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R2 Etihad Derby 14 October 7:50pm


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10 hours ago, n i k o said:

So many players were huge. The work rate of Jaokbsen, Kamau, Mauk etc. were faultless. Simply didn't stop for 90 minutes. Fucking epic effort. 

Random statistic from the match:  Stefan Mauk made nine tackles, more than twice as many as any of his teammates on the night and the most of any Melbourne City player in a single game since Jack Clisby made 10 in November 2015.

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1 hour ago, jw1739 said:

Random statistic from the match:  Stefan Mauk made nine tackles, more than twice as many as any of his teammates on the night and the most of any Melbourne City player in a single game since Jack Clisby made 10 in November 2015.

Except these were decent tackles.... poor Clisbo

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1 hour ago, playmaker said:

Possession means nothing.

Less possession means less errors at this level.

So take this statistic as irrelevant.

Possession is important, losing possession is dangerous.There's a video somewhere here of Pep talking about 15 passes before an attack, those 15 passes are to allow time for movement off the ball in order to position defenders to counter the impact of losing the ball and to position attackers. We were doing neither of these latter two things, just playing meaningless possession. There are risks and opportunities with every style, the risk with direct long passes is that our attackers are poorly positioned to create an overload and our defenders need to sit quite deep in order to stay compact. We could see that last night where we spent much of the match defending our box. It worked last night but we really need to mix our styles, remember last season where everyone worked out how to play us after Round 3

Edited by belaguttman
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1 hour ago, Forever City said:

Warren Joyce press conference. 

https://www.foxsports.com.au/video/football

Killa has a back injury and Brattan got injured during the week. 

 For the life of me I can't understand why, in 2017, FFA/the League can't organize press conferences so that we can hear the questions as well as the answers.

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it was almost Sydney like the way we grinded that, let's not give too much credit to victory, we deserved our lead at half time, should have been up by more in fact,  I couldn't give a rats about possession, it's what you do with it that counts and I thought we were for the most part effective, we became a bit ragged after going 2-1 up but for the most part blunted them out pretty comfortably, these are the type of performances it takes to win finals, fo, what I've seen through 2 games is that we are nowhere near as flashy as what we showed early last season and that's understandable with the players that are out, I don't wanna jinx it but it looks like we are finally going to make ourselves hard to beat. Again it's out of the Sydney playbook but it gets the results.

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yea last night I was there, thinking that I was watching for of a Sydney-esq performance as well.

At this level, if you are solid at the back and more importantly well-organised (not just individuals) it is very hard for teams to break this down as frankly, the mids and forwards are generally not good enough.

If we can blend this with some of the better forwards in the comp, we should be able to compete. But to throw caution to the wind as we did under JVS, at this level you give the ball up too much and leak too many goals. Can never work over the long-term.

Great defensive performance, Great performance full stop and should have had another couple. But, not sure many teams in the history of the comp could have done that to this Victory team, with the likes of Bruno, Brandan, Brattan and Kilkenny, unavailable, with marquees Cahill and Bud not ready to start, and quality such as Marcelo not even seeing game time yet. I said that I thought this was our best and most balanced squad ever, lets hope it plays out that way.

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27 minutes ago, Geo400 said:

it was almost Sydney like the way we grinded that, let's not give too much credit to victory, we deserved our lead at half time, should have been up by more in fact,  I couldn't give a rats about possession, it's what you do with it that counts and I thought we were for the most part effective, we became a bit ragged after going 2-1 up but for the most part blunted them out pretty comfortably, these are the type of performances it takes to win finals, fo, what I've seen through 2 games is that we are nowhere near as flashy as what we showed early last season and that's understandable with the players that are out, I don't wanna jinx it but it looks like we are finally going to make ourselves hard to beat. Again it's out of the Sydney playbook but it gets the results.

more commas please

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3 hours ago, heart_fan10 said:

would think that's fox sports responsibility?

I don't really care who's it is. Look at the backdrop to the post-match Joyce presser - HostPlus, Etihad Airways, McDonalds, Fox Sports, A-League, "This is our City", Harvey Norman, Foxtel are the advertisers. If you're going to market a product, do it properly.

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Superb win.

 

Perhaps the best thing was the great attitude from the team throughout. Worked all game, and worked together as a real team as well. At the same time there were some starring individuals and great moments: Fitzy with 2 assists (the 1st one was magic IMO; he attacked the defenders with excellent footwork and laid the ball off deftly--that goal doesn't happen without Fitzy's impact), Budzinski scoring minutes after his derby debut, Our defence being rock solid in particular with Schenkeveld and La Rocca being near faultless, Jakobsen again stepping up to put in a solid shift in a makeshift position (this time in midfield), Brucey with a great individual goal running 3 quarters of the pitch, and Malik for mine kept the team ticking in possession in the first half (our possession play went down a peg in the second half without him). In short, there were great performances all around in my view.

A win to be proud of. We had 8 shots to the visitors 4 shots in the first half. In the first 45 they also got 3 yellow cards and we got 0, them needing to do dodgy tackles to keep us down. So we really should have been a goal up and a player up by HT. And all game we had 7 shots on target to the visitors 2. For all their possession, they produced precious few actual chances and only got their one goal after a breakaway from one of our corners. We should really have finished the game 3-1 with Budzinski having a great one-on-one (and Cahill there for the layoff) near the end.

On Melbourne City's fluency in possession, I'd say this: In the first half, we matched and maybe even surpassed the visitors. Our first goal was the only goal not from a counterattack, and we had 8 shots to 4. And consider the players we had: going into the game no Kilkenny and no Brattan. Malik went off before HT. And Mauk pushed on often, so we were playing 4-2-4. And in the entire second half that midfield was a defender in Jakobsen and a significantly undercooked (fitness-lacking) Budzinski. So IMO it's not surprising we weren't playing Barca-style football with great ball movement and retention, because in the second half we really had no midfielders in midfield, and our captain defender Jakobsen needed to play the whole game in midfield. So really it was a pretty remarkable and sharp performance given how shaken up the midfield was.

 

All in all, it was a great win built on a 1st class team spirit and a rock hard defence in an away derby at Etihad. Two wins out of two, can't do any better than that, and there's still so many good individuals to rejoin the team--Brattan, Kilkenny, Brandan, Fornaroli--or get up to full fitness--Budzinski, McCormack, Cahill, Carrusca. Bring on Round 3 against Wellington!

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4 hours ago, belaguttman said:

Possession is important, losing possession is dangerous.There's a video somewhere here of Pep talking about 15 passes before an attack, those 15 passes are to allow time for movement off the ball in order to position defenders to counter the impact of losing the ball and to position attackers. We were doing neither of these latter two things, just playing meaningless possession. There are risks and opportunities with every style, the risk with direct long passes is that our attackers are poorly positioned to create an overload and our defenders need to sit quite deep in order to stay compact. We could see that last night where we spent much of the match defending our box. It worked last night but we really need to mix our styles, remember last season where everyone worked out how to play us after Round 3

With all due respect, Pep can say what he wants about the game at the level he is at and with list that he has (past and present) , but the data suggest different at our level and there are valid reasons why this is the case.

But even at the top level of football and in leagues where the top 6 teams are quite equal, possession is irrelevant in measuring the likelihood of success, but rather just an indicator of the style of play.

In saying that the last 2 winners of the EPL have had very low average possession (Chelsea about 7th and Leicester 17th) from memory. I am keeping an eye on Ranieri's Nantes this season to see how successful his low possession defensive counter attacking style is in Ligue 1, but so far so good.

However in the lower leagues there is data to suggest that the more teams have the ball the more likely they are to lose.

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I agree that possession on its own means nothing other than you can't score without any possession. I also don't think that 15 passes is a magic formula or even that it'll work for us either, but the point was that it's also about structure and movement with and without the ball. Our problem has always been poor structure and poor movement with and without the ball.

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9 minutes ago, fensaddler said:

Have we ever started a week top of the league, with the round completed? Good feeling....

Yes. 2 years ago we were top of the league with 1 match to play. Now that was a (short lived) good feeling.

i for one am not going to overly celebrate a 2 game winning streak 

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5 minutes ago, n i k o said:

Yes two years ago as Shahanga mentioned, and also this time last year after we walloped the tards 4-1

Nah we weren't top last year, Sydney were on top all season cause they smashed WSW in round 1

But anyway nice to be there, buy come back to me in 12 weeks. That's when ladders start to matter 

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Ok so after standing in with the Melbournians on Saturday I assume none of you have a job that involves talking in meetings, on a phone or in any kind of customer service! My throat is still horse!!! Was the same at Shityhad the last 3 times we've played there and stood with the Lads. But its a good little reminder of Saturday night. 

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I thought both Centre Backs were immense. Victory only have one avenue to goal, knock the ball out wide, then cross it along the ground to Berisha, they were prepared for this and cut those low crosses out every single time, often double marking him.  The only change I'd like to see is Bart moved to RB in place of Muscat and Jako slotting back into CB. Looking very Solid!

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Spoke to a wise colleague of mine today, who is that strange thing, a cultured and intelligent Victory fan.  His take as follows:

1. The tackle on Malik was lucky not to be a sending off.

2. We look a far more polished and organised side than Victory.

3. We have a lot of strength in depth to perform like that with several first pick players missing.

4. Budzik looks good.

5. Great admiration for our defence.

6. Ross is a chunky lad.

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2 hours ago, fensaddler said:

Spoke to a wise colleague of mine today, who is that strange thing, a cultured and intelligent Victory fan.  His take as follows:

1. The tackle on Malik was lucky not to be a sending off.

2. We look a far more polished and organised side than Victory.

3. We have a lot of strength in depth to perform like that with several first pick players missing.

4. Budzik looks good.

5. Great admiration for our defence.

6. Ross is a chunky lad.

On point number 1 I was certain it was going to be red especially considering it went to the VAR.

Late tackle from behind, no ball and malicious follow through.

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13 minutes ago, malloy said:

On point number 1 I was certain it was going to be red especially considering it went to the VAR.

Late tackle from behind, no ball and malicious follow through.

I can't understand how it didn't warrant a red after a VAR review to be honest and I'm surprised there hasn't been more scrutiny of the decision.

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7 minutes ago, Embee said:

I can't understand how it didn't warrant a red after a VAR review to be honest and I'm surprised there hasn't been more scrutiny of the decision.

If it was the other way round and Malik had made the late challenge instead of Williams, it would have been scrutinised all over the news. 

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