Seasons over. Was it a pass/fail? Discuss.

[belaguttman]

9 hours ago, fiji19 said:

We have played some good football though this season?

Yes we have, but playing good football for parts of matches, some weeks, doesn't win Premierships

21 minutes ago, Dylan said:

I was talking about their season as a whole. It has been a season of luck for them. 

Yes, they've been far less consistent than usual, but when presented with an opportunity they've created their own luck, much like our W-League team seems to do over the last two seasons.

Edited April 29, 2018 by belaguttman

[jw1739]

To a large extent you make your own "luck." Compared with many of the teams in the league we are still mentally weak. Only when we won the FFA Cup did we show the necessary bottle to win silverware.

In a way I'm pleased that the two semi-finals went the way that they did. It always hurts to be second-best to Victory, but these two results just show the gulf that remains between the two clubs. To think that there is not is just kidding yourself.

I still think our season has to be a "pass" but it's not success nor is it good enough for anyone connected with the club to be satisfied. 

[Dylan]

10 hours ago, fiji19 said:

We have played some good football though this season?

No where near as good as seasons past.

 

[GreenSeater]

8 hours ago, Chris p said:

 

What are the mitigating circumstances ? most of them feel self inflicted 

Well the biggest one would have to be the club's greatest ever mens player spending more than half the season on the pine with a broken leg. Then Aston Villa being pricks and deciding to keep McCormack out of spite. James Troisi walking out on signing a marquee deal at the final possible moment leaving us with an absolute garbage marquee. Tim Cahill turning on the club for his "game time" moment. None of these are really our fault tbh

[Kiro Kompiro]

Can we revise the pass mark after the Grand Final?  If Victory win it, no Champions League play off.  FAIL.

[JMSTEP123]

Knowing Victory and watching their dominance last night. If they take the same attitude to Newcastle I cant see them not winning.

Everything else has gone against us. This probably will too. Odds on we are out of the ACL spot. I dont think we deserved it either.

Season pass mark: ordinary. Ticked a few boxes, but many left untouched. Not being competitive in the semi final and playing pathetic football. Wellington and Newcaslte were shocking games for us. Brisbane was a good game, but they were hopeless. We had good runs of consistency, decent early season form and McCormack was incredible for us which kept us competitive. But we rely solely on individuals, and can never it seems rely on the unit of the team. 

Watching Newcastle and Victory and that is the difference that makes a difference. Team unity. Brothers in arms. One vision together.

A lesson we are trying to learn, but seem hopelessly misguided from ever achieving. 

[xXJawsaXx]

11 hours ago, fiji19 said:

We have played some good football though this season?

As others have said, we have played some good football, but we haven't played it consistently, at all. This season seemed to follow a pattern where, we'd play good football, win 3-4 in a row, and then suddenly play awfully, and lose three in a row. We have to be good more consistently if we are to ever challenge for a championship.

[Missing_Moy]

Fail didn’t win a trophy!

 

[jw1739]

4 minutes ago, JMSTEP123 said:

Knowing Victory and watching their dominance last night. If they take the same attitude to Newcastle I cant see them not winning.

Everything else has gone against us. This probably will too. Odds on we are out of the ACL spot. I dont think we deserved it either.

Season pass mark: ordinary. Ticked a few boxes, but many left untouched. Not being competitive in the semi final and playing pathetic football. Wellington and Newcaslte were shocking games for us. Brisbane was a good game, but they were hopeless. We had good runs of consistency, decent early season form and McCormack was incredible for us which kept us competitive. But we rely solely on individuals, and can never it seems rely on the unit of the team. 

Watching Newcastle and Victory and that is the difference that makes a difference. Team unity. Brothers in arms. One vision together.

A lesson we are trying to learn, but seem hopelessly misguided from ever achieving. 

This.

Can we ever achieve it being owned by Manchester City and having certain decisions being made at Head Office rather than on the ground here in Melbourne?

After four seasons I'm wondering about that.

[neio]

I give the season a pass, we finished third with a new manager who is still building his squad. While it will be a huge kick in the guts if we don't get the opportunity to play acl though

Next season is a grand final at a minimum though, as wazza should have the players he wants in the positions he wants and to the game plan he wants 

[JMSTEP123]

4 hours ago, jw1739 said:

This.

Can we ever achieve it being owned by Manchester City and having certain decisions being made at Head Office rather than on the ground here in Melbourne?

After four seasons I'm wondering about that.

I think absolutely we can. The City group are a fantastic addition to Aus football. I believe that they are very aware of the goings on here in Aus. I have no doubt at some point in the future we will look back and understand where and why we got it so wrong for so long.

At the moment we lack the necessary to do over the league. Whatever that necessary may be. I feel the City group will eventually find out what it is, and we will go from there.

Either that or they will cut their losses and we are back to the ice bins.

[Imtellingyou]

Wishful thinking.  The biggest club in the country, undisclosed from Melbourne, is owned by people whose number one priority is that club. CFG needs to think twice is it Melbourne Florida or Australia. 

[CityWildcat]

23 hours ago, JMSTEP123 said:

Watching Newcastle and Victory .... Team unity. Brothers in arms. One vision together.

Yep.  That comes from keeping the same nucleus season after season after season...i.e. Kosta, Gypsy, Troisi, Valeri,  etc.   Our squad usually don't know eachother when pre-season starts every year.

[Embee]

27 minutes ago, CityWildcat said:

Yep.  That comes from keeping the same nucleus season after season after season...i.e. Kosta, Gypsy, Troisi, Valeri,  etc.   Our squad usually don't know eachother when pre-season starts every year.

To be fair, Kosta and Troisi recently went overseas/to other clubs and came crawling back, in fact Troisi was a few thousand dollars away from signing here and Newcastle underwent some pretty significant changes on and off-field from this season to the last.

Sure, our constant chopping and changing doesn't help our predicament at all but there's been a more sinister underlying issue during our existence IMO, something that we've only just started to address this season with the concerted effort to fix the culture in the men's team.

[Jovan]

2 hours ago, Embee said:

To be fair, Kosta and Troisi recently went overseas/to other clubs and came crawling back, in fact Troisi was a few thousand dollars away from signing here and Newcastle underwent some pretty significant changes on and off-field from this season to the last.

Sure, our constant chopping and changing doesn't help our predicament at all but there's been a more sinister underlying issue during our existence IMO, something that we've only just started to address this season with the concerted effort to fix the culture in the men's team.

Not sure that there is anything sinister underlying issue. 

I just put it down to a couple fuck nuggets make more bad decisions than good ones.

[thisphantomfortress]

Reserving judgement til about 10.30 Saturday night 

[n i k o]

10 minutes ago, thisphantomfortress said:

Reserving judgement til about 10.30 Saturday night 

Its unfortunate we have to wait for another team to lose to decide whether we have a pass or fail mark for the season. But I see your logic.

[jeffplz]

Fail because we should be in control of our fate and outcome, not other clubs. This way, we're relying on luck rather than our skill which should be the goal

[Imtellingyou]

Targets were not set before the season. 

We did not:

Finish top two

Get into GF

Get automatic ACL spot

Defend Cup title 

Get more members 

Get bigger crowd 

Win Xmas derby 

 

We did:

Achieve highest 3rd spot

Win EPL and global domination 

[n i k o]

8 minutes ago, Imtellingyou said:

Targets were not set before the season. 

We did not:

Finish top two

Get into GF

Get automatic ACL spot

Defend Cup title 

Get more members 

Get bigger crowd 

Win Xmas derby 

 

We did:

Achieve highest 3rd spot

Win EPL and global domination 

Could be your best post. Half mind to give it a like if not for the fear I may have misinterpreted something you said. All very good points. 

[jw1739]

16 minutes ago, Imtellingyou said:

Targets were not set before the season. 

We did not:

Finish top two

Get into GF

Get automatic ACL spot

Defend Cup title 

Get more members 

Get bigger crowd 

Win Xmas derby 

 

We did:

Achieve highest 3rd spot

Win EPL and global domination 

We don't know what targets were actually set by the club. Other than the dissatisfaction with Melbourne expressed by Khaldoon Al Mubarak in last season's post-season review, the impression I always get from the PR pumped out by CFG is one of smug self-satisfaction.

I long for the day when I hear someone from City - be they admin., coach or player - say that something we did or didn't do was just not f****ing acceptable.

[Dylan]

So according to the world game seems like half the squad is going again.

 

i wonder who will knock us out in the semi next season?

[Deeming]

2015-2016 - Mooy, Fornaroli & Novillo running amok and breaking records.

2016-2017 - Cup win

2017-2018 - Highest ever finish (but still not top 2)

This would be our third best season. Is that good enough for a pass? Probably if we are ok with being a good but not great team.

[mus-28]

Fail. We finished 3rd in an ordinary season with a lot of ordinary teams. Behind a Newcastle side with a new coach, had a long term injured marquee, sold their star player mid season and lost their only striker for a decent chunk of the season. 

We had a marquee spot available, the best youth team in the country, the best training facilities in the land and one of the best squads in the league. Yet we released a chunk of quality players during the season and replaced them with inferior quality (bar Vidosic when he turns it on every 2nd week). The Kilkenny and Brandan moves were ones that cost us massively. Bozanic is a shit replacement for Kilkenny and Brandan would've been invaluable in the run it with Mauk and Vidosic often going missing.

 

A club with our backing and net spend should be expected to be challenging for silverware, this year we rarely looked like anything but the 3rd or 4th best team in the competition.

[neio]

1 hour ago, Deeming said:

2015-2016 - Mooy, Fornaroli & Novillo running amok and breaking records.

2016-2017 - Cup win

2017-2018 - Highest ever finish (but still not top 2)

This would be our third best season. Is that good enough for a pass? Probably if we are ok with being a good but not great team.

This season was better than 15/16. We were defensively a mess that season and Adelaide absolutely destroyed us in the semi final 

[xXCiTyZeNXx]

We finished third the highest City/Heart ever finished in Joyces first season

A pass for me

[malloy]

1 hour ago, Deeming said:

2015-2016 - Mooy, Fornaroli & Novillo running amok and breaking records.

2016-2017 - Cup win

2017-2018 - Highest ever finish (but still not top 2)

This would be our third best season. Is that good enough for a pass? Probably if we are ok with being a good but not great team.

 

9 minutes ago, xXCiTyZeNXx said:

We finished third the highest City/Heart ever finished in Joyces first season

A pass for me

It should be noted that despite it being our highest league finish it is not our largest points tally at the end of the season.

[NuggetsMcGreggor]

For all the talk of culture change at the club, we’ve still lost the unloseable games, played poorly in derbies and gone on losing streaks. Fail for me. 

[xXCiTyZeNXx]

1 hour ago, malloy said:

 

It should be noted that despite it being our highest league finish it is not our largest points tally at the end of the season.

Correct but despite not having the largest point tally, Warren Joyce has shown that in his first A League season he has done well.

With players like ross leaving and Bruno coming back after an ankle injury and slowly crawling back into form which was a hiccup in Jan and start of feb. I reckon next season will be a huge season for the club and Warren Joyce because we have shown that we can be the A league champions. 

Warren Joyce was rebuilding this season

Edited April 30, 2018 by xXCiTyZeNXx

[belaguttman]

4 hours ago, Dylan said:

So according to the world game seems like half the squad is going again.

 

i wonder who will knock us out in the semi next season?

We never learn, reinventing the wheel every season. What we are doing isn't working so the solution is to try it harder. It still isn't working so try it even harder...

[SF33]

I'd like to revise my mark. I think one of the most important goals for us each year in order to grow is have a better season than Victory. We didn't do that. You can see it with Newcastle: making the grand final, even hosting a grand final (as we would have if we'd won and the other result stayed the same) would have been an absolutely massive step for the club and if we gave a good account of ourselves, that would be another one.

Of course they're not mutually exclusive, but as far as I'm concerned, finishing higher on the table, and going deeper in the finals than Victory are more important than the results of the three derbies combined.

Oh, and a fail for something else: the fixture. I find it pretty distasteful that the club tries to extort money from us through a 'price freeze' of our membership fees (like that should be a huge incentive in the first place) before we have any idea of what the fixture will be. With two young daughters, going to a game from 7pm onwards was not in play for me this season, hence, I barely used my membership this year. If the club wants to genuinely distance itself from Victory and create a point of difference, my advice would be to try to take afternoon games to make it possible for more kids (or parents of very young children) to come along.

[jw1739]

2 hours ago, SF33 said:

I'd like to revise my mark. I think one of the most important goals for us each year in order to grow is have a better season than Victory. We didn't do that. You can see it with Newcastle: making the grand final, even hosting a grand final (as we would have if we'd won and the other result stayed the same) would have been an absolutely massive step for the club and if we gave a good account of ourselves, that would be another one.

Of course they're not mutually exclusive, but as far as I'm concerned, finishing higher on the table, and going deeper in the finals than Victory are more important than the results of the three derbies combined.

Oh, and a fail for something else: the fixture. I find it pretty distasteful that the club tries to extort money from us through a 'price freeze' of our membership fees (like that should be a huge incentive in the first place) before we have any idea of what the fixture will be. With two young daughters, going to a game from 7pm onwards was not in play for me this season, hence, I barely used my membership this year. If the club wants to genuinely distance itself from Victory and create a point of difference, my advice would be to try to take afternoon games to make it possible for more kids (or parents of very young children) to come along.

I don't think we get much of a choice with the fixture. IIRC each club gets one "special request" per season (which may or may not be granted by FFA), and ours is the Christmas Derby.

Odd, isn't it, that we have to keep asking for something that ought to be a standard fixture every season?

With kick-off times, days of the week etc. it's impossible to please all of the people all of the time.

[Imtellingyou]

If helps, none of the clubs has season pass before coming GF. For Jets home GF win is a pass. For visitors win and ACL spot is only pass. For Sydney is a fail not to be in home GF and win it.

[SF33]

3 hours ago, jw1739 said:

I don't think we get much of a choice with the fixture. IIRC each club gets one "special request" per season (which may or may not be granted by FFA), and ours is the Christmas Derby.

Odd, isn't it, that we have to keep asking for something that ought to be a standard fixture every season?

With kick-off times, days of the week etc. it's impossible to please all of the people all of the time.

True. I'm sure if most of our home games started between 1-3pm from November-March, there'd be a different group that would be unhappy about it (along with games having to be postponed, heat restrictions used etc.), just giving my perspective.

I don't necessarily blame the club, but pretty tired of sporting clubs in general (they all do it in this country, from what I see) expecting people to part with several hundred dollars for a season ticket, before they have the first clue as to whether the fixture actually suits them or not.

[bt50]

On 5/2/2018 at 7:14 AM, SF33 said:

I'd like to revise my mark. I think one of the most important goals for us each year in order to grow is have a better season than Victory. We didn't do that. You can see it with Newcastle: making the grand final, even hosting a grand final (as we would have if we'd won and the other result stayed the same) would have been an absolutely massive step for the club and if we gave a good account of ourselves, that would be another one.

Of course they're not mutually exclusive, but as far as I'm concerned, finishing higher on the table, and going deeper in the finals than Victory are more important than the results of the three derbies combined.

Oh, and a fail for something else: the fixture. I find it pretty distasteful that the club tries to extort money from us through a 'price freeze' of our membership fees (like that should be a huge incentive in the first place) before we have any idea of what the fixture will be. With two young daughters, going to a game from 7pm onwards was not in play for me this season, hence, I barely used my membership this year. If the club wants to genuinely distance itself from Victory and create a point of difference, my advice would be to try to take afternoon games to make it possible for more kids (or parents of very young children) to come along.

Lol that's not extortion. It's rewarding the fans who's loyalty isnt dependant on any outside factor, as well as ensuring the club has cash flow from May and not September. No-one is holding a gun to your head. 

Edited May 3, 2018 by bt50

[jw1739]

1 hour ago, bt50 said:

Lol that's not extortion. It's rewarding the fans who's loyalty isnt dependant on any outside factor, as well as ensuring the club has cash flow from May and not September. No-one is holding a gun to your head. 

Ooh, IMO you're being a wee bit harsh there. It's true that no-one is forcing any member to do anything, but a price freeze and "retain your current seats" are incentives (however much you value them) to renew before a lot is known about the following season. For example, last season we didn't know who the manager was going to be. Most of the new players for a season seem to be announced June/July/August. Also IMO the cash flow argument is a bit weak - those people on the payments plan will pay only one monthly instalment before July anyway.

It's not an issue for me because I will renew automatically, but I do think we release new memberships a little earlier than we need to.

[n i k o]

26 minutes ago, jw1739 said:

Ooh, IMO you're being a wee bit harsh there. It's true that no-one is forcing any member to do anything, but a price freeze and "retain your current seats" are incentives (however much you value them) to renew before a lot is known about the following season. For example, last season we didn't know who the manager was going to be. Most of the new players for a season seem to be announced June/July/August. Also IMO the cash flow argument is a bit weak - those people on the payments plan will pay only one monthly instalment before July anyway.

It's not an issue for me because I will renew automatically, but I do think we release new memberships a little earlier than we need to.

I dont think its harsh at all. If you want to sit on the fence becasue of a schedule or manager then that's your choice. And with that choice you forgo the right to a price freeze. My membership is renewed automatically too because my support of the club doesn't sway based on  whether I'm happy with a manager they choose or which day they play. 

[malloy]

19 minutes ago, n i k o said:

I dont think its harsh at all. If you want to sit on the fence becasue of a schedule or manager then that's your choice. And with that choice you forgo the right to a price freeze. My membership is renewed automatically too because my support of the club doesn't sway based on  whether I'm happy with a manager they choose or which day they play. 

My 'support' for the club sways on those factors mentioned by JW, but my membership renewal does not. I am too OCD to miss a year of having a membership.

That being said you and BT are correct. 

We keep repeating that membership is a product and on that basis i dont see any issue with a company rewarding their most loyal customers with early bird discounts. 

Furthermore if the above notion is rejected then as BT50 said there is no issue with the club rewarding their most loyal supporters.

[fensaddler]

5 hours ago, jw1739 said:

Ooh, IMO you're being a wee bit harsh there. It's true that no-one is forcing any member to do anything, but a price freeze and "retain your current seats" are incentives (however much you value them) to renew before a lot is known about the following season. For example, last season we didn't know who the manager was going to be. Most of the new players for a season seem to be announced June/July/August. Also IMO the cash flow argument is a bit weak - those people on the payments plan will pay only one monthly instalment before July anyway.

It's not an issue for me because I will renew automatically, but I do think we release new memberships a little earlier than we need to.

Given the oversize, smelly individual our seats are next to, keeping them is no incentive at all. We'll make sure we're well away. 

[n i k o]

Stance hasn't changed. Fail.