Matchday 9: v Perth - Friday 6th December 7:30 pm at AAMI Park

[Mr MO]

17 minutes ago, xXCiTyZeNXx said:

We are the Arsenal of the A League. Start strong, turn to shit

Did we start strong???

[Afif Adam]

Bad evening, good night 

[Mr MO]

Fuck me Delbridge beaten again in the air.

Now we know where we are at!

[Dezy94]

Pretty insipid goal to give up. The lead up to the corner then the corner itself, we were so reactive. 

[CityWildcat]

Jesus wept.  I’m in the Active area and this looks like the Ghost Of Warren Joyce.  We look clueless.  

[Heart of Melbourne]

Fold now

[fensaddler]

Good sides don't give up two goal leads away from home. They don't lose 3-0 to the team bottom of the league at home. They don't even lose to last year's champions at home if they want to win anything themselves. We're nowhere near being potential champions. We're just as mediocre and frustrating as we always have been. 

[Mr MO]

Ah well it calms everybody down who thought we are a top 2 team.

Does this put the discussion to bed about:

- Quick long balls to Maclaren is the way forward.

- Bouzanis is a decent keeper for the A League.

- Delbridge is a future Socceroo better than Good and certainly better than Schenkeveld.

- Brillante and Griffiths are an excellent pair up.

Edited December 6, 2019 by Mr MO

[haz]

Pretenders.

[Nate]

just dreadful

[playmaker]

Mombaets pre game interview and I quote.....

EM: In our style, we take some risks. In saying that, in some situations we need to be better defensively. We are continuing to work on this and we are definitely focusing on this.

And 

EM: We never change our style. We will set up as we do normally and keep our offensive options. We know Perth will be tough and want to win but we keep our match principals.

Summary 

Out classed

Out played

Out coached.

Rubbish 

 

[neio]

Interview with Erick on fox

Simon Hill "is there anything you like about the performance" 

Erick "No" 

Well at least he isn't sugar coating anything 

[HEARTinator]

21 minutes ago, neio said:

Interview with Erick on fox

Simon Hill "is there anything you like about the performance" 

Erick "No" 

Well at least he isn't sugar coating anything 

Should have just summarised it as awful crap. Popovic brings out his defensive structure, as he would, and we have no fcuking idea. No fcuking idea. It’s not like we didn’t have time to prepare for the inevitable Popovic brick wall. Bereft of ideas tonight.

[jw1739]

I've never in my life left a football match 20 minutes before the end...until tonight.

Dreadful performance all round. Totally outclassed and out-coached.

Another woeful crowd and a funereal atmosphere just add to the misery, and so does that fucking idiot ground announcer. I think I may be just about done with this season after tonight.

[xXCiTyZeNXx]

There ya go. Next weeks line-up cause idk anymore 

[Harrison]

1 hour ago, Mr MO said:

Ah well it calms everybody down who thought we are a top 2 team.

Does this put the discussion to bed about:

- Quick long balls to Maclaren is the way forward.

- Bouzanis is a decent keeper for the A League.

- Delbridge is a future Socceroo better than Good and certainly better than Schenkeveld.

- Brillante and Griffiths are an excellent pair up.

The last two are the most important. Delbridge needs to be dropped for Windbichler and Griffiths needs to be dropped. Brillante to move back to the six and Berenguer or Genreau as an eight. 

Won’t fix everything but it’s a start. 

[playmaker]

11 minutes ago, jw1739 said:

I've never in my life left a football match 20 minutes before the end...until tonight.

Dreadful performance all round. Totally outclassed and out-coached.

Another woeful crowd and a funereal atmosphere just add to the misery, and so does that fucking idiot ground announcer. I think I may be just about done with this season after tonight.

I am also scratching my head right now.

Don't know what I just witnessed.

I also left at the 70th minute.

There is absolutely nothing positive about what I saw for 70 minutes and I wasn't going to watch one more second of it.

Absolute shambles 

[Mr MO]

1 hour ago, playmaker said:

Mombaets pre game interview and I quote.....

EM: In our style, we take some risks. In saying that, in some situations we need to be better defensively. We are continuing to work on this and we are definitely focusing on this.

And 

EM: We never change our style. We will set up as we do normally and keep our offensive options. We know Perth will be tough and want to win but we keep our match principals.

Summary 

Out classed

Out played

Out coached.

Rubbish 

 

The fact that we are predetermined not to adapt before and more importantly during the game can cost us more games. Well we didn’t adapt to circumstances in any of losses to be honest.

Edited December 6, 2019 by Mr MO

[pattyd89]

Seeing Bruno in Perth colours - it's like the painful breakup with the girl you won't get back.... 

[Mr MO]

27 minutes ago, Harrison said:

The last two are the most important. Delbridge needs to be dropped for Windbichler and Griffiths needs to be dropped. Brillante to move back to the six and Berenguer or Genreau as an eight. 

Won’t fix everything but it’s a start. 

Let’s hope Eric reads this because I can’t agree more.

[HeartFc]

Only bloke who felt like a winner tonight was Tom Glover. Surely gets a crack soon.

[Harrison]

5 minutes ago, Mr MO said:

Let’s hope Eric reads this because I can’t agree more.

That midfield just doesn’t work. We ship goals like a bottom-placed side and when there’s no connection between this dour midfield and our forwards, we can’t out score the opponent. 

5 minutes ago, HeartFc said:

Only bloke who felt like a winner tonight was Tom Glover. Surely gets a crack soon.

Have you seen his haircut? Doesn’t have a dope fade like Bouz. Until he sorts that out he’ll rot away on the bench. 

[Imtellingyou]

Not enough free tickets for 7k. Not enough Glory supporters.  Shame on them. 

[Afif Adam]

Was there any reason why Denis didn't get a start, metcalfe doesn't offer the attacking play he does...that was one of the problems imo, three man midfield was way too defensive, and Cabrera is average 

[Imtellingyou]

Delbo should be benched.  Griffiths is solid. Brilliante is not offensive midfielder and Metcalfe doesn't provide anything. Noone doesn't justify selection. Jamo is a weak link. Bouzanis is not worth mentioning. Are we really grand finale material. 

[mjake1234]

Attendance 6,679. Club is going backwards and it won't get any better with this lacklustre display.

[Harrison]

20 minutes ago, Imtellingyou said:

Delbo should be benched.  Griffiths is solid. Brilliante is not offensive midfielder and Metcalfe doesn't provide anything. Noone doesn't justify selection. Jamo is a weak link. Bouzanis is not worth mentioning. Are we really grand finale material. 

But who are you going to drop? Brillante is a better six and is better than Griffiths there, so he has to make way. I can’t see it working when both are on the field, unless you play with a double pivot and move to a narrower version of a 4-2-3-1. Not sold on Noone, Cabrera or Luna. Could be Berenguer, Metcalfe and Genreau in front of Griffiths and Brillante. Just don’t think we will change our shape but something has to give because we won’t be winning anything with that line-up.

Windbichler is a sure thing to start though. 

[n i k o]

10 goals conceded in 3 games. Getting concerning. 

[Heart of Melbourne]

Club is folding.

you heard it first here 

[jw1739]

8 hours ago, playmaker said:

Don't know what I just witnessed.

I think that what you witnessed was the complete absence of any "entertainment" whatsoever. The "matchday experience" is just insipid from start to finish. Yes, I know that I have my own issues to deal with at the moment, but I left because there really was no reason to sit there any longer. Whatever it is that CFG thinks it's doing with the club has no appeal, and the crowd of 6,679 shows it. You can go through the list of players and drop a few here and there (e.g. Noone, Bouzanis), shuffle a few around (e.g. Brillante) and question why we have the usual list of mediocre overseas players (e.g. Luna, Cabrera, Berenguer) but you still end up with something that doesn't appeal.

We are going nowhere as a club.

Incidentally, our 10-season record against Perth is now 7W, 9D and 15L.

Edited December 6, 2019 by jw1739

[malloy]

7 hours ago, Imtellingyou said:

Delbo should be benched.  Griffiths is solid. Brilliante is not offensive midfielder and Metcalfe doesn't provide anything. Noone doesn't justify selection. Jamo is a weak link. Bouzanis is not worth mentioning. Are we really grand finale material. 

Griffiths is solid, but you can't have him and Brillante in the same team without it being set up very defensive. Genreau should have started instead of Griffiths.

Too many times when we were going forward it was 3 v 6 or 3 v 7 with every one well marked. 

[Jovan]

On 04/12/2019 at 12:08 PM, Jovan said:

Interesting situation we find ourselves. We are coming off a bye in decent form playing an obviously underperforming preseason favorite. 

Now if ever there was game to see where we are at, it would be Friday, and I'm not trying to be funny. I do think we have been fortunate in our fixture and we really haven't played anyone decent, although the away win to Wanderers was a huge result, I still have a lingering pessimism that we are 1 loss away from return to semi final mediocre perennials. 

"Always trust your feelings Luke"

Now that was horrible, conceding the first goal was always going to difficult and Perth literally parked the bus. 

I'm worried Mombarets doesn't have an alternative plan and his fundamental philosophy is reliant on players that are not capable of playing a high pressing possession based game plan. 

Last night was typical Heart/City and the perfect way to fuck up a weekend. 

[playmaker]

2 hours ago, jw1739 said:

crowd of 6,679

This is disputable and an overestimation IMO.

I actually started head counting every section I could see because I couldn't watch the game anymore and I guesstimated 4500. I don't know where the other 2000+ were hiding.

 

[CityHeart]

We have been extremely ordinary all season - how on earth we lucked out playing so many poor teams/out of form teams up until now is amazing. Even Perth have been struggling, but although they lost last week was a slight turnaround for them.

Going to be very difficult to finish in the top half - and this league is absolutely rubbish and pretty much unwatchable these days. 

This squad is very, very ordinary and dont let the early season wins fool you. 

[Nate]

Our tactics last night amazed me, we just kept repeating the same mistakes over and over and over and over again. 

High balls over the top to Maclaren were snuffed out by Perth's towering defenders with ease but we kept trying the same failing tactics and Perth dealt with our attacks with complete ease. And then there were the set pieces... holy crap. Set pieces are a luxury if things aren't working out in open-play but instead of putting the ball in first hit, we would repeatedly pass the ball back into open-play where things clearly hadn't worked and Perth would shut us down again, from both corners and free kicks of which we had enough to create something!

Delbridge has had a reasonable season so I'm not calling for his head but he played like a giraffe without poise or confidence last night and it showed with responsibility for at least two of the goals, possibly also the third. But Bouzanis is the one who has had sooooooo many chances and just looks like a player devoid of care or urgency and that also showed with the first goal. 

0-3 at home against the bottom side is bad no matter which way you look at it but we still have enough quality in the squad to push for top 3. I'm just still so disappointed that our club has been so reluctant to finally splurge on a decent marquee given the capacity to do so because it's showing in our attendances and it's showing in our club's historically disappointing on-field showing. 

 

Edited December 6, 2019 by Nate

[playmaker]

Post match with Mombaets 

 

https://www.a-league.com.au/video/mombaerts-xxx-press-conference-hyundai-a-league-1

[Harrison]

To break down the kind of system Perth has we need players like Berenguer, Genreau and Najjarine. Good on the ball and in tight, so we can try to play through seven behind the ball with quick interplay. At times we had to break down 11, so it’s important that when we win back the ball we’re moving it quickly between the lines, otherwise we have to beat 11 every time. I was impressed by Fornaroli’s work rate, he dropped off and defended very well. So did Ikonimidis and Castro, who were pretty aggressive. It all came together for them last night. Early first goal so they could sit back with their five defenders and Kilkenny and Juande. 

Edited December 6, 2019 by Harrison

[jw1739]

1 hour ago, Nate said:

Our tactics last night amazed me, we just kept repeating the same mistakes over and over and over and over again. 

That's just shit coaching. It was obvious after 20 minutes and yet we kept on doing it - the main reason I left as soon as Perth got their third.

Don't be surprised if we keep doing it for the rest of the season. City Football Group just don't and won't listen. To draw 6,679 from a city of 4.9 million shows what the Melbourne public think of the club.

[n i k o]

Shit result last night doesn't mean we haven't played well during the season. And the result doesn't mean the club hasn't done good things this season either. 

 

[playmaker]

27 minutes ago, Harrison said:

To break down the kind of system Perth has we need players like Berenguer, Genreau and Najjarine. Good on the ball and in tight, so we can try to play through seven behind the ball with quick interplay. At times we had to break down 11, so it’s important that when we win back the ball we’re moving it quickly between the lines, otherwise we have to beat 11 every time. I was impressed by Fornaroli’s work rate, he dropped off and defended very well. So did Ikonimidis and Castro, who were pretty aggressive. It all came together for them last night. Early first goal so they could sit back with their five defenders and Kilkenny and Juande. 

When opposition use these tactics sometimes you just need to give them the ball and sit back, get them to stretch their midfield and press their FBs and then exploit the space, because trying to break a 9 player defensive block is hard to do at any level.

So the manager needs to be smart.

To add to the problem is the fact that we were attacking with 4 in defense and 6 players up on their defensive line, so please tell me how we could possibly stretch their defensive lines if we had no midfield and they were double marking our wings. Then as a result, the only passing option available was a high ball into their towering defenders.

Absolutely hopeless and incompetent tactics.

14 minutes ago, jw1739 said:

Don't be surprised if we keep doing it for the rest of the season. City Football Group just don't and won't listen.

This is my biggest fear.