belaguttman

Yes, that also added one more to our mid-field and made it more difficult to overload us there and helped cover passing channels in defensive transition

I agree with this. I think we lack pace in our centre-backs, and the risk of losing possession is that our FBs are often advanced and have a long way to track back, so we struggle to regain defensive pace. This is more a function of the risk that comes with our style of play, but one of our DMs needs to help out the CBs, I remember Aidan O'Neill struggled with this aspect initially but quickly made this a strength of his game. In this respect, our DM's pace, positioning and decision-making in both attacking and defensive transition makes them the key players in our team performance. One of the key features of our double winning season was our high conversion efficiency in front of goal, and it's a key area that we need to improve.

You aren't the only one puzzled by this

Corporate box, not active

We are in a sense that it creates different training goals, injury risk etc. This is easier to manage with a larger squad size.

I'd prefer to win all three competitions, I just don't think that we have the squad size, yet alone squad depth, to manage three competitions at once.

At the moment, it looks like a long season, we'll probably scrape into the 6. I'm not too concerned that we are out of the Cup, we don't have the size and depth of squad to be playing three competitions at once, but I'm unhappy with how we lost. Positives: First half performance was passable, but with concerns at both ends. Negatives: If we want to play a high line, we need to have fast defenders, and we need to be compact, we were neither Our ball speed is slow, Man City are effective because they combine triangles and possession with vertical balls that penetrate the opposition defence, we don't do that We threatened very little, the only ball that found JMac was a delightfully creative ball from a Sydney defender; has he been introduced to our new players? We lacked any urgency

Maybe they were expecting the team with the sand-bucket?

Oh dear. That took me back to the old JVS games when we built up our passing and possession stats by having the CBs aimlessly pass the ball between them. It was hard to discern our game plan unless ponderous ball movement between 10 pale blue traffic cones was magically going to open up a well-organised compact defence. Our wingers seem to offer little threat; in fact, we lacked width, and we lacked balls into the box. They struggled to clear balls into their box, yet we didn't seem to prioritise making this a problem for them. Ugarkovic is a key player in our style of play, both defensively, but also in setting up our attacking transition but is creating little; it did take O'Neill time to settle into the position, so, hopefully, it'll happen with more time. Jakolis is little more than a peripheral figure. Early days, much work to do.

Keyhole surgery these days.

I hear that they are still waiting for that ball to hit the ground

I'm assuming that his loan was already underway to being formalised when Nabbout injured himself.

The worst player at Corinthians > the worst player in our League

Souprayen doesn't appear to have much interest in tracking players running into the box, nor in closing down the passing lane to that player

We can sign an injury replacement player for Andrew Nabbout.

Mombaerts, he was the first to introduce our successful style of play. I wish that he'd stayed longer

A perfect addition for the Jonathan Germano Treatment Centre

That looks like a good signing, on paper anyway: 26, played for Corinthians, and in Europe

Nuno is a good defender, but relatively slow. It becomes an issue for us as we play a high defensive line, it means that he has to take more risks with his tackling, or compromise our defensive shape

Is No-one going to want to come back to sit on the bench? Is it a good use of a visa spot?

I thought that this was a pretty reasonable pre-season performance. It'll take some time for the new signings to gel but, comparatively, we are further along this path than Nix. It's more complex for them because they are also trying to introduce a new playing style. It was good to see our fitness and desire.

being able to offer visa players an opportunity to play ACL is always going top be attractive

probably home or away ground availability + ACL

Remember,we were in very under-whelming form during the last pre-season

Somewhere where it'll advantage a NSW team and where the FFA bigwigs don't have to inconvenience themselves getting to the game