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Ok, I can keep going here but let's put it aside now and get constructive instead. You're entitled to opinion on Brattan, I just happen to disagree with it. Rather than keep digging and re-justifying myself, I'll tell you what I believe. I actually think he's not lazy at all and quite like him as a player. I also think he is a hard worker as evidenced by his conditioning this season. I don't see any evidence that he was pushed to try - I believe the whole group has been challenged to get fitter this season by the coach. He may be ponderous on the ball but i believe that is more a function of our style and structure than himself as a player. I would also put Kilkenny in the same boat. They're not #10 style linking up with the striker type players - they're box to box / defensive type midfielders who need a more creative player in front of them to link with. This is where I believe our main problem is and have crapped on about it for ages now. We were very fortunate (and probably spoiled) to have witnessed Mooy playing (who is creative and can play those diagonal reverse through balls) and linking up with come to me, skillful forwards such as Fornaroli and Novillo. We don't have that player now. IMO, Caceres wasn't the answer and the club lucked out by first Troisi and then that Croat dude changing their minds. I believe Budzinski was a last minute, last one left, pickup that sadly has not worked. Mauk too is not a creative midfielder, rather imo, a defensive forward to who is there chiefly to pressure defences. What that all leaves us with is two quality midfielders who look slow with decision making because they have no-one to link with. Their only other option is to spray long wide balls to Fitzy and Kamau who are good, adept players but also prone to being wasteful. Same with McCormack - he relies on long balls over the top rather than coming and meeting the midfielders (Fornaroli style). Unfortunately for Kilkenny, it seems like he has reacted negatively (attitude) and is in danger now of staying in the squad whereas Brattan is fighting for his position - again this is how i see it. Rightly or wrongly, Joyce has concentrated on fixing his defence first. This January period provides us with a great opportunity to rectify this problem, however I honestly believe we won't go looking for that creative midfielder, instead I think we'll ditch Budzinski and play Fornaroli and McCormack together. I guess we just have to wait and see what happens. I hope that makes sense.

Caceras Gol

This forum has been fucked for a while. I do enjoy the sane voices that pop up from time to time though.

Have you been under a rock for the past few weeks? That's precisely how all this started, and it ended with his departure from the club.

It's not gay if they identify as woman

Seriously (exaggerated eye roll included) from Pierias's one appearance he showed more than Muscat has imho, but tbf Muscat does have a decent cross on him, but at his age won't be getting much better, he is what he is. It depends what you see as important or improvement, keep the status quo which is average but dependable. Or show some faith in a fella who could improve exponentially, who has shown he can compete at this level and 'could' (operative word) improve further and impact games like Fitzy is? Consider Ajax who's champions league team's average age was 23, now HAL isn't no champions league, if they have young guys running about there, but we are to scared to in this league, I call bs. With our facilities and set up we could become the Ajax of Australia and have a revolving door for young Aussies to Europe and a good cash flow so we don't care about crowd size. Mooy's sale was worth more than CFG payed for the actual club, a few more gems it's almost free to run and a good way for Manchester to inflate it's fair play spending. Reputation rises sales are easier, more investments can be made and it's snow ball time, who knows maybe we may have someone play for Manchester one day? Don't kid yourself that the HAL isn't a development league, when the whole team wage cap could pay for only one player in Europe or Asia. We should capitalise on what we have and it's not player spending power, it's our facilities, coaching staff and opportunities we can provide. Rant over.

We both can keep this rolling forever and I appreciate the will to stop this nonsense. It certainly makes sense and touches many areas not just Brattan. First of all agree with creativity issues, in fact one of my posts here was about lack of creativity. It was a post about Mooy actually. He was slow on the ball initially and was pain to watch first games. He became better in several weeks or when Villa departed. Whatever was the reason he became our best asset very quickly. I do not agree though with Ross characteristics. Yes, he is not the same type as Bruno, but he is not Cahill (pure box poacher) type either. I personally think all 3 are great forwards. Ross does works in the midfield and some of his passes there are Championship level. My impression is that he follows Wazza's instructions more thoroughly then Bruno and it's Wazza's idea for him to stay up all the time. Again in preseason, I witnessed when Joyce screamed to Bruno to stay in the center but Bruno constantly drifted sideways and did not obey. I think they might be very good paired. Ross upfront might give Bruno that edge which was provided by Novillo earlier. But having said this, both Bruno and Ross are slow runners and we need quick alternative there. Hence, young quick forwards are essential. For the time period I thought Fitzy could be a better version of Novillo - quicker than him naturally and able to cut in and score. Now I just hope he will be. Fitzy is definetelly the most improved player last season. But he regressed sometime around Sydney game. Still manages to make a couple of great crosses in 90 mins which is good, but not good enough. Still think he is a player with one of the best attitude in the team and I am sure he will continue improvement. Kamau started season like a new player but something happened and he is one dimensional again. We do not know exactly what happened and it seemed a lot of bad stuff happened in the Club with Valkanis and Timmy's démarche, potential Killa issues, so I do not blame Bruce and Nick for anything. Attitude is right and result will eventually come for both. Now coming to the most painful area. Midfield. And here we see our ManCity superstar - Brattan. He was introduced as Mooy replacement in "creative" department, not as defensive mid. Never worked out. I personally never expected him to be as good as Mooy and probably nobody did. He was slow with decisions, many times slow to tackle. Gaps to big for the attacking midfielder. That episode from preseason I mentioned, Wazza constantly screamed to Brattan "tackle, tackle" and one time word to word "too easy" when he was again outplayed. He also sucks most of the time in defense - costed us a goal against Perth is recent example. He definitely played better in smaller areas, but again he was introduced as central attacking option. I prefer Killa or Malik (with all his flaws), even Jako in defensive midfield. I also challenge his professional attitude, he clearly was very comfortable last year and did not maintain himself before preseason. Just remember his "4th month" belly. Now, judging from the glimpse of quality we saw from Brattan, I am sure he can develop his abilities further and he should really take current opportunities to solidify his position. He is most definitively in the "drain list" of the first team regulars. I will be glad to be wrong about any player I consider bad in MCFC squad. Now it is clear what style Joyce was working on - aggressive football when opposition is suffocated and left with no space. It did work brilliantly against Victory and generally in the start of the season. Our defensive players also mentioned it several times - it is much easier to defend now because defense is starting on the opposition side. That was the reason why Brattan appeared on the bench - simply not suitable for this style. Laziness or natural ability, doesn't matter. I think it's both. I have a feeling that Joyce is sort of stuck with him at the moment - Casseras left, Carrusca injured. So it's basically Brattan or Mauk. Mauk, once my favorite Heart player, is another underachiever. Too much fret with little result. But he is better option to Brattan too. I think if Casseras was around or Carrusca fit having Mauk and either of them would be a good option. I still do not understand the purpose of Budzik and agree that he was "just to get anything" option. Joyce desperately tries to push the game to the opposition side again, hence we see experiments with Jaco in the midfield. He is putting everything to help midfield. Do not want to talk much about defense here. It's good. Even Muscut. His attitude is great. He reminds me Murdocca's attitude. Limited talent but hard working. He also had games where his crosses were better then wingers. Hope the goal he scored will give him a boost. Hope this will help to understand why Brattan is the weakest link in my opinion and is not just a person to blame for everything.

Came from behind to beat Perth 2-1 today.

The forum cancer is spreading. Its an epidemic

wE wILL NeVEr Win AnyTHIng iF RedmAynE IS oUr KeEpER. iTs HIs FauLT WE aLWaYs LOsE

Can’t have visa players under 21 blokes. League rules

I have now been diagnosed with forum cancer

Wazza clearly doesn’t rate Kilkenny and Genreau. Basically it seems everything he thinks about football is the opposite of me. Going to be a long 18 months.

I hope a hard nosed coach comes in, decides 38 year olds aren’t the best approach for a World Cup, and he doesn’t even make the plane for Russia.

Good fucking riddance!

Can you post a vid of the fence painting?

Either Watching someone paint a fence or watching us play tonight would bring the same level of enjoyment

Best bet would be an old timer takes the reigns for a year and then someone younger like possibly Frydenberg tries to sell a new story. I think a New Labor AKA Tony Blair approach is needed with the party going back to an emphasis on actually being literally “liberal” in how it tackles issues. A undisputed leader is the biggest need for both sides of politics at the moment.

Your best post yet

Walker is still fucking us over too #yoof

Its incurable. Many great posters are sadly no longer with us or not strong enough to endure the pain and suffering and we are worst for it. We need to band together to find a cure or we all will fall ill, wither and die a lonely desperate death.

Up until the 90s state and federal parliaments were on a maximum of three year terms. State parliaments moved to four year terms and now some are on fixed four year terms. This has not stopped the 'election mode' politics and my observations of overseas polities indicate the same thing. This could be for a variety of reasons, one of which I think is the media itself because it is cheap to generate since politicians are static, like publicity and politics are part of the daily fabric. As for being indistinguishable you have a point. When the ALP embraced market liberalism what had been a differentiating point blurred. The Liberal Party moved further to the right economically (case in point the number of ex-IPA MPs/Senators) and 'the culture wars' became the point of difference. The side effect of this has been a decreasing number of people joining political parties and an increase in the reliance on focus groups and think tanks. I remain baffled as to why focus groups are required because MPs should have a very good intuition of where the voters are. As an old time lefty, the ALP is not to the left of the spectrum. Certainly politicians from the 60s and 70s would not recognise any of the current parties. I tend to concur with you regarding the different strains pulling at the LP. Part of the problem is that the definition of Conservative is changing - Menzies governments were high taxing, protectionist and interventionist governments. Which is one of the reasons why he never founded a Conservative party. He was for God, Queen and Country and culturally conservative (although he lived through large social changes). I would add another factor that is plaguing the LP - personality politics between Abbot and Turnbull. During the 80s the ALP had a free kick when Howard and Peacock turned on each other. This decade it has been Abbot and Turnbull. They appear to be different but practically they follow the same economic policies, same refugee policies and it was Abbot who promised a plebiscite but delivered by Turnbull. They have their differences on the social spectrum but otherwise they are the same. It is good to see that you want tighter welfare and to close the tax loopholes because if you are pensioner you certainly are seeing the tightening but corporations seem to be paying less and less taxes. I would disagree with you on this. The 50s and 60s saw a general rebellion against religion. You could not be a religious conservative and believe in freedom because that was a challenge to the establish order of the power of the church. In Victoria this power was wielded mercilessly by Archbishop Mannix. In the end it led to the protection of pedophiles in the church with one central Victorian policeman effectively shutting down any investigation of any priest, purging any police officer who would investigate and damaging the reputation of the victim and their families. It is strange seeing Conservatives calling for the protection of religious freedom yet all my life they have been at the forefront of pushing against a bill of rights which includes religious protections. And of course the same arguments against a bill of rights can be used their proposals. For the record, I think what has been happening in the West (broadly speaking) is the internalisation of religion. That is, you can believe what ever you want just as long as you keep it to yourself. This of course would mean a shift in power from the established churches to individuals. It would also be against the proselytizing demanded by the monotheistic religions.

We signed the right polish bloke didn’t we?

Of course we don't know the details and it's basically bullshit speculation on my part. But what is solid. 1. Kilkenny was by far our best and more importantly most consistent player last season. 2. He is not injured or hasn't been injured for weeks. 3 Not to even make match day squad and have "youth team" players instead is a clear statement.

That 15K figure spouted pre season looks fanciful now. Eclipsing last season's is highly unlikely also.

But to isolate a player, a quality player is very poor and weak management.

There must be problems between Kilkenny and Wazza. Cant see any other reason for him not getting more game time.

It's concerning to read that some think that Brattan is our weakest link, whilst we have Malik, Muscat, Kamau and Mauk consistently in our line up. Or do you mean weakest link just in midfield? Regardless of how fat, lazy or slow he is, in my opinion he is a more skillful and complete player than any of the above 4. I can understand that people are disapointed thinking that Luke was going to be a Mooy replacement, however he was never brought in as a marquee or anything with those qualities. Rass is 100% correct in saying that Brattan is keeping the ball with him a little longer sometimes as he knows that some hard and quick balls will end up in a turn over as some of our players struggle controlling under pressure or whilst being on pace. Last season he even skipped Bruno and Tim occasionally as in some games their first touch was horrendous.

Players who won't play tomorrow because they played today: Kilkenny, Metcalfe and Genreau. Players possible for tomorrow: Atkinson, Pierias, Arzani, Najjarine, Roberts. And Crowley.

https://www.foxsports.com.au/video/football/football/full-tim-cahill-interview!655695

Seriously surely we can get someone on this forum preselected given we are 95% of the LDP voters in Victoria.

I made some real good money that game.

Better dead than Red!

As a self appointed Walkerist, it sounds like Atkinson had a really good game and made a difference last weekend, if he is taking the place of Pierias, he must be doing something right. That said it sounds like he played as a wingback so would be more attacking maybe, where Pierias may be more defensively sound? That's just an assumption though going by match reports I haven't seen him play, might try and make it down to the next Lakeside game.

Welcome to the Liberal Democrats

I'm glad we have a resident expert on the forum that knows what went on behind the scenes. All that article suggests is that Tim wanted to secure a regular starting spot in a team, so he was willing to payout his own contract in order to do so. The inference obviously being that we (rightly) gave him no such guarantees of a starting spot here, and that he would have to pay back a portion of the money he received last year in order to break the contract. It also suggests a bad relationship between Cahill and Joyce, which is almost impossible to know much about unless you are in the inner circle. I hate to break it to you, but you're not Marwood and nor do you have any semblance of qualifications to be. You are adding 2 + 2 and getting 17.

Dont know if it is actully Munn who is to blame (although he is a common denominator). Wouldn't be surprised if a phone convo with Marwood to Munn pretty much goes along the lines of 'Yea everything is fine, no need for changes, our performances will improve we just have some injuries'

You're telling me

Ill burn down CFG Bundoora if that happens

Ye sorry you're right it was River. Drunk. That mistake could get me killed here.

Ye plenty of people wearing full jeans and jacket set ups in 30+ degree weather. I figure its to hide weapons. Anyway todays adventure involved visiting a "town" where my Mrs grew up. It was basically a fucked up genuine 'knife fight over apple core" type ghetto. On the way there I spotted 2 dogs fucking in the middle in a busy highway. That was a first for me. When I got out the car to visits their sugar cane farm some crack head tried to sell me a bundle of sticks. Didnt get it, still don't. We had some more over cooked "asado" for lunch with her uncles/cousins and I got the grand tour of their cockroach invested overgrown garden. After that we Jumped on a motor bike to visit some shitty river 10km down some pot hole infested dusty road. Gears were fucked so almost flipped it 15 times. On the way there my Mrs cousin stopped and cut down a length of sugar cane, wasn't sure why until we got to section of the road where about 10 street dogs ran at us and he used the sugar cane to smack em around so I could zip past without my ankles getting bitten off. Good times. In other news, I got a horrible cough and about 20,000 mozzie bites coz apparently flyscreens haven't been invented here yet, I probably have AIDs. Over and out.