jw1739

Occam's Razor also I think?

If I was Vidmar that would have been the very first thing I would have addressed. Especially with a GK such as Jamie Young behind the back line. Always has been a good shot-stopper - as he showed last night - but all at sea off his line.

I very much doubt it, although we do know that match-fixing in football takes place from time to time. I didn't watch the match at the time and have just looked at the replay. Just looks like one of our totally unnecessary back passes when the player has plenty of time to turn on the ball and play a pass forward. We do it time after time and it's a cancer on our game. At the back it's risky and up front it results on a waste of scoring opportunities. While Vidmar is trying to get the squad playing better, as long as we take the points off teams like Perth it's OK by me.

What's he done?

Might as well play it behind closed doors at this rate.... People wonder why attendances are falling? It's this sort of thing added to everything else that gradually strangles interest in the game.

Troyes - three wins in a row and hauling themselves out of the relegation zone...

IMO that's possibly the best thing I've heard so far this season - that the players are aware of what they are doing (and not doing) and are sufficiently bonded to be candid with one another about it. Good on 'em.

I don't agree. If you think back to Heart's first season the whole "experience" of going to those first two derbies, and league matches, was far removed from what we experience today. Many factors have been involved in first the growth of attendances and then the decline. IMO most have been the game self-harming, but of course external factors such as COVID have played their part.

I still go to regular league and Cup matches, but to not derbies anymore. Mainly because of my age I am still avoiding unnecessary contact with large numbers of people (COVID), secondly thanks to the bucket derby, thirdly, yes, because APL has destroyed the League's GF tradition, and not least because my club's vice-chairman and a board member of APL therefore supported that destruction (or at least did not oppose it).

I don't think we've ever done really well in the GK Stakes except for Tommy Sorensen's first season - 2015/16 - when we were first with two matches to go and lost the last two to finish fourth, and then at the beginning of the 2016/17 when we won the FFA Cup and then faded in the second half of the season and Bouzanis was preferred over Sorensen. IMO he was the best GK we've ever had. The rest have been rather mediocre, and we've let so many promising youth GKs leave too.

On the venue and tickets - where can I see a plan of the stadium and available seats?

I'm not sure that ticket prices are set by the club. IIRC all the arrangements for the match are in the hands of the AFC.

I accept that. Nevertheless I think the club should explain to members just what has to be done after the concert finishes and why it cannot be completed in 4 days. It's not rocket science we're talking about.

For the AFC of course, it's non-negotiable unless they move the other match as well, because the two matches must be played simultaneously. But FMD, 6 days to get the stadium ready for a football match? Laughable, except it's not funny.

I still think we're throwing money in the wrong direction.

TBH I struggle for the words I want to use to express my feelings about this situation. I think the word is "disappointed" but it doesn't seem strong enough. The last event I can see at AAMI preceding this match is a concert on 6th December. So MOPT can't get the place ready for an Asian Champions League football match in six days? Then they're not trying. I think what it tells me is that the club has no clout whatsoever in Melbourne, and that football has none in Victoria. I suspect that Scott Munn would have worked his arse off and secured AAMI Park for us.

What CFG do may depend on what commitments were made to him to go to France. I'm still surprised that in the cases of both PK and Rado that a contract was offered instead of an interim appointment.

Agreed, there was. But really, has he come up to expectations and our needs overall? However, I guess from a salary cap point of view he has a contract and at the end of the season we move on.... GK errors are usually costly and these past two seasons they have cost us in the ACL.

I don't think too many of us understood why he was signed in the first place so I would release him in January anyway. Play Beach.

What's he waiting for - the fairy godmother? I hope he's wrong and that it becomes beautiful immediately...

Very ambivalent about going. Don't know what Princes Park is like now but I went to a match there many years ago - Euro team was playing - and the seating angle is very shallow (because of course it's Carlton's old ground in the VFL/AFL) and we could hardly see a thing what with advertising hoardings around the pitch and what-not. Walked out with 20 minutes to go in frustration. Even if you want to tackle the transport issue from the suburbs I'd say it depends on what seats they are actually offering. What a shame that this is the critical match for us. Pretty piss poor IMO that MOPT/AAMI Park and the AFC can't do better. The club is powerless in this situation.

Missed the match completely (no) thanks to an NBN failure lasting nearly 36 hours. Just looked at the highlights, and those were two decent goals. But the Young incident puzzles me - surely a yellow if not a red?

Understand how Troyes fans felt and feel. Not defending PK but like here in Melbourne he's not the actual boss of the club, and whoever is is also accountable to CFG. Those who appointed him, and those who continued to allow him to stay, share what has happened. Surely they should have stepped in when there was open ridicule of him? Not to do so was bad management. He's human after all. Perhaps Paddy's failing was not so much the football side, but not to realise that it was time to step down, as Rado realised he should do here. As it is, PK's coaching career is in tatters.

He played against Wellington in the Cup at Oakleigh and IMO acquitted himself well. Again, like Galloway, I have no idea why we we don't play him but persist with the same old, same old.

Is Hall so bad? In midfield we can replace Sakhi and Antonis. If we have the balls to release the out-of-contract players and then recruit well we can have a thorough rebuild.