Pretty good video.
certainly getting me excited anyway.

Its certainly a far cry from last years bench.
though i'll admit ill be a bit pissed if any of those guys are left out.
if only dave would be more flexible with his formations.

There's an article on the Glory website now:

http://www.perthglory.com.au/default.aspx?s=newsdisplay&id=27769

Obviously he reviewed the Meacock index before commenting.

=d>

Dave should patent his Meacock Index, people'll steal it! :p

A typo and a spelling error. :-k

How many are arriving early july? Jelic at least, maybe Jacob and Todd too?

Hopefully they can still play well with such a short time together.

cannot wait to see the boys in action plus the new recruits ... jelic, burns, todd, sterjovski ..... gonna be a great season up ahead, totally need to praise tony sage, dave mitchell and lui guiliani .. wat legends

my excitment is making me feel like a little kid lol

I sure they will be her in time for the EPL games....

I think Mitch said sometihng along the liens of the European players usually have a break in June so he doesn't want to disrupt their routine. So yea those guys would be arriving in July I guess

hmmm so guys ... since we have our marquee sorted (thank god, how long have we been waiting for this) that rules out mpenza joining our squad lol .... how many spots do we have left now that we can fit under salary cap, i know we got an international spot still available, anything else?

I think Sterj was our 20th player so 3 spots left.

ahh kk sweet ... cheers.

my ideal way to use up the last 3 spots.

- foreign left back like a cassio type figure
- C.Coyne
- a young gun from any of the state league's around oz.

Mile will be great for this club and the A League. I have just read a blog he does on www.fast4football.com He talks about the move made so much more attractive by teaming up with socceroo team mate Jacob Burns. He also has a link on there to the Perth Glory website. How is that for showing enthusiasm for his new club, been with them a day and proudly promoting his new club, an absolute sensational buy. Well done Tony and Mitch!

Bingo, my sentiments too.

While Mitch was over in Sydney, he not only met Mile, he watched some NSW State League games/players over there - so he's certainly interested in finding some state league boys, whether it's our state or over east, to top off our squad.

People mention Sekulovski and say he is young and still developing - but he's been with our club since A-League season one (05/06) and he's 27, he's already entering his prime. With the increased standard of our squad he should only be a squad player, part of the rotation. TBH I'm surprised he survived the cull, given the number of players we let go. But I suppose he hasn't been too bad for us.

But really, it's surprising - Harnwell aside, he's not far behind Coyne as one of the longest serving Glory players still in our squad! :o 61 games for us, according to his Wiki entry, he's almost a Glory veteran. Mind you the rest of the squad are relatively new to Glory, having only joined the squad within the past two seasons! :o

But really, it's time we added some more class there, to freshen things up. Brent Griffiths comes through, but he's still very young and if we want to challenge for the premiership, we need to strengthen all parts of the field. And while we still have a VISA spot free, we may aswell use it on a decent LB, especially if we have Chris Coyne or Adrian Madaschi lined up, for our CB rotation. :o

BTW With the LB thing - AFAIK, Mitch has only 'scouted' in Europe and the state leagues. Hopefully he has checked out some South Americans, Asians even African LBs, but at the very least, he probably checked out some LBs in Europe, be they Aussie expats, like Steffanuto or Shane Cansdell-Sheriff or Euro guys similar in stature to Jelic or Todd.

He spent alot of time in that European scouting trip, so hopefully Todd, Jelic, Mile and maybe Coyne, are not the only results from that trip. But if they are, that was still a pretty good scouting trip!

Edited by gloryperth: 13/6/2009 12:29:28 AM

This pre season shall be very immportant for assesing the quality of our young kids.

Yeah i expect a few of them to get a run on Tuesday....

http://www.fast4football.com/My-move-to-Perth.html

That's really interesting to see how he feels about his move to Perth.

I personally reckon that this is the equal second best signing of the year in the A-League, with the Carlos Hernandez transfer being the best. It just shows how much of a reputation the league is getting. Hernandez (transfer instead of loan), Fowler, Culina, Sterjovski, Burns, Todd have all come in this year and it is brilliant. I can't wait for this season to start, it will be brilliant. We should just stuff defence and try and score more goals than our opponents. :P

I reckon our two big games this year will be Gold Coast in round 6 at home and Sydney at Subi in Round 15. Melbourne game at home should be big, but not as big as the others. Thats my top four.

Gold Coast
Perth (maybe first depending on how todd or the Gold Coast brazilians turn out)
Melbourne
Sydney

FP General, if you're going to the game on Tuesday can you write up a story for us? I have a school game up at Clarkson on Tuesday so I won't be able to get there.

I'll try head down and check it out.
so you can get a nice amateur report from me hahahaha.
and Sterj aye.
what a legend.
he seems like a great bloke from that blog.

Yeah I was going to go down and check it out and write a short report afterwards (wont be too fancy).

TommyCash: Haiku Poster.

;)

In the west australian today, Dave mentioned he is going to use Mile as a central striker. I wonder how he will use Dadi and Jelic.

Dadi deserves a spot on the pitch, he was the first Glory player to make it to double digits in the A-League

Central striker hey ?
perhaps he'll have two people beside him hahahaha.

He could play 433 if he really wanted to, but i don't think he will, i think he'll stick to 442

he did mention playing sterj in a central striking role ....

i think best option would be to stick to a 4-4-2 but have sterj playing as more of an attacking centre mid ... just behind the 2 striker but centrally, with dadi and jelic deep up front ... then burns behind sterj in the centre and more defensive ... thats my best bet

We all have these dream formations.
but if Mitch does bust out something thats not 442 i would be amazed.

The thing is guys, from what I've heard, good coaches (esp those at NT level), adapt their formations, style, to the talent they have. If they have players who are tending to be more capable in one area, or less in another, or lack sufficient talent in a particular area on the pitch, like a Left Winger or something, then they may play a formation or style, which does not rely on such a position or player and may favour the strengths of the squad at their disposal.

Mind you, in a club situation, with the sufficient backing from the club's ownership, managers can and do adapt their squads to suit their own formations/styles/philosophy. Certainly Mitchell has done a bit of this through his squad clearout, including deciding on who to keep in that process and his subsequent purchases.

I think we can safely say that Mitchell's scenario is more the latter as this squad is well and truly 'his' now. And he's brought the players in aswell as kept those, who he sees as fitting with his plans. So yeah, unless he's deciding to spring a new formation/style on us, it will likely be not too unlike last season, formations wise. Though, perhaps with the players he's brought in, Mitch's style/philosophy that's he's tried to implement since he took over, may be executed better, by this squad. That's the idea, one would think anyway.


BTW Some of us have brought him up before, but Ali Abbas would be a great candidate for us, as our LB/LWB and 5th VISA player. He featured on TWG today and I know he's a more attacking player, but he's class and would certainly be good enough for our league. He may not be known too much for his defensive work (But I mean that literally, I don't know), but he's still relatively young (22) and being in our league would improve his game playing at LB and improve his European prospect which he certainly has. He will improve his defensive side and perhaps workrate/off the ball and in Glory's case he'd have Sikora up ahead of him, to interplay and overlap, with and guys like Burns, Todd etc.. to interact with on the park.

If we win the Premiership or Finals and get that place for 2012's ACL then he could be our +1 AFC player, when it comes to that campaign - if he's still around (Not already in Europe) by then. He'd be relatively cheap, wage wise too - you'd get damn good bang for your buck aswell as perhaps a good transfer fee from Europe, if things work out well. And he will have the fire in his belly to impress for sure, bc he IS young and willing to grow and improve, aswell as being keen on Europe. He's also mended fences with Iraq's football federation and is keen to return to Iraq's NT. He's already been capped 7 times for the NT, including featuring in the 2007 Asian Cup where we lost to them.

He's well worth pursuing. let's get in there before, Sydney FC or others do. BTW On TWG he clearly showed he speaks a decent level of English - better than I expected.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ali_Abbas_Al-Hilfi

Edited by gloryperth: 15/6/2009 03:37:56 AM

Has anyone heard any info regarding whether the KO times at MES will change due to WA rejecting Daylight Saving? I would expect that all the games here during the Eastern States' period of Daylight Saving will kick-off an hour earlier to keep in line with Foxtel's demands

Hopefully they stay the same.
otherwise they'll have to reprint all the fixture cards ahahaa.
eyah i'm hoping we can get a player akin to Ali Abbas.
hes in the LB position we need to fill so urgently but he may not be as goood as Mitch wants.