progression and with O'Shea and Berenguer capable of feeding good players he might be what we need.

I'm going with the hope he is trying out and plays for us.

This would be... underwhelming

What a game for us tonight against Wanderers.

Too early for 'going top' to be a meaningful discussion, but playing against another of the form teams is a great test for us.

We lost to Nix, who are equal with Wanderers, so a good showing today can tell us the Nix game was just a bad game. We beat Wanderers in the Cup, but that was when they fielded a younger side so we can't take much from that.

Berenguer being injured last week and out this week is a loss for us more for the reorganising that will be required and disruption that makes to our developing cohesion - but the ongoing troubles with left fullback is going to be our toughest challenge for me. We just can't seem to find (and keep) a reliable, fit left fullback.

Borello out helps us, but Wanderers are playing such good football that they can carry his loss.

Play well tonight for the 90 and I am happy to say we are the real deal this season and can start going into every game thinking we will win it. Concede goals like we did against Nix and/or drop away after the halftime break again and we belong in 4th to 6th place until we improve. Still got it in us - just time to bring it out.

I am going with us playing well.

Waddingham has struggled to score so far against big, good defenders. I am looking forward to seeing him continue to improve his physical side and get on the scoresheet tonight. Mileusnic will have one of his great games, and O'Shea is sure to get one. Probably be going with Hingert and Zabala as our two fullbacks. I prefer that to Trewin being played in the left fullback role - I'd rather keep Trewin as a good centreback than just another 'play him anywhere at the back' option.

Not calling wadders himself wasteful but as an 18 year old he will make the mistakes an 18 year old makes as he learns his craft. Add that to hore and melusenic who can be good and have moments of magic but will hardly be putting chances on the plate to convert it converting them themselves (are melusenic on the weekend) and you get a wasteful front 3. You can carry one or even two of them as starters if the other is like jmac or cumdog converting chances at will but not all 3 at once. (Personally I would have wadders starting our of any of those 3 as he is the best talent of the lot and has huge potential)

The best example was adl last season, with Goodwin consistently converting they could have irankunda develop and even looked good with Blackwood in the starting line up. 

Best time of the season to try it out though against proper competitive opposition. Either Ross now knows that he has work to do to get Gomulka scoring, or he knows that Gomulka is not striker material.

I don't have a problem with trying him out since he must be showing something at training and in games that Ross likes the look of - and as soon as Waddingham is back we know who will start. What Ross now does with the information he just got is what determines his quality as a coach in my eyes.

Ross playing Gomulka as a CF from round 1 even, shows how short of being a decent coach he really is. You calling Waddinhgam wasteful is ridiculous.

Its the same thing everyone has been saying for the last 3-4 years, we really are short attacking options. Ive said it many times but a front 3 of hore, waddinham, and melusenic are too wasteful to compete at the top of the table (let alone when you dont get all 3 on the park like on the weekend and have to turn elsewhere). You can get away with 2 of the 3 as starters if you have an out and out quality player as the 3rd but all 3 would have to significantly outperform their stature to have any chance at a top 4 finish. (saying that i really like wadders, i think he has the potential to be a great player, just too early to rely on him yet). 

Feke has always had a good reaction save in him and we saw that at his best on the weekend. his let down was always his decision making and distribution which heaped pressure on himself and the defence but he is looking like he is improving there, if he keeps that trajectory he will be a very good a-league keeper in a year or two (reminds me of early redders). 

I like our high press even though it leave us open to pace, its better to be open to pace that to just heap pressure upon pressure with a low block getting deeper and deeper just waiting to concede like we have seen the last couple years. at least the high press means we can get more numbers forward when we attack. 

Im looking forward to being back at suncorp and watching attacking football again, hoping wadders can continue his domestic and international form and bag a few. 

Good hard game to start the season.

Reading that we missed out on Ibini (?) so we are sticking with Waddingham as our striker for the season was hard to take. I would never have considered Ibini to fill our need. Waddingham is turning out to be a great front man for us but today's game shows how light on we are in the dependable goal scoring stakes again. We still need that quality striker either on the bench or on the field. Gomulka does not hit me as a striker from today's performance.

I am bothered by the elbow out from the body that was not given as a penalty today - especially when Western United got a penalty for a handball in their game where the player was struck in a far more natural position. Frustrating because on another day we will concede a penalty in that exact situation with roles reversed.

Great showing by Freke today. I have been concerned about him not being up to those critical moments that can turn a game and today he showed his right to be there.

Brilliant combinations in attack for us in the final third - getting past defenders in tight spaces out wide in the final third without just passing back and round. Loving the way Aloisi has us playing as a team to bring the ball upfield. Our defence, when we press so high, seems too easy to penetrate by quality opposition. Outright pace hurts us. We have played together enough to be more solid at the back so I am not sure what we can do about it.

Still a great start to the season and showing such good form on the ball. The rest will fall into place I am sure as we find our league feet.

Next week will be a huge game for us - first home game of the season, first game back at Suncorp, and playing against the team that beat is in the Cup. Looking forward to that stupid smile I get on my face walking down Caxton Street on matchday every time!

he will get plenty of minutes, Neville and Aldred will likely miss 10+ games throughout the season and he will have to step in. I'm a big fan of him so a little disappointed that he is not starting but probably good for a  22 year old to not be relied on so heavily. I also suspect that he will be phased in towards the end of the season with the view that he will be a starter next season (at least that is my hope as neville is 34 and aldred is 33, long term successors are needed)

Any thoughts on trewin fitting into the team? 

looking at the replay Zabala had no chance to get back and cover he and hingert were caught out by the quick counter and would have had to be super human to get back. The only thing that could have stopped the second goal (once SFC had broken) was aldred, if he had  rushed out to lolly quickly, lolly would have either had to put the pass in early (when mak was still well outside the box) or held onto it and tried to beat aldred (giving hingert and zabala time to recover their positions). doing that would have been against his training and would have left the box man on man at best. 

first half was good but second was poor, we either ran out of legs to continue the high tempo game or were outcoached. Reminds me a bit of early last season where we could only put in a good 30-40 minutes a game. 

moving berenguer up front didnt work, it seemed to kill all our forward play. I think we are really short a quality attacker. We can get away with 2 of waddingham, hore, melusenic and armiento in the front 3 and be competitive but having 3 starting ends up being too wasteful. Maybe Waddingham improves or one of the young blokes really steps up (macnicol, Cahill, markovski) but that front 3 will cost us points during the season. Freke also worries me and I think acton might be worth a shot. If Freke concedes one, he almost certainly concedes a  second. The way we play we will definitely be giving up plenty of chances and conceding. I like Zabala and thought he should have had many more minutes last season but if Brown is at a similar standard to where he left then he will thrive in this formation and we will benefit from having him in the team. 

Overall i think we are definitely in a better spot than last season to be competitive and i like the brand of football ross seems to be playing but there is still gaping holes to fill if we want to win the league. 

That first half was fantastic. Basically spent 95% of it camped in Sydney's half.

They'll need to work out what went wrong in the second and remedy that. 

Does look promising for the season though.

A lot of positives against quality opposition in that first half of the Cup game. I am looking forward to watching from the 'big event stadium' at Suncorp this season. There is something about walking down Caxton Street and into Suncorp that makes every game there special.

For Sydney's second goal, Zabala was running back to cover when Sydney had us outnumbered in a 3 on 2, but instead of putting pressure on the free player Zabala just stopped running when he got near the penalty spot. Is it normal to just go to 'a dangerous spot' like that in cover or should he have kept on and at least attempted to even up the numbers.

It reminded me of (I think) Wilkshire in a World Cup game when he was marking a player near the penalty spot then inexplicably ran to cover the back post - leaving his opponent free to score - which he did. Same sort of thing with Zabala in that he made an effort to get back then covered a space rather than a player.

Ross substituted him soon after that but whether it was related or not I don't know.

Interesting comment from Ross after the Cup game (from the FTBL article): "A lot of other clubs go and buy strikers but it's important to produce our own."

Maybe we aren't going to be seeing a visa striker.

We are one step further in the Australia Cup this year and we have done it against decent opponents and playing better football.

Tonight's game against the Knights was a struggle and we lost a lot of the focussed intensity we have shown in previous games - particularly in the second half tonight. Some of the weaknesses we spoke about in defence showed up, and we were lucky that desperation covered that when we needed it. We did seem to lose some of the sharpness at the front end although we did not go back to the defensive shell style of play. Interesting to see us trying to hold the one goal advantage by keeping the ball in our front third (despite many turnovers) rather than slowly sliding back to our keeper then stuffing up.

Do you think we are getting tired - being pre-season and with Ross piling games on to get fit for the season?
Did we get a bit overwhelmed by the occasion with very little successful top level competition experience across our players?
Do we struggle to play through physical contact as opposed to just close marking?

Knights gave us a good hard run for it (as expected) and on the night we played a bit worse than we have been. Great to get the win, but we made it hard with wayward passing.

Looking forward to the final - hope we get a chance to host and they don't pull a 'traditional Sydney event' card on us to make up for the prospect of NSW losing their three year finals deal.