Qualification will probably come down to our match against Japan at home. 

I suspect that the Saudi game will be live. Will make for some very nervous moments.

                    Ryan
Karacic    Sains    Degenek   Elder
             Jeggo      Irvine  
Boyle          Hrustic     Mcgree      

Yep, I was screaming at the TV when that happened. He had only been on for two minutes.

Unless Arnold told him from sideline not to chase, that was the most pathetic thing I’ve ever seen from a Socceroos sub in 24 years! Does Nabbout give a shit about fucking up a pass and nearly costing us a goal or not??!! Unforgivable imho. Call up Ikon, Arzani, even Borello rather than that unfit hack that doesn’t deserve another cap

Nabbout's trotting along had me so mad. Behich was tired and needed help.

McGowan and Wright have come into squad. Souttar and Nabbout are out. 

Is that official?

https://www.socceroos.com.au/news/socceroos-announce-squad-changes-china-pr-clash

Yeah all on Socceroos website.

https://www.socceroos.com.au/news/socceroos-announce-squad-changes-china-pr-clash

Nabbout will feature for Victory tonight apparently. 

You had me there. He'll probably wear a light blue shirt.

Ahh that's right he's moved! Haven't been paying best attention. 

I am really concerned about the next three games, if we don’t get 9 points from them our chances of finishing in the top two are not good. And I think all three of our next opponents will have learnt a lot since the last games, and will be more capable of frustrating a Socceroos side which has been shown under Arnold to be very inflexible tactically.

Would not be surprised if we fail to qualify. This is a poor group of players being selected on the basis of the personal history by a coach well out of his depth. 

Pretty devastated by Souttar's injury.

Praying for some form of miracle with it.

McGowan (Kuwait SC) over Grant (Pohang) is interesting. Going for Roos experience even though Grant is preparing for the ACL final on the 24th.

That's very true. I guess McGowan is only in Kuwait and can play right back too but we're totally stocked there. It's an Arnie favourite unfortunately. 

I think Grant will likely come in for one of the windows. Deng really needs to sort himself out. If Spiranovic kicks on again he'll be under consideration. I really hope Susnjar has another strong season. 

I'm hoping Arnie plays Stensness over Wright & McGowan. Wright not starting or getting minutes at the moment for Sunderland & McGowan hasn't really played that much either lately, apart from cup games etc by the look of it. 
Stensness playing 90 mins every week in a fairly strong league & we know how good he is from his days in the a league. 

If we don't get full points then we probably don't deserve to qualify. Saudi Arabia or Japan or both will drop points on MD8. We need to bank the 9 points. The top 3 teams play the 4th place Oman during these game so they have a bit of a say in the final standings      

Chinese colleagues are telling me this is being pitched as a cultural chance to "slap" naughty Australia .... will be interesting game that's for sure if thats the case.

I would've thought the last game would have been that chance just as much, if not more so.

Instead it turned out to be an embarrassing night for them.

Yep Australia very naughty compared to China claiming other countries waters and building artificial military bases in them 

Does anyone else find it as irritating as I do that Arnie always uses the same “it was a great performance” rhetoric in the media no matter how poorly we’ve played and never acknowledges our deficiencies or underwhelming performances. Just so predictable after the Saudi game that he says “we created so many chances but the ball just wouldn’t go in tonight” which is such typical Arnie bullshit and such an inaccurate representation of the game. So frustrating listening to him. 

Yeah it's bad. I'm pretty sure Ange was a bit more realistic but also stubborn to admit his own faults. Now at Celtic Ange seems to go a little more directly into what went wrong. There's all this chat on not scrutinizing publicly and I'm not so sure where I stand on that. At the same time the blame is and can always be shifted between coaches and players. I just want some honesty from Arnold where he states what we didn't do and why it was the case and what is going to be done to rectify it. His overly positive coaching from the sideline is annoying too. I get the passion but the claiming for a free kick every time we get nudged is too much.

Well he was correct, we were the better team for the majority of the game, SA coming into it when he brought on the pathetic substitution (Nabbout). We had 3 clear cut chances that we could've converted, that Would've changed the game completely. Would you prefer the coach to be saying we were useless etc etc with another game 5 days later? 

You sure you aren’t Graham Arnold!? We were poor overall with very few shots on target and if anyone deserved the win, it was Saudi. How many saves did their keeper need to make? Virtually none. I’m not asking him to publicly criticise his players. I just expect some level of honesty rather than him treating fans like fools, and doing his best to avoid scrutiny by pretending that all is fine. I’m not just talking about this game - this is standard Arnie behaviour when things aren’t going well. The reality is, we took 1 point from a possible 6 in the last two games, yet listen to Arnie and he’ll have you believe that we played great in both games and were desperately unlucky not to win both. 

I'm happy for him to keep pumping up the boy's tyres & keep that belief going. We'll agree to disagree about the performance - I still believe we deserved to win that one. We were substandard against Japan, but we nearly stole a draw.
Arnie's problem is that he's making mistakes with squad selection & substitutions + he's playing guys out of position nearly every game. Irvine is a completely different player when he's playing at number 10 for his club. Plus we definitely missed Rogic's creativity & Mooy's control. 

I still can’t fathom why Arnold put Leckie up front when he’s not a striker?! In such a tough & important game it was a really bizarre decision. Hope Ruka or Jmac start China game. But icing on the cake for bad decisions was Nabbout being in squad and actually getting game time when Atkinson could have been out there instead. It’s not like Arnold hasn’t seen how good Atkinson is first hand?! Wonder if Arnold is actually losing his mind a bit at times

Definitely agree with you about the squad selection issues. I was glad to see Jeggo start but felt it was long overdue. I can’t understand why Elder is not getting more of a chance at LB after being such a consistently strong performer at club level. Grant is an Arnie favourite and I feel like he’s probably only the 3rd best option right now at RB behind Atkinson and Karacic. I agree completely that Irvine is a whole lot better when played further up the field. The Leckie and Nabbout decisions were inexplicable. In a game that we needed to really win, we had only three players in the squad who’ve been consistent goal scorers for their clubs in the last couple of years (Boyle, McLaren and Rukavytsa) and two of the three didn’t see a minute of game time. 

Yep it really pisses me off. It comes across as either totally ingenuous, or not having a clue.

Game day!