well it's game week so thats exciting but i just looked at the seat map for the game and it looks like they are only opening the eastern side of the bottom tier. we will be lucky to get 8k which is very disappointing. Thank god there are no mid summer arvo games at suncorp because that stand bakes in the sun and i avoid it at all costs. 

Interesting, thanks. Shows the lack of interest that there is a dearth of posts and just 3 days out from the season opener.

I’d say it’s to save on costs. No point in opening the whole stadium for the game. At least we are back at Suncorp.

Reasonably optimistic about the weekend although Macarthur look strong. Can’t give Davila too much free time and space on the ball.

I’m going to be optimistic and go for a 2-1 win. Austin penalty and Danzaki to score.

I am calling on anyone who stopped going to games when we moved to Moreton Daily - get to the game if you can and show them that there is reason to move back towards the city.

We have a good line-up and they can play great football.

I want to see our defensive group solid. That above all else is where we have been a bit weak lately. I don't mean playing a 7-2-1; I mean having the back 4 or 5 and DM working well to shut that area down and let the rest of the team concentrate on their own roles.

I want to see us play the ball through the midfield and up the wings with good passing and supportive running/positioning rather than stand in place or kick and hope.

Our front end is likely to improve over the season. Austin and Danzaki have the ability to beat good defenders - Hore, Mileusnic and Ivanovic can all create havoc. As they work more together in what I hope will be a relatively stable team (did I mention that is something else I want?) they will be able to sort out the rather random nature of our attack into something more clinically dangerous.

Macarthur are playing excellent football. I am concerned that Moon may set us up far too defensively, hold O'Shea back, and isolate our forwards again - hoping for the speedy counter. If he does, and it works, then good on him. I love watching fast interplay and good cohesive football but if we have to block out some teams and play on the counter I know that is also part of intelligent football.

I always sat in the Eastern stand at Suncorp in the stinking sun, so nothing new to me :)

We have nothing in our pre-season really to hang our ALM hopes on. I don't care - we can win this.

Come on you Roar!

In classic Roar form, membership packs will be available from 9 December, TWO MONTHS after the start of the season, due to "development and supply chain issues". I'm pretty sure this is a copy and paste from the last couple of seasons, as it seems to be the standard now.
I honestly feel like something is up with the admin/membership side of the club.

Love your positivity and agree with everything you’ve said - Ivanovic has since left us, replaced essentially by Carlo Armiento, ex-Perth and Adelaide winger.

Oh it is definitely to save costs if they get a run on tickets then they will open up more of the stadium but that would have happened by now if they were expecting more than 10k. 
the bottom tier hold 24k. if we are on a bit of a roll come end of season then i suspect they will for the final suncorp game. 

RIMB - you must be a little distracted because Ivanovic is no longer with us, we traded him for armiento from perth. however i think Knowles is better than Ivanovic anyway. 

I think with danzaki and austin we have more creativity up front which suits having oshae play deeper to control the tempo. I still think we are one out and out starter short, either in the CAM or in wide roles. Melusenic, hore, Jez, armiento should really be battling it out for one starting spot and then the others should be battling to get minutes off the bench. Unfortunately 2 of them will be starters unless Akbari can really start lifting his game to cement the CAM spot to move danzaki out wide, which i dont think will happen.

My personal preference would be to play a 3/5 at the back system but i dont think that is going to happen unfortunately. if everyone is fit then i think we will go with

Holmes
Hingert/Zabala, Chapman, Aldred, JCP/Hingert
Trewin, Oshae
milusenic, Danzaki, Hore
Austin  


my preferred would be

holmes
chapman, Aldred, JCP
Zabala, Trewin, Oshae, Hingert
Melusenic danzaki
Austin

That’s true. Here’s hoping that last Suncorp game we’re in a position to open a few more seats up. I’m just glad we’re back at Suncorp.

It’s really interesting Trewin is playing DM. I’d have expected Chapman to play there, although Trewin is excellent on the ball and is a good tackler. Maybe Moon wants to get him far away from the goal so he can stop scoring OGs lol

Yeeks - if I knew Ivanovic was gone I forgot it completely. Doesn't even ring a bell with him and Armiento swapping.

Trewin was a very promising CB and Chapman was our intended DM - funny how things work out.

Sirhcdobo - you rate Chapman better than Neville - or just don't rate Neville that highly?

I am interested to see how Knowles comes on with us. His skills and strength might see him earning a starting place over Mileusnic and Hore as the season progresses. Strikes me as another who can beat a good defender to score in those tight matches.

Agree with Knowles he was very good in the EPL games but i do think striker is more his spot so a good option for when Austin is gassed. 

I definitely rate Chapman better than Neville. Neville is great in a 3 at the back, so thinking again my preference would be for Neville-aldred-chapman if we went to 3 at the back 
but he is a liability when playing a 4 at the back in either the CB or RB role. he is not quite defensive minded enough to plat CB and not good enough going forward for RB. but when he can play in the pocket attacking and have defensive cover as with a 3 at the back he is great. 

We’ll, it was good to be back at Suncorp, but a disappointing crowd. I don’t mind the idea of filling just one side of the ground but how about filling the bays next to the Den - better atmosphere and a better look on telly when they film the home end. What other sport/team fills the away end first????

Thought we looked decent first half. The back five is really solid. Armiento looks a good signing (just quit the diving - you too Arzani) and we actually seemed to have a plan. Felt like we were never under any pressure. We should have got more from that game. The Bulls were pretty poor.

Most disappointing thing for me that the last 20 mins we seemed happy with 0-0. Did Moon forget we were the home team? Here was a chance to get our season off to a great start and just maybe entice a fan or two to Dolphin Stadium in future. But we were happy to knock it round at the back till time ran out.
The more I see of Moon the less I rate him. His chummy laugh with York immediately after seeing his team drop two points at home was not a good look for me.

Yes as I have said before...Moon is a nice bloke but does he have the goods to take Roar further, I sincerely doubt it.
MacArthur have Yorke, we have Moon.
Chalk and Cheese so far as experience or pulling power.
Im very disappointed to lose Ivanovic, wasn’t over the moon when he came but he proved me and others wrong.
He’s a young striker And managed to score some and invariably effect the game if used as a sub. How he could of profited with Austin near him. Disappointing.

I always liked Ivanovic. We needed to swap him and Armiento though for our left wingback problems- but where Armiento had a huge game with total involvement for us I thought that Ivanovic was left isolated and barely useful for Glory tonight. Shame for him but early days and he could get opportunities yet.

I also think we made Macarthur play much poorer than they are expected to play.

Similar to how a lot of teams had 'bad games' against us last season, I think our new/current defensive line up has got what it takes to stifle and frustrate a lot of good attacking teams.

Just need Moon to get the front third working better - and to his credit our first half on Saturday did show a lot more ability to bring the ball forwards with more structured and effective interplay back and forth between our lines. The way we carried the ball as a group was better able to breach a well structured defence without relying on the lightning interplay we so often require to get through.

Yes mate I agree with you and maybe Mooney is improving as a coach but we really want to see something of a more structured and settled lineup this season.
i think he has had long enough To pretty much figure out who goes where and how the pieces fit together over the last couple seasons.
Ok...there’s new faces but they just fit in easily, eg Austin, Danzaki.
I think The better coaches figure this out quicker, settle on it and go with it...give it time and then change if necessary.
Last year I didn’t know who was going to play where week to week. 
Hopefully this will be sorted more or less this season. 

Not really, if Austin gets injured 'Mooney' would have to figure out whether to leave Knowles up front with Armiento or Akbari or O'Shea's, or if he should continue with two up front, or chamge to one striker.
Still alittle unsettled.

it was great to be back at suncorp and 8.5k was actually  better than i was expecting and huge credit to the den they were great. suncorp is so much better than dolphins for active support, even with 8.5k in cavernous suncorp (which would make dolphins look packed) the den was much louder and created a better atmosphere. 

i dont think it was moon that caused the last 20 slow down, loosing hingert and armiento really blunt our attack (and those changes were enforced by cramp). moon was apoplectic in the last 10 minutes when danzaki played back to aldred when we had a break. he damn near broke a railing which i heard from the other side of the stadium. 

there were some really good points. Our defence did fantastically to stop a MacArthur attacking line up that is really dangerous. davilla, dasilva and arzani can glide past players and cause real problems but there was always an orange shirt to come across and force them away from goal or win the ball. we looked very calm bringing the ball out and it was good to see the Fowler era interplay between wing back, outside centre back and midfielder to move the ball forward when the wing back gets trapped with the ball on the sideline around halfway. the players seem to actually have a game plan to bring the ball forward instead of relying on individual spark to beat a player. armiento was great and can actually provide a decent cross but still not consistently .

some worrying points for me. the final 3rd. hopefully this is because we haven't had much time to practice with a back 3/5 so havent quite worked out the interplay in the final 3rd but we are relying on crosses and we just dont have the players capable of delivering them consistently. 8 accurate crosses from 33 and that is not including the (many) that were blocked in the wide positions while attempting a cross. From the weekend only adl delivered more crosses (39) and they were playing against 10 men for the majority of the game. we need another option to bring the ball into the box because we are simply not going to score goals just lofting balls into the box from wide. we need to do a lot of work at choosing the times when we cross early and the times when we interplay to out wide to work the ball into the box.

It is a different formation but we looked most dangerous in preseason when Austin was dropping in to get the ball in the centre leaving room for danzaki and melusenic to use their skill to burst forward into the gap he left. on the weekend austin played much higher but he hardly got the ball and we didnt really look dangerous at all. 

On Ivanovic, i think if you look at the output of Armiento from the weekend and compare it to pretty much any game ivanovic has played, we have won out big time with the trade. 
.

I found this one of the most unsettling aspects of last season and for me the biggest cause of our poorer performances.

How can players develop the cohesion we need in a starting eleven when the team/roles changed by more than one or two players most games? I think it has taken time, but Moon has his ideas now about the starting side; giving him the luxury of once again playing with the bench week in, week out, to provide variety and options (like most other coaches have been able to).

Assuming what we saw on Saturday is mostly our starting team now (no guarantee it is not just 22/23.001), our bench is now a place where the alternate players will be driven to take their chances and get onto the field. The wider group rotation policy we saw last season did not force that much pressure on the bench since everyone got a turn to some extent. I agree that Moon still needs to know if injuries to focal players like Austin can be solved by a single individual, by two players, and/or by structural change before we might need them. For the most part I want to see that as 60th minute experimentation and maintain consistency in the starting side though.

Hore v Knowles will be a question for Moon that can only be answered by mixing it up I am afraid - so we might see some switching around when Hore gets fit again. They are very different players and will fit with their teammates in different ways. Not a bad situation for Moon to work through - I like both of them.

I didn’t realise Henry was injured - how far off is he?

So... looks like the club might be behind in rent for YET ANOTHER training ground....

https://twitter.com/vincerugari/status/1584291591266914306?s=46&t=BvGSfJCcQyuxv4Obx6hboQ

 Gold Coast Suns chairman Tony Cochrane blasts Brisbane Roar over claims of unpaid rent
The future of a proposed elite sporting complex on the Gold Coast is in doubt with two national sporting teams at loggerheads over claims of unpaid rent and a $200,000 ratepayer-funded upgrade.
THE Brisbane Roar and Gold Coast Suns are at loggerheads over claims the A-League side is pulling out of a deal to build a new base at Carrara.
Tony Cochrane, chairman of the Suns AFL club, said the deal to relocate the Brisbane team’s training and operations to the Gold Coast has fallen through and has left his club nearly $60,000 out of pocket in “outstanding rent”.
A furious Mr Cochrane is now demanding the A-League franchise pay back “every single cent”.
“They have completely let us down and it is really poor form,” he said.
“We recognised from day one their proposal was a load of rubbish but we reluctantly went along with it and now we have been left high and dry with a bill for $60,000 and we are not happy to say the least – and that’s me being polite.
“The truth is, we were used and abused … I don’t think they ever intended to shift their whole thing down here.”
However, the Roar dispute Mr Cochrane’s claims, insisting they have made no final decision about the club’s future on the Gold Coast.
“We have made no decision, nor have we made any announcement concerning our training base,” the club said in a statement on Sunday.
“The Gold Coast sports precinct training field is hired on a ‘when used’ basis and is currently not available for a period of two months due to maintenance.
“Unfortunately, due to the maintenance of the football fields and other related venue hire for cricket, there are currently no facilities available for Brisbane Roar to train on at the Gold Coast Sports Precinct.
“In the past, back-up training fields have been rented from the Gold Coast Suns.”
Roar officials confirmed they had received an invoice for $11,280.01 from the Suns earlier this month.
The Roar announced it would relocate its facilities and headquarters to the Gold Coast in late 2020 after a long-running feud with the Logan City Council over an alleged unpaid bills.
Pictures of the elite training ground built by the gold coast city council at the back of Metricon stadium for the Brisbane Roar to train on. Picture by Richard Gosling
The three-time A-League champions had trained at Logan Metro Sports Park between 2018 and late 2020 after the Logan council invested more than $9m into the venue’s upgrade.
But the relationship between the parties soured in October 2020, with the Logan council suing the Roar over alleged unpaid utility bills – mostly water – to the value of $153,714.96.
The Roar were then lured to the city by the Gold Coast City Council offering a “significant” amount of money in incentives for the club to move.
Plans were announced for a giant elite training centre after the council transferred funds from its strategic priority reserve to build the new field.

The Council also spent more than $200,000 upgrading the playing fields for the Roar.
The Bulletin understands none of the incentive funding was ultimately given to the club.
Deputy Mayor Donna Gates said she was disappointed and called for a review of the council’s incentives program in the wake of the dispute.
On Friday evening she lodged a question on notice with council CEO Tim Baker asking for a report on the deal.
“We agreed to provide an elite training ground and we provided an incentive to them to relocate their operations here to the Gold Coast but now it hasn’t worked out,” she said.
“I want answers about how much we actually invested in this.
“I want stronger structures in governance around making allocations of ratepayer’s money in the belief that it will provide something of value.”
Ms Gates said she wanted the city to work in the best interests of all national sporting teams.

"We recognised from day one their proposal was rubbish but went along with it..."

Fuck sake - I know bugger all about the details but to go along with it means you are equally culpable. Can't claim you were mislead if you admit you saw it was crap from the start.

Complaining about a two legged race horse they agreed to buy together is what that smacks of.

After you've defended the 78th shit laden issue the Roar's been involved in do you start wondering if there is a common denominator?

I can't defend what I really know nothing about. Just sounds typical for someone to say they understood it was a poor decision then complain when it falls through.

Unfortunately mate the common denominator is the owners!!
don’t go putting your shot on the fans and players please. 

So the Sun's claim $60k out of pocket but only sent the Roar a bill for $11k?

To be fair on davide it is a fairly asked question. Your response covers it nicely.

I didn't feel attacked and don't find his attention offensive. Calls what he sees - even if he is just a one-eyed, ignorant Reds supporter.

Sorry. That is actually what I was trying to say. Didn't mean it to sound like a dig at RIMB or anyone.
I meant don't you get tired of having to defend the Bakries etc

Together we have two eyes at least

Yeah; but my eye works ;)