Melbourne Derby XII - 7:45pm 1st March AAMI Park

[Sash]

Melbouirne Heart's Incredible Rise: http://www.theturf.com.au/2014/03/melbourne-hearts-incredible-rise/

 

This is good too, however, I haven't seen this website before. Interesting comments about the pre match formations on Foxsports in light of the posts above.

 

"A consistent source of entertainment this season has been the pre-match formation diagrams on Fox Sports – from basic mistakes of player positions to full-blown changes of system, they’re nearly always wrong, and it’s become a bit of a ritual to see how drastically the actual team shape has been changed by the production team.

 

It was odd, then, that the information recently emerged that it’s in fact the coaches responsible for this oddity – the line-ups are a conscious decision on their part to try and disguise their team’s actual formation, and more specifically, the real positioning of players."

 

Edit: Sorry, just noticed this in another thread. Doesn't matter, relevant to both I think.

Edited March 4, 2014 by Sash

[Tbitm]

Does anyone have a pic of the tifo?

Edit: Nevermind I found one

Edited March 4, 2014 by Tbitm

[carlings]

 

Melbourne Heart 4-0 Melbourne Victory: Heart start strongly, and control game after red card

 

March 3, 2014

 

Tim Palmer

 

The Heart dominated the opening, then made the most of their extra man to illustrate their superiority.

 

The starting line-ups

 

Teams

 

John van’t Schip had to reshuffle half of his back four with both Patrick Gerhardt and Aziz Behich accumulating yellow card suspensions, with Rob Wielaert and Ben Garrucio replacing them at centre-back and left-back respectively.

 

Kevin Muscat made three changes from the midweek defeat to Guangzhou Evergrande, with Guilherme Finkler starting ahead of Jesse Makarounas, and Kosta Barbarouses making way for Tom Rogic – meaning a brand new front two, with Troisi going wide left. Meanwhile, at the back, Pablo Contreras was dropped in favour of Scott Galloway, which saw Jason Geria shuffle across to centre-back. Finally, Lawrence Thomas was surprisingly selected ahead of Nathan Coe in goals.

 

Heart start strong

 

A key feature of the Heart’s win over Brisbane last week was how physical they were in the midfield zone –  using three energetic, combative players to break up passing moves. It was the case again here, with a number of strong challenges right from the first whistle, resulting in a succession of Victory free-kicks – the commentator’s story about the word “aggression” being underlined on the Heart change-room whiteboard was appropriate.

 

Opening goal

 

In games featuring an early goal, it’s often the case that there’s not been time to establish a pattern, or tactical trend, but in fact, here, the Heart’s route to the opening goal was practically a duplicate of the passage of play immediately before it – Engelaar winning the ball because of his height, and playing a quick ball over the top for one of the front three. In the move preceding the goal, Engelaar released Williams in behind with a lofted pass into the channel – the striker’s shot was high over the bar, leading to the goal-kick from which Thomas, of course, hit the ball directly at the tall Engelaar, who promptly played Ramsay in behind before moving forward to tap in the forthcoming cross.

 

Stylistically, the goal was also quite similar to Engelaar’s last week against Brisbane, and it’s worth noting how the 4-3-3 system accommodates those runs from midfield – with three central midfielders, there’s always cover in behind when one of them moves forward, as Engelaar has obviously done so to good effect recently.

 

Germano

 

Importantly, when the Heart had the ball higher up the pitch, Germano held his position in front of the back four. That meant the Heart had numbers behind the ball at transitions, and Germano did a good job of jockeying Finkler and Rogic towards the sides – normally, the Heart midfield trio is quite fluid and flexible with the three rotating positions, but Germano’s discipline as the most central player was vital here. A good example was when Andrew Redmayne mishit a kick, as the ball fell to a Victory player inside the penalty area – fortunately, Germano was able to fill in at centre-back and clear the danger.

 

Pattern

 

Afterwards, the game slowed down, with the Heart establishing a control of possession through slow, measured build-up from the back – the two centre-backs split wide, with Germano dropping in between to give them a 3v2 numerical advantage against the Victory front two of Finkler and Rogic, who pressed high up to prevent forward passes (with the wide players dropping back to create a second bank of four as has been the trend in recent weeks).

 

However, Kisnorbo still managed to play a number of penetrative passes from a wide-left position, sometimes moving forward purposefully on the ball, and sometimes hitting straight balls through the centre for Williams. Williams to Kisnorbo was he key combination – it brought attacks into the final third, with the former doing an excellent job of laying it off for supporting players. One such pass lead to Dugdanzic getting free on the right, and sending in a looping cross from the side, from which Ramsay’s volley struck the side-netting.

 

 

A few seconds later, Dugdanzic scored from a very similar type of cross – this, though, was obviously an enormous stroke of fortune, and not reflective of any particular tactical theme.

 

Heart possession

 

Still, the Heart were now 2-0 up, and had the freedom to dictate the game on their terms, which meant long spells of possession. This was a marked change from last week’s counter-attacking approach against Brisbane, where they had just 37% possession – contrasting with the 60% they enjoyed here.

 

Obviously, the nature of the opposition – as Brisbane are always going to dominate the ball in their matches – informed this approach, but it was interesting how calm the Heart’s passing was for long stretches of the first half, often happy knocking it around in deep positions. It was as if they deliberately wanted to slow the tempo, perhaps wary of how the Victory benefitted from the openness of last Saturday’s match against Adelaide, which lead to both sides counter-attacking frantically in a helter-skelter 4-3 Victory win.

 

Unsurprisingly, then, the Victory’s best chance came when they robbed the Heart high up the pitch – Troisi intercepted a loose Wielaert pass and broke forward to put a shot high over the far post. Aside from that, though, the Heart generally were able to play under the Victory’s first wave of pressure.

 

Heart attacks

 

As briefly mentioned earlier, the Heart’s major attacking pattern was hitting direct balls to the front three. Often, Williams would drop short in front of the centre-backs, pull the defenders forward and thus create space for both Ramsay and Dugdanzic to move inside on the diagonal run – the ‘false 9′ move. There was a moment where Williams hit a one-touch pass on the outside of his foot for Ramsay to chase – Thomas collected it cleanly, but it showed how and where the Heart were looking dangerous.

 

 

Shortly after that, in the forty-first minute, Ansell was sent off for pulling the shirt of Williams when the striker got in behind off a long, direct pass from the back.

 

Red card/Kalmar

 

Muscat’s response to the red card was to drop Leigh Broxham into centre-back, meaning Finkler in turn had to move deeper into central midfield, in a 4-4-1 formation spearheaded by Rogic. There were also, understandably, passive without the ball, sitting back and allowing the Heart to continue their patient passiog in deep positions.

 

John van’t Schip acted early to bring on Nick Kalmar in place of Germano twelve minutes into the second half. With 10 v 11, the thinking was probably that there was no need for Germano to drop in between the centre-backs (with only Rogic in the first line of Victory defence) – so Kalmar played slightly higher up, becoming a ‘spare man’ in midfield (with Engelaar and Murdocca occupying Milligan and Finkler) and so dominating the play with his passing. Considering he only played half an hour, it was remarkable he finished as the game’s 7th most frequent passer. The majority of his distribution was calmly towards the sides but he also hit penetrative forward balls towards teammates between the lines, while also providing a brilliant chipped through-ball for Dugdanzic to go 1-on-1 with Thomas.

 

 

The second most prominent feature of the second half was the Heart’s crossing – they seemed keen to target the makeshift Victory centre defence (particularly Broxham) obvious weakness of height. Dugdanzic missed a good chance on the volley from a Williams cross (the original move stemming from, unsurprisingly, a Kisnorbo pass to the striker), while later, Ramsay was only denied by a last-ditch clearance from Traore off a low Williams ball across the face of goal. Later, Williams somehow managed to hit a volley from five yards over the bar, but scored minutes later from a penalty box scramble that originated, inevitably, from a cross.

 

Substitutes

 

Meanwhile, Muscat made a double change on the hour mark, replacing his wide players with two direct attackers, Connor Pain and Kosta Barbarouses, which, on paper, made sense – both, as quick, dribble-first players, were ideal for leading counter-attacks. Later, Makarounas came on for Rogic, but this was an insignificant change.

 

Van’t Schip’s second change saw Harry Kewell replace Engelaar, playing broadly the same role as the Dutchman- he scored a fantastic goal from a clever position between the lines, the assist coming, fittingly, from Kalmar.

 

End notes

 

This was a fine win for the Heart: not only a thrashing over their local rivals but a tactically excellent display, and importantly, a completely different style of win from the preceding game – this showed how effective they can be when controlling possession, doing an excellent job in playing out neatly from the back to create space in the final third, particularly through that Kisnorbo –> Williams combination.

 

Of course, they benefitted from the extra man for the entire second half – but even there, Van’t Schip deserves great credit for his positive use of the bench , with Kalmar providing purposeful forward passing and proving instrumental in the final two goals. Furthermore, the obvious focus on crossing paid off, especially considering the number of chances Williams, Ramsay and Dugdanzic spurned in the second period.

 

Muscat will acknowledge the red card as a turning point (and in fairness, the Heart’s second goal was indebted to pure luck), but he’ll privately admit his side were still inferior at 11v11 – they didn’t press the Heart effectively to prevent them from building attacking moves, and struggled to cope with Williams’ clever movement in front of the central defenders.

 

http://www.australiascout.com/2014/03/melbourne-heart-melbourne-victory-tactics-analysis/

 

 

Impressive article. One of the best articles I've read about Heart in a while.

 

The depth of that analysis is fucking bonkers.

[Alexxandro]

 

 

Melbourne Heart 4-0 Melbourne Victory: Heart start strongly, and control game after red card

 

March 3, 2014

 

Tim Palmer

 

The Heart dominated the opening, then made the most of their extra man to illustrate their superiority.

 

The starting line-ups

 

Teams

 

John van’t Schip had to reshuffle half of his back four with both Patrick Gerhardt and Aziz Behich accumulating yellow card suspensions, with Rob Wielaert and Ben Garrucio replacing them at centre-back and left-back respectively.

 

Kevin Muscat made three changes from the midweek defeat to Guangzhou Evergrande, with Guilherme Finkler starting ahead of Jesse Makarounas, and Kosta Barbarouses making way for Tom Rogic – meaning a brand new front two, with Troisi going wide left. Meanwhile, at the back, Pablo Contreras was dropped in favour of Scott Galloway, which saw Jason Geria shuffle across to centre-back. Finally, Lawrence Thomas was surprisingly selected ahead of Nathan Coe in goals.

 

Heart start strong

 

A key feature of the Heart’s win over Brisbane last week was how physical they were in the midfield zone –  using three energetic, combative players to break up passing moves. It was the case again here, with a number of strong challenges right from the first whistle, resulting in a succession of Victory free-kicks – the commentator’s story about the word “aggression” being underlined on the Heart change-room whiteboard was appropriate.

 

Opening goal

 

In games featuring an early goal, it’s often the case that there’s not been time to establish a pattern, or tactical trend, but in fact, here, the Heart’s route to the opening goal was practically a duplicate of the passage of play immediately before it – Engelaar winning the ball because of his height, and playing a quick ball over the top for one of the front three. In the move preceding the goal, Engelaar released Williams in behind with a lofted pass into the channel – the striker’s shot was high over the bar, leading to the goal-kick from which Thomas, of course, hit the ball directly at the tall Engelaar, who promptly played Ramsay in behind before moving forward to tap in the forthcoming cross.

 

Stylistically, the goal was also quite similar to Engelaar’s last week against Brisbane, and it’s worth noting how the 4-3-3 system accommodates those runs from midfield – with three central midfielders, there’s always cover in behind when one of them moves forward, as Engelaar has obviously done so to good effect recently.

 

Germano

 

Importantly, when the Heart had the ball higher up the pitch, Germano held his position in front of the back four. That meant the Heart had numbers behind the ball at transitions, and Germano did a good job of jockeying Finkler and Rogic towards the sides – normally, the Heart midfield trio is quite fluid and flexible with the three rotating positions, but Germano’s discipline as the most central player was vital here. A good example was when Andrew Redmayne mishit a kick, as the ball fell to a Victory player inside the penalty area – fortunately, Germano was able to fill in at centre-back and clear the danger.

 

Pattern

 

Afterwards, the game slowed down, with the Heart establishing a control of possession through slow, measured build-up from the back – the two centre-backs split wide, with Germano dropping in between to give them a 3v2 numerical advantage against the Victory front two of Finkler and Rogic, who pressed high up to prevent forward passes (with the wide players dropping back to create a second bank of four as has been the trend in recent weeks).

 

However, Kisnorbo still managed to play a number of penetrative passes from a wide-left position, sometimes moving forward purposefully on the ball, and sometimes hitting straight balls through the centre for Williams. Williams to Kisnorbo was he key combination – it brought attacks into the final third, with the former doing an excellent job of laying it off for supporting players. One such pass lead to Dugdanzic getting free on the right, and sending in a looping cross from the side, from which Ramsay’s volley struck the side-netting.

 

 

A few seconds later, Dugdanzic scored from a very similar type of cross – this, though, was obviously an enormous stroke of fortune, and not reflective of any particular tactical theme.

 

Heart possession

 

Still, the Heart were now 2-0 up, and had the freedom to dictate the game on their terms, which meant long spells of possession. This was a marked change from last week’s counter-attacking approach against Brisbane, where they had just 37% possession – contrasting with the 60% they enjoyed here.

 

Obviously, the nature of the opposition – as Brisbane are always going to dominate the ball in their matches – informed this approach, but it was interesting how calm the Heart’s passing was for long stretches of the first half, often happy knocking it around in deep positions. It was as if they deliberately wanted to slow the tempo, perhaps wary of how the Victory benefitted from the openness of last Saturday’s match against Adelaide, which lead to both sides counter-attacking frantically in a helter-skelter 4-3 Victory win.

 

Unsurprisingly, then, the Victory’s best chance came when they robbed the Heart high up the pitch – Troisi intercepted a loose Wielaert pass and broke forward to put a shot high over the far post. Aside from that, though, the Heart generally were able to play under the Victory’s first wave of pressure.

 

Heart attacks

 

As briefly mentioned earlier, the Heart’s major attacking pattern was hitting direct balls to the front three. Often, Williams would drop short in front of the centre-backs, pull the defenders forward and thus create space for both Ramsay and Dugdanzic to move inside on the diagonal run – the ‘false 9′ move. There was a moment where Williams hit a one-touch pass on the outside of his foot for Ramsay to chase – Thomas collected it cleanly, but it showed how and where the Heart were looking dangerous.

 

 

Shortly after that, in the forty-first minute, Ansell was sent off for pulling the shirt of Williams when the striker got in behind off a long, direct pass from the back.

 

Red card/Kalmar

 

Muscat’s response to the red card was to drop Leigh Broxham into centre-back, meaning Finkler in turn had to move deeper into central midfield, in a 4-4-1 formation spearheaded by Rogic. There were also, understandably, passive without the ball, sitting back and allowing the Heart to continue their patient passiog in deep positions.

 

John van’t Schip acted early to bring on Nick Kalmar in place of Germano twelve minutes into the second half. With 10 v 11, the thinking was probably that there was no need for Germano to drop in between the centre-backs (with only Rogic in the first line of Victory defence) – so Kalmar played slightly higher up, becoming a ‘spare man’ in midfield (with Engelaar and Murdocca occupying Milligan and Finkler) and so dominating the play with his passing. Considering he only played half an hour, it was remarkable he finished as the game’s 7th most frequent passer. The majority of his distribution was calmly towards the sides but he also hit penetrative forward balls towards teammates between the lines, while also providing a brilliant chipped through-ball for Dugdanzic to go 1-on-1 with Thomas.

 

 

The second most prominent feature of the second half was the Heart’s crossing – they seemed keen to target the makeshift Victory centre defence (particularly Broxham) obvious weakness of height. Dugdanzic missed a good chance on the volley from a Williams cross (the original move stemming from, unsurprisingly, a Kisnorbo pass to the striker), while later, Ramsay was only denied by a last-ditch clearance from Traore off a low Williams ball across the face of goal. Later, Williams somehow managed to hit a volley from five yards over the bar, but scored minutes later from a penalty box scramble that originated, inevitably, from a cross.

 

Substitutes

 

Meanwhile, Muscat made a double change on the hour mark, replacing his wide players with two direct attackers, Connor Pain and Kosta Barbarouses, which, on paper, made sense – both, as quick, dribble-first players, were ideal for leading counter-attacks. Later, Makarounas came on for Rogic, but this was an insignificant change.

 

Van’t Schip’s second change saw Harry Kewell replace Engelaar, playing broadly the same role as the Dutchman- he scored a fantastic goal from a clever position between the lines, the assist coming, fittingly, from Kalmar.

 

End notes

 

This was a fine win for the Heart: not only a thrashing over their local rivals but a tactically excellent display, and importantly, a completely different style of win from the preceding game – this showed how effective they can be when controlling possession, doing an excellent job in playing out neatly from the back to create space in the final third, particularly through that Kisnorbo –> Williams combination.

 

Of course, they benefitted from the extra man for the entire second half – but even there, Van’t Schip deserves great credit for his positive use of the bench , with Kalmar providing purposeful forward passing and proving instrumental in the final two goals. Furthermore, the obvious focus on crossing paid off, especially considering the number of chances Williams, Ramsay and Dugdanzic spurned in the second period.

 

Muscat will acknowledge the red card as a turning point (and in fairness, the Heart’s second goal was indebted to pure luck), but he’ll privately admit his side were still inferior at 11v11 – they didn’t press the Heart effectively to prevent them from building attacking moves, and struggled to cope with Williams’ clever movement in front of the central defenders.

 

http://www.australiascout.com/2014/03/melbourne-heart-melbourne-victory-tactics-analysis/

 

 

Impressive article. One of the best articles I've read about Heart in a while.

 

The depth of that analysis is fucking bonkers.

 

Aloisi has a lot of free time on his hands. 

[Tbitm]

 

 

 

Melbourne Heart 4-0 Melbourne Victory: Heart start strongly, and control game after red card

 

March 3, 2014

 

Tim Palmer

 

The Heart dominated the opening, then made the most of their extra man to illustrate their superiority.

 

The starting line-ups

 

Teams

 

John van’t Schip had to reshuffle half of his back four with both Patrick Gerhardt and Aziz Behich accumulating yellow card suspensions, with Rob Wielaert and Ben Garrucio replacing them at centre-back and left-back respectively.

 

Kevin Muscat made three changes from the midweek defeat to Guangzhou Evergrande, with Guilherme Finkler starting ahead of Jesse Makarounas, and Kosta Barbarouses making way for Tom Rogic – meaning a brand new front two, with Troisi going wide left. Meanwhile, at the back, Pablo Contreras was dropped in favour of Scott Galloway, which saw Jason Geria shuffle across to centre-back. Finally, Lawrence Thomas was surprisingly selected ahead of Nathan Coe in goals.

 

Heart start strong

 

A key feature of the Heart’s win over Brisbane last week was how physical they were in the midfield zone –  using three energetic, combative players to break up passing moves. It was the case again here, with a number of strong challenges right from the first whistle, resulting in a succession of Victory free-kicks – the commentator’s story about the word “aggression” being underlined on the Heart change-room whiteboard was appropriate.

 

Opening goal

 

In games featuring an early goal, it’s often the case that there’s not been time to establish a pattern, or tactical trend, but in fact, here, the Heart’s route to the opening goal was practically a duplicate of the passage of play immediately before it – Engelaar winning the ball because of his height, and playing a quick ball over the top for one of the front three. In the move preceding the goal, Engelaar released Williams in behind with a lofted pass into the channel – the striker’s shot was high over the bar, leading to the goal-kick from which Thomas, of course, hit the ball directly at the tall Engelaar, who promptly played Ramsay in behind before moving forward to tap in the forthcoming cross.

 

Stylistically, the goal was also quite similar to Engelaar’s last week against Brisbane, and it’s worth noting how the 4-3-3 system accommodates those runs from midfield – with three central midfielders, there’s always cover in behind when one of them moves forward, as Engelaar has obviously done so to good effect recently.

 

Germano

 

Importantly, when the Heart had the ball higher up the pitch, Germano held his position in front of the back four. That meant the Heart had numbers behind the ball at transitions, and Germano did a good job of jockeying Finkler and Rogic towards the sides – normally, the Heart midfield trio is quite fluid and flexible with the three rotating positions, but Germano’s discipline as the most central player was vital here. A good example was when Andrew Redmayne mishit a kick, as the ball fell to a Victory player inside the penalty area – fortunately, Germano was able to fill in at centre-back and clear the danger.

 

Pattern

 

Afterwards, the game slowed down, with the Heart establishing a control of possession through slow, measured build-up from the back – the two centre-backs split wide, with Germano dropping in between to give them a 3v2 numerical advantage against the Victory front two of Finkler and Rogic, who pressed high up to prevent forward passes (with the wide players dropping back to create a second bank of four as has been the trend in recent weeks).

 

However, Kisnorbo still managed to play a number of penetrative passes from a wide-left position, sometimes moving forward purposefully on the ball, and sometimes hitting straight balls through the centre for Williams. Williams to Kisnorbo was he key combination – it brought attacks into the final third, with the former doing an excellent job of laying it off for supporting players. One such pass lead to Dugdanzic getting free on the right, and sending in a looping cross from the side, from which Ramsay’s volley struck the side-netting.

 

 

A few seconds later, Dugdanzic scored from a very similar type of cross – this, though, was obviously an enormous stroke of fortune, and not reflective of any particular tactical theme.

 

Heart possession

 

Still, the Heart were now 2-0 up, and had the freedom to dictate the game on their terms, which meant long spells of possession. This was a marked change from last week’s counter-attacking approach against Brisbane, where they had just 37% possession – contrasting with the 60% they enjoyed here.

 

Obviously, the nature of the opposition – as Brisbane are always going to dominate the ball in their matches – informed this approach, but it was interesting how calm the Heart’s passing was for long stretches of the first half, often happy knocking it around in deep positions. It was as if they deliberately wanted to slow the tempo, perhaps wary of how the Victory benefitted from the openness of last Saturday’s match against Adelaide, which lead to both sides counter-attacking frantically in a helter-skelter 4-3 Victory win.

 

Unsurprisingly, then, the Victory’s best chance came when they robbed the Heart high up the pitch – Troisi intercepted a loose Wielaert pass and broke forward to put a shot high over the far post. Aside from that, though, the Heart generally were able to play under the Victory’s first wave of pressure.

 

Heart attacks

 

As briefly mentioned earlier, the Heart’s major attacking pattern was hitting direct balls to the front three. Often, Williams would drop short in front of the centre-backs, pull the defenders forward and thus create space for both Ramsay and Dugdanzic to move inside on the diagonal run – the ‘false 9′ move. There was a moment where Williams hit a one-touch pass on the outside of his foot for Ramsay to chase – Thomas collected it cleanly, but it showed how and where the Heart were looking dangerous.

 

 

Shortly after that, in the forty-first minute, Ansell was sent off for pulling the shirt of Williams when the striker got in behind off a long, direct pass from the back.

 

Red card/Kalmar

 

Muscat’s response to the red card was to drop Leigh Broxham into centre-back, meaning Finkler in turn had to move deeper into central midfield, in a 4-4-1 formation spearheaded by Rogic. There were also, understandably, passive without the ball, sitting back and allowing the Heart to continue their patient passiog in deep positions.

 

John van’t Schip acted early to bring on Nick Kalmar in place of Germano twelve minutes into the second half. With 10 v 11, the thinking was probably that there was no need for Germano to drop in between the centre-backs (with only Rogic in the first line of Victory defence) – so Kalmar played slightly higher up, becoming a ‘spare man’ in midfield (with Engelaar and Murdocca occupying Milligan and Finkler) and so dominating the play with his passing. Considering he only played half an hour, it was remarkable he finished as the game’s 7th most frequent passer. The majority of his distribution was calmly towards the sides but he also hit penetrative forward balls towards teammates between the lines, while also providing a brilliant chipped through-ball for Dugdanzic to go 1-on-1 with Thomas.

 

 

The second most prominent feature of the second half was the Heart’s crossing – they seemed keen to target the makeshift Victory centre defence (particularly Broxham) obvious weakness of height. Dugdanzic missed a good chance on the volley from a Williams cross (the original move stemming from, unsurprisingly, a Kisnorbo pass to the striker), while later, Ramsay was only denied by a last-ditch clearance from Traore off a low Williams ball across the face of goal. Later, Williams somehow managed to hit a volley from five yards over the bar, but scored minutes later from a penalty box scramble that originated, inevitably, from a cross.

 

Substitutes

 

Meanwhile, Muscat made a double change on the hour mark, replacing his wide players with two direct attackers, Connor Pain and Kosta Barbarouses, which, on paper, made sense – both, as quick, dribble-first players, were ideal for leading counter-attacks. Later, Makarounas came on for Rogic, but this was an insignificant change.

 

Van’t Schip’s second change saw Harry Kewell replace Engelaar, playing broadly the same role as the Dutchman- he scored a fantastic goal from a clever position between the lines, the assist coming, fittingly, from Kalmar.

 

End notes

 

This was a fine win for the Heart: not only a thrashing over their local rivals but a tactically excellent display, and importantly, a completely different style of win from the preceding game – this showed how effective they can be when controlling possession, doing an excellent job in playing out neatly from the back to create space in the final third, particularly through that Kisnorbo –> Williams combination.

 

Of course, they benefitted from the extra man for the entire second half – but even there, Van’t Schip deserves great credit for his positive use of the bench , with Kalmar providing purposeful forward passing and proving instrumental in the final two goals. Furthermore, the obvious focus on crossing paid off, especially considering the number of chances Williams, Ramsay and Dugdanzic spurned in the second period.

 

Muscat will acknowledge the red card as a turning point (and in fairness, the Heart’s second goal was indebted to pure luck), but he’ll privately admit his side were still inferior at 11v11 – they didn’t press the Heart effectively to prevent them from building attacking moves, and struggled to cope with Williams’ clever movement in front of the central defenders.

 

http://www.australiascout.com/2014/03/melbourne-heart-melbourne-victory-tactics-analysis/

 

 

Impressive article. One of the best articles I've read about Heart in a while.

 

The depth of that analysis is fucking bonkers.

 

Aloisi has a lot of free time on his hands. 

 

Hardly, Bayern play a lot of games you know

[theresonlyonebzamora]

FFS can people stop quoting the entire article?

[bazzatron]

 

 

 

 

Melbourne Heart 4-0 Melbourne Victory: Heart start strongly, and control game after red card

 

March 3, 2014

 

Tim Palmer

 

The Heart dominated the opening, then made the most of their extra man to illustrate their superiority.

 

The starting line-ups

 

Teams

 

John van’t Schip had to reshuffle half of his back four with both Patrick Gerhardt and Aziz Behich accumulating yellow card suspensions, with Rob Wielaert and Ben Garrucio replacing them at centre-back and left-back respectively.

 

Kevin Muscat made three changes from the midweek defeat to Guangzhou Evergrande, with Guilherme Finkler starting ahead of Jesse Makarounas, and Kosta Barbarouses making way for Tom Rogic – meaning a brand new front two, with Troisi going wide left. Meanwhile, at the back, Pablo Contreras was dropped in favour of Scott Galloway, which saw Jason Geria shuffle across to centre-back. Finally, Lawrence Thomas was surprisingly selected ahead of Nathan Coe in goals.

 

Heart start strong

 

A key feature of the Heart’s win over Brisbane last week was how physical they were in the midfield zone –  using three energetic, combative players to break up passing moves. It was the case again here, with a number of strong challenges right from the first whistle, resulting in a succession of Victory free-kicks – the commentator’s story about the word “aggression” being underlined on the Heart change-room whiteboard was appropriate.

 

Opening goal

 

In games featuring an early goal, it’s often the case that there’s not been time to establish a pattern, or tactical trend, but in fact, here, the Heart’s route to the opening goal was practically a duplicate of the passage of play immediately before it – Engelaar winning the ball because of his height, and playing a quick ball over the top for one of the front three. In the move preceding the goal, Engelaar released Williams in behind with a lofted pass into the channel – the striker’s shot was high over the bar, leading to the goal-kick from which Thomas, of course, hit the ball directly at the tall Engelaar, who promptly played Ramsay in behind before moving forward to tap in the forthcoming cross.

 

Stylistically, the goal was also quite similar to Engelaar’s last week against Brisbane, and it’s worth noting how the 4-3-3 system accommodates those runs from midfield – with three central midfielders, there’s always cover in behind when one of them moves forward, as Engelaar has obviously done so to good effect recently.

 

Germano

 

Importantly, when the Heart had the ball higher up the pitch, Germano held his position in front of the back four. That meant the Heart had numbers behind the ball at transitions, and Germano did a good job of jockeying Finkler and Rogic towards the sides – normally, the Heart midfield trio is quite fluid and flexible with the three rotating positions, but Germano’s discipline as the most central player was vital here. A good example was when Andrew Redmayne mishit a kick, as the ball fell to a Victory player inside the penalty area – fortunately, Germano was able to fill in at centre-back and clear the danger.

 

Pattern

 

Afterwards, the game slowed down, with the Heart establishing a control of possession through slow, measured build-up from the back – the two centre-backs split wide, with Germano dropping in between to give them a 3v2 numerical advantage against the Victory front two of Finkler and Rogic, who pressed high up to prevent forward passes (with the wide players dropping back to create a second bank of four as has been the trend in recent weeks).

 

However, Kisnorbo still managed to play a number of penetrative passes from a wide-left position, sometimes moving forward purposefully on the ball, and sometimes hitting straight balls through the centre for Williams. Williams to Kisnorbo was he key combination – it brought attacks into the final third, with the former doing an excellent job of laying it off for supporting players. One such pass lead to Dugdanzic getting free on the right, and sending in a looping cross from the side, from which Ramsay’s volley struck the side-netting.

 

 

A few seconds later, Dugdanzic scored from a very similar type of cross – this, though, was obviously an enormous stroke of fortune, and not reflective of any particular tactical theme.

 

Heart possession

 

Still, the Heart were now 2-0 up, and had the freedom to dictate the game on their terms, which meant long spells of possession. This was a marked change from last week’s counter-attacking approach against Brisbane, where they had just 37% possession – contrasting with the 60% they enjoyed here.

 

Obviously, the nature of the opposition – as Brisbane are always going to dominate the ball in their matches – informed this approach, but it was interesting how calm the Heart’s passing was for long stretches of the first half, often happy knocking it around in deep positions. It was as if they deliberately wanted to slow the tempo, perhaps wary of how the Victory benefitted from the openness of last Saturday’s match against Adelaide, which lead to both sides counter-attacking frantically in a helter-skelter 4-3 Victory win.

 

Unsurprisingly, then, the Victory’s best chance came when they robbed the Heart high up the pitch – Troisi intercepted a loose Wielaert pass and broke forward to put a shot high over the far post. Aside from that, though, the Heart generally were able to play under the Victory’s first wave of pressure.

 

Heart attacks

 

As briefly mentioned earlier, the Heart’s major attacking pattern was hitting direct balls to the front three. Often, Williams would drop short in front of the centre-backs, pull the defenders forward and thus create space for both Ramsay and Dugdanzic to move inside on the diagonal run – the ‘false 9′ move. There was a moment where Williams hit a one-touch pass on the outside of his foot for Ramsay to chase – Thomas collected it cleanly, but it showed how and where the Heart were looking dangerous.

 

 

Shortly after that, in the forty-first minute, Ansell was sent off for pulling the shirt of Williams when the striker got in behind off a long, direct pass from the back.

 

Red card/Kalmar

 

Muscat’s response to the red card was to drop Leigh Broxham into centre-back, meaning Finkler in turn had to move deeper into central midfield, in a 4-4-1 formation spearheaded by Rogic. There were also, understandably, passive without the ball, sitting back and allowing the Heart to continue their patient passiog in deep positions.

 

John van’t Schip acted early to bring on Nick Kalmar in place of Germano twelve minutes into the second half. With 10 v 11, the thinking was probably that there was no need for Germano to drop in between the centre-backs (with only Rogic in the first line of Victory defence) – so Kalmar played slightly higher up, becoming a ‘spare man’ in midfield (with Engelaar and Murdocca occupying Milligan and Finkler) and so dominating the play with his passing. Considering he only played half an hour, it was remarkable he finished as the game’s 7th most frequent passer. The majority of his distribution was calmly towards the sides but he also hit penetrative forward balls towards teammates between the lines, while also providing a brilliant chipped through-ball for Dugdanzic to go 1-on-1 with Thomas.

 

 

The second most prominent feature of the second half was the Heart’s crossing – they seemed keen to target the makeshift Victory centre defence (particularly Broxham) obvious weakness of height. Dugdanzic missed a good chance on the volley from a Williams cross (the original move stemming from, unsurprisingly, a Kisnorbo pass to the striker), while later, Ramsay was only denied by a last-ditch clearance from Traore off a low Williams ball across the face of goal. Later, Williams somehow managed to hit a volley from five yards over the bar, but scored minutes later from a penalty box scramble that originated, inevitably, from a cross.

 

Substitutes

 

Meanwhile, Muscat made a double change on the hour mark, replacing his wide players with two direct attackers, Connor Pain and Kosta Barbarouses, which, on paper, made sense – both, as quick, dribble-first players, were ideal for leading counter-attacks. Later, Makarounas came on for Rogic, but this was an insignificant change.

 

Van’t Schip’s second change saw Harry Kewell replace Engelaar, playing broadly the same role as the Dutchman- he scored a fantastic goal from a clever position between the lines, the assist coming, fittingly, from Kalmar.

 

End notes

 

This was a fine win for the Heart: not only a thrashing over their local rivals but a tactically excellent display, and importantly, a completely different style of win from the preceding game – this showed how effective they can be when controlling possession, doing an excellent job in playing out neatly from the back to create space in the final third, particularly through that Kisnorbo –> Williams combination.

 

Of course, they benefitted from the extra man for the entire second half – but even there, Van’t Schip deserves great credit for his positive use of the bench , with Kalmar providing purposeful forward passing and proving instrumental in the final two goals. Furthermore, the obvious focus on crossing paid off, especially considering the number of chances Williams, Ramsay and Dugdanzic spurned in the second period.

 

Muscat will acknowledge the red card as a turning point (and in fairness, the Heart’s second goal was indebted to pure luck), but he’ll privately admit his side were still inferior at 11v11 – they didn’t press the Heart effectively to prevent them from building attacking moves, and struggled to cope with Williams’ clever movement in front of the central defenders.

 

http://www.australiascout.com/2014/03/melbourne-heart-melbourne-victory-tactics-analysis/

 

 

Impressive article. One of the best articles I've read about Heart in a while.

 

The depth of that analysis is fucking bonkers.

 

Aloisi has a lot of free time on his hands. 

 

Hardly, Bayern play a lot of games you know

 

 

 

FFS can people stop quoting the entire article?

 

 

Why?

[Tbitm]

 

 

 

 

 

Melbourne Heart 4-0 Melbourne Victory: Heart start strongly, and control game after red card

 

March 3, 2014

 

Tim Palmer

 

The Heart dominated the opening, then made the most of their extra man to illustrate their superiority.

 

The starting line-ups

 

Teams

 

John van’t Schip had to reshuffle half of his back four with both Patrick Gerhardt and Aziz Behich accumulating yellow card suspensions, with Rob Wielaert and Ben Garrucio replacing them at centre-back and left-back respectively.

 

Kevin Muscat made three changes from the midweek defeat to Guangzhou Evergrande, with Guilherme Finkler starting ahead of Jesse Makarounas, and Kosta Barbarouses making way for Tom Rogic – meaning a brand new front two, with Troisi going wide left. Meanwhile, at the back, Pablo Contreras was dropped in favour of Scott Galloway, which saw Jason Geria shuffle across to centre-back. Finally, Lawrence Thomas was surprisingly selected ahead of Nathan Coe in goals.

 

Heart start strong

 

A key feature of the Heart’s win over Brisbane last week was how physical they were in the midfield zone –  using three energetic, combative players to break up passing moves. It was the case again here, with a number of strong challenges right from the first whistle, resulting in a succession of Victory free-kicks – the commentator’s story about the word “aggression” being underlined on the Heart change-room whiteboard was appropriate.

 

Opening goal

 

In games featuring an early goal, it’s often the case that there’s not been time to establish a pattern, or tactical trend, but in fact, here, the Heart’s route to the opening goal was practically a duplicate of the passage of play immediately before it – Engelaar winning the ball because of his height, and playing a quick ball over the top for one of the front three. In the move preceding the goal, Engelaar released Williams in behind with a lofted pass into the channel – the striker’s shot was high over the bar, leading to the goal-kick from which Thomas, of course, hit the ball directly at the tall Engelaar, who promptly played Ramsay in behind before moving forward to tap in the forthcoming cross.

 

Stylistically, the goal was also quite similar to Engelaar’s last week against Brisbane, and it’s worth noting how the 4-3-3 system accommodates those runs from midfield – with three central midfielders, there’s always cover in behind when one of them moves forward, as Engelaar has obviously done so to good effect recently.

 

Germano

 

Importantly, when the Heart had the ball higher up the pitch, Germano held his position in front of the back four. That meant the Heart had numbers behind the ball at transitions, and Germano did a good job of jockeying Finkler and Rogic towards the sides – normally, the Heart midfield trio is quite fluid and flexible with the three rotating positions, but Germano’s discipline as the most central player was vital here. A good example was when Andrew Redmayne mishit a kick, as the ball fell to a Victory player inside the penalty area – fortunately, Germano was able to fill in at centre-back and clear the danger.

 

Pattern

 

Afterwards, the game slowed down, with the Heart establishing a control of possession through slow, measured build-up from the back – the two centre-backs split wide, with Germano dropping in between to give them a 3v2 numerical advantage against the Victory front two of Finkler and Rogic, who pressed high up to prevent forward passes (with the wide players dropping back to create a second bank of four as has been the trend in recent weeks).

 

However, Kisnorbo still managed to play a number of penetrative passes from a wide-left position, sometimes moving forward purposefully on the ball, and sometimes hitting straight balls through the centre for Williams. Williams to Kisnorbo was he key combination – it brought attacks into the final third, with the former doing an excellent job of laying it off for supporting players. One such pass lead to Dugdanzic getting free on the right, and sending in a looping cross from the side, from which Ramsay’s volley struck the side-netting.

 

 

A few seconds later, Dugdanzic scored from a very similar type of cross – this, though, was obviously an enormous stroke of fortune, and not reflective of any particular tactical theme.

 

Heart possession

 

Still, the Heart were now 2-0 up, and had the freedom to dictate the game on their terms, which meant long spells of possession. This was a marked change from last week’s counter-attacking approach against Brisbane, where they had just 37% possession – contrasting with the 60% they enjoyed here.

 

Obviously, the nature of the opposition – as Brisbane are always going to dominate the ball in their matches – informed this approach, but it was interesting how calm the Heart’s passing was for long stretches of the first half, often happy knocking it around in deep positions. It was as if they deliberately wanted to slow the tempo, perhaps wary of how the Victory benefitted from the openness of last Saturday’s match against Adelaide, which lead to both sides counter-attacking frantically in a helter-skelter 4-3 Victory win.

 

Unsurprisingly, then, the Victory’s best chance came when they robbed the Heart high up the pitch – Troisi intercepted a loose Wielaert pass and broke forward to put a shot high over the far post. Aside from that, though, the Heart generally were able to play under the Victory’s first wave of pressure.

 

Heart attacks

 

As briefly mentioned earlier, the Heart’s major attacking pattern was hitting direct balls to the front three. Often, Williams would drop short in front of the centre-backs, pull the defenders forward and thus create space for both Ramsay and Dugdanzic to move inside on the diagonal run – the ‘false 9′ move. There was a moment where Williams hit a one-touch pass on the outside of his foot for Ramsay to chase – Thomas collected it cleanly, but it showed how and where the Heart were looking dangerous.

 

 

Shortly after that, in the forty-first minute, Ansell was sent off for pulling the shirt of Williams when the striker got in behind off a long, direct pass from the back.

 

Red card/Kalmar

 

Muscat’s response to the red card was to drop Leigh Broxham into centre-back, meaning Finkler in turn had to move deeper into central midfield, in a 4-4-1 formation spearheaded by Rogic. There were also, understandably, passive without the ball, sitting back and allowing the Heart to continue their patient passiog in deep positions.

 

John van’t Schip acted early to bring on Nick Kalmar in place of Germano twelve minutes into the second half. With 10 v 11, the thinking was probably that there was no need for Germano to drop in between the centre-backs (with only Rogic in the first line of Victory defence) – so Kalmar played slightly higher up, becoming a ‘spare man’ in midfield (with Engelaar and Murdocca occupying Milligan and Finkler) and so dominating the play with his passing. Considering he only played half an hour, it was remarkable he finished as the game’s 7th most frequent passer. The majority of his distribution was calmly towards the sides but he also hit penetrative forward balls towards teammates between the lines, while also providing a brilliant chipped through-ball for Dugdanzic to go 1-on-1 with Thomas.

 

 

The second most prominent feature of the second half was the Heart’s crossing – they seemed keen to target the makeshift Victory centre defence (particularly Broxham) obvious weakness of height. Dugdanzic missed a good chance on the volley from a Williams cross (the original move stemming from, unsurprisingly, a Kisnorbo pass to the striker), while later, Ramsay was only denied by a last-ditch clearance from Traore off a low Williams ball across the face of goal. Later, Williams somehow managed to hit a volley from five yards over the bar, but scored minutes later from a penalty box scramble that originated, inevitably, from a cross.

 

Substitutes

 

Meanwhile, Muscat made a double change on the hour mark, replacing his wide players with two direct attackers, Connor Pain and Kosta Barbarouses, which, on paper, made sense – both, as quick, dribble-first players, were ideal for leading counter-attacks. Later, Makarounas came on for Rogic, but this was an insignificant change.

 

Van’t Schip’s second change saw Harry Kewell replace Engelaar, playing broadly the same role as the Dutchman- he scored a fantastic goal from a clever position between the lines, the assist coming, fittingly, from Kalmar.

 

End notes

 

This was a fine win for the Heart: not only a thrashing over their local rivals but a tactically excellent display, and importantly, a completely different style of win from the preceding game – this showed how effective they can be when controlling possession, doing an excellent job in playing out neatly from the back to create space in the final third, particularly through that Kisnorbo –> Williams combination.

 

Of course, they benefitted from the extra man for the entire second half – but even there, Van’t Schip deserves great credit for his positive use of the bench , with Kalmar providing purposeful forward passing and proving instrumental in the final two goals. Furthermore, the obvious focus on crossing paid off, especially considering the number of chances Williams, Ramsay and Dugdanzic spurned in the second period.

 

Muscat will acknowledge the red card as a turning point (and in fairness, the Heart’s second goal was indebted to pure luck), but he’ll privately admit his side were still inferior at 11v11 – they didn’t press the Heart effectively to prevent them from building attacking moves, and struggled to cope with Williams’ clever movement in front of the central defenders.

 

http://www.australiascout.com/2014/03/melbourne-heart-melbourne-victory-tactics-analysis/

 

 

Impressive article. One of the best articles I've read about Heart in a while.

 

The depth of that analysis is fucking bonkers.

 

Aloisi has a lot of free time on his hands. 

 

Hardly, Bayern play a lot of games you know

 

 

 

FFS can people stop quoting the entire article?

 

 

Why?

 

I'm guessing cause it pisses him off.

[Deviant]

Melbourne Heart 4-0 Melbourne Victory: Heart start strongly, and control game after red card

March 3, 2014

Tim Palmer

The Heart dominated the opening, then made the most of their extra man to illustrate their superiority.

The starting line-ups

[/font]

Teams

John van’t Schip had to reshuffle half of his back four with both Patrick Gerhardt and Aziz Behich accumulating yellow card suspensions, with Rob Wielaert and Ben Garrucio replacing them at centre-back and left-back respectively.

Kevin Muscat made three changes from the midweek defeat to Guangzhou Evergrande, with Guilherme Finkler starting ahead of Jesse Makarounas, and Kosta Barbarouses making way for Tom Rogic – meaning a brand new front two, with Troisi going wide left. Meanwhile, at the back, Pablo Contreras was dropped in favour of Scott Galloway, which saw Jason Geria shuffle across to centre-back. Finally, Lawrence Thomas was surprisingly selected ahead of Nathan Coe in goals.

Heart start strong

A key feature of the Heart’s win over Brisbane last week was how physical they were in the midfield zone – using three energetic, combative players to break up passing moves. It was the case again here, with a number of strong challenges right from the first whistle, resulting in a succession of Victory free-kicks – the commentator’s story about the word “aggression” being underlined on the Heart change-room whiteboard was appropriate.

Opening goal

In games featuring an early goal, it’s often the case that there’s not been time to establish a pattern, or tactical trend, but in fact, here, the Heart’s route to the opening goal was practically a duplicate of the passage of play immediately before it – Engelaar winning the ball because of his height, and playing a quick ball over the top for one of the front three. In the move preceding the goal, Engelaar released Williams in behind with a lofted pass into the channel – the striker’s shot was high over the bar, leading to the goal-kick from which Thomas, of course, hit the ball directly at the tall Engelaar, who promptly played Ramsay in behind before moving forward to tap in the forthcoming cross.

Stylistically, the goal was also quite similar to Engelaar’s last week against Brisbane, and it’s worth noting how the 4-3-3 system accommodates those runs from midfield – with three central midfielders, there’s always cover in behind when one of them moves forward, as Engelaar has obviously done so to good effect recently.

Germano

Importantly, when the Heart had the ball higher up the pitch, Germano held his position in front of the back four. That meant the Heart had numbers behind the ball at transitions, and Germano did a good job of jockeying Finkler and Rogic towards the sides – normally, the Heart midfield trio is quite fluid and flexible with the three rotating positions, but Germano’s discipline as the most central player was vital here. A good example was when Andrew Redmayne mishit a kick, as the ball fell to a Victory player inside the penalty area – fortunately, Germano was able to fill in at centre-back and clear the danger.

Pattern

Afterwards, the game slowed down, with the Heart establishing a control of possession through slow, measured build-up from the back – the two centre-backs split wide, with Germano dropping in between to give them a 3v2 numerical advantage against the Victory front two of Finkler and Rogic, who pressed high up to prevent forward passes (with the wide players dropping back to create a second bank of four as has been the trend in recent weeks).

However, Kisnorbo still managed to play a number of penetrative passes from a wide-left position, sometimes moving forward purposefully on the ball, and sometimes hitting straight balls through the centre for Williams. Williams to Kisnorbo was he key combination – it brought attacks into the final third, with the former doing an excellent job of laying it off for supporting players. One such pass lead to Dugdanzic getting free on the right, and sending in a looping cross from the side, from which Ramsay’s volley struck the side-netting.

A few seconds later, Dugdanzic scored from a very similar type of cross – this, though, was obviously an enormous stroke of fortune, and not reflective of any particular tactical theme.

Heart possession

Still, the Heart were now 2-0 up, and had the freedom to dictate the game on their terms, which meant long spells of possession. This was a marked change from last week’s counter-attacking approach against Brisbane, where they had just 37% possession – contrasting with the 60% they enjoyed here.

Obviously, the nature of the opposition – as Brisbane are always going to dominate the ball in their matches – informed this approach, but it was interesting how calm the Heart’s passing was for long stretches of the first half, often happy knocking it around in deep positions. It was as if they deliberately wanted to slow the tempo, perhaps wary of how the Victory benefitted from the openness of last Saturday’s match against Adelaide, which lead to both sides counter-attacking frantically in a helter-skelter 4-3 Victory win.

Unsurprisingly, then, the Victory’s best chance came when they robbed the Heart high up the pitch – Troisi intercepted a loose Wielaert pass and broke forward to put a shot high over the far post. Aside from that, though, the Heart generally were able to play under the Victory’s first wave of pressure.

Heart attacks

As briefly mentioned earlier, the Heart’s major attacking pattern was hitting direct balls to the front three. Often, Williams would drop short in front of the centre-backs, pull the defenders forward and thus create space for both Ramsay and Dugdanzic to move inside on the diagonal run – the ‘false 9′ move. There was a moment where Williams hit a one-touch pass on the outside of his foot for Ramsay to chase – Thomas collected it cleanly, but it showed how and where the Heart were looking dangerous.

Shortly after that, in the forty-first minute, Ansell was sent off for pulling the shirt of Williams when the striker got in behind off a long, direct pass from the back.

Red card/Kalmar

Muscat’s response to the red card was to drop Leigh Broxham into centre-back, meaning Finkler in turn had to move deeper into central midfield, in a 4-4-1 formation spearheaded by Rogic. There were also, understandably, passive without the ball, sitting back and allowing the Heart to continue their patient passiog in deep positions.

John van’t Schip acted early to bring on Nick Kalmar in place of Germano twelve minutes into the second half. With 10 v 11, the thinking was probably that there was no need for Germano to drop in between the centre-backs (with only Rogic in the first line of Victory defence) – so Kalmar played slightly higher up, becoming a ‘spare man’ in midfield (with Engelaar and Murdocca occupying Milligan and Finkler) and so dominating the play with his passing. Considering he only played half an hour, it was remarkable he finished as the game’s 7th most frequent passer. The majority of his distribution was calmly towards the sides but he also hit penetrative forward balls towards teammates between the lines, while also providing a brilliant chipped through-ball for Dugdanzic to go 1-on-1 with Thomas.

The second most prominent feature of the second half was the Heart’s crossing – they seemed keen to target the makeshift Victory centre defence (particularly Broxham) obvious weakness of height. Dugdanzic missed a good chance on the volley from a Williams cross (the original move stemming from, unsurprisingly, a Kisnorbo pass to the striker), while later, Ramsay was only denied by a last-ditch clearance from Traore off a low Williams ball across the face of goal. Later, Williams somehow managed to hit a volley from five yards over the bar, but scored minutes later from a penalty box scramble that originated, inevitably, from a cross.

Substitutes

Meanwhile, Muscat made a double change on the hour mark, replacing his wide players with two direct attackers, Connor Pain and Kosta Barbarouses, which, on paper, made sense – both, as quick, dribble-first players, were ideal for leading counter-attacks. Later, Makarounas came on for Rogic, but this was an insignificant change.

Van’t Schip’s second change saw Harry Kewell replace Engelaar, playing broadly the same role as the Dutchman- he scored a fantastic goal from a clever position between the lines, the assist coming, fittingly, from Kalmar.

End notes

This was a fine win for the Heart: not only a thrashing over their local rivals but a tactically excellent display, and importantly, a completely different style of win from the preceding game – this showed how effective they can be when controlling possession, doing an excellent job in playing out neatly from the back to create space in the final third, particularly through that Kisnorbo –> Williams combination.

Of course, they benefitted from the extra man for the entire second half – but even there, Van’t Schip deserves great credit for his positive use of the bench , with Kalmar providing purposeful forward passing and proving instrumental in the final two goals. Furthermore, the obvious focus on crossing paid off, especially considering the number of chances Williams, Ramsay and Dugdanzic spurned in the second period.

Muscat will acknowledge the red card as a turning point (and in fairness, the Heart’s second goal was indebted to pure luck), but he’ll privately admit his side were still inferior at 11v11 – they didn’t press the Heart effectively to prevent them from building attacking moves, and struggled to cope with Williams’ clever movement in front of the central defenders.

http://www.australiascout.com/2014/03/melbourne-heart-melbourne-victory-tactics-analysis/

Impressive article. One of the best articles I've read about Heart in a while.

The depth of that analysis is fucking bonkers.

Aloisi has a lot of free time on his hands.

Hardly, Bayern play a lot of games you know

FFS can people stop quoting the entire article?

Why?

I'm guessing cause it pisses him off. Yeah stop!! Sheeeesh

[theresonlyonebzamora]

Well I walked into that one...

[Rellum]

 

 

 

 

http://www.australiascout.com/2014/03/melbourne-heart-melbourne-victory-tactics-analysis/

 

 

Impressive article. One of the best articles I've read about Heart in a while.

 

The depth of that analysis is fucking bonkers.

 

It is what I expect from football commentators, more of it I say. I hate the "they showed more will to win" guff that people like the guys at foxsports dish up.

[n i k o]

Love it murdocca, the littlest guy out there, is the first one to run over and get in traores face!

And I'm pretty sure when ansell gets sent off you can see Hoffman saying something to him along the lines of get the fuck off.

Fantastic stuff. Loving the team unity we have.

Edited March 4, 2014 by n i k o

[HEARTinator]

Melbouirne Heart's Incredible Rise: http://www.theturf.com.au/2014/03/melbourne-hearts-incredible-rise/

 

This is good too, however, I haven't seen this website before. Interesting comments about the pre match formations on Foxsports in light of the posts above.

 

"A consistent source of entertainment this season has been the pre-match formation diagrams on Fox Sports – from basic mistakes of player positions to full-blown changes of system, they’re nearly always wrong, and it’s become a bit of a ritual to see how drastically the actual team shape has been changed by the production team.

 

It was odd, then, that the information recently emerged that it’s in fact the coaches responsible for this oddity – the line-ups are a conscious decision on their part to try and disguise their team’s actual formation, and more specifically, the real positioning of players."

 

Edit: Sorry, just noticed this in another thread. Doesn't matter, relevant to both I think.

And from that article:

"That’s because Van’t Schip is one of the league’s most innovative coaches, constantly tinkering his side’s shape to suit both the players and counter an opposition threat."

If JVS wants to coach us next year, we don't need to go looking for a more expensive alternative. He knows the HeartFC and players, seemingly likes being here and with the added resources of MCFC we will be right up there challenging for silverware.

[HeartFc]

According to bozza dugandzic's goal was a "cross cumshot".

[n i k o]

Fuckers that quote that large article a million times.

NEED

[n i k o]

TO

[n i k o]

KEEP

[n i k o]

POSTING

[n i k o]

UNTIL

[n i k o]

A NEW

[n i k o]

PAGE

[n i k o]

IS

[n i k o]

STARTED

[n i k o]

That's better.

[LR9]

Melbourne Heart 4-0 Melbourne Victory: Heart start strongly, and control game after red card

 

March 3, 2014

 

Tim Palmer

 

The Heart dominated the opening, then made the most of their extra man to illustrate their superiority.

 

The starting line-ups

 

Teams

 

John van’t Schip had to reshuffle half of his back four with both Patrick Gerhardt and Aziz Behich accumulating yellow card suspensions, with Rob Wielaert and Ben Garrucio replacing them at centre-back and left-back respectively.

 

Kevin Muscat made three changes from the midweek defeat to Guangzhou Evergrande, with Guilherme Finkler starting ahead of Jesse Makarounas, and Kosta Barbarouses making way for Tom Rogic – meaning a brand new front two, with Troisi going wide left. Meanwhile, at the back, Pablo Contreras was dropped in favour of Scott Galloway, which saw Jason Geria shuffle across to centre-back. Finally, Lawrence Thomas was surprisingly selected ahead of Nathan Coe in goals.

 

Heart start strong

 

A key feature of the Heart’s win over Brisbane last week was how physical they were in the midfield zone –  using three energetic, combative players to break up passing moves. It was the case again here, with a number of strong challenges right from the first whistle, resulting in a succession of Victory free-kicks – the commentator’s story about the word “aggression” being underlined on the Heart change-room whiteboard was appropriate.

 

Opening goal

 

In games featuring an early goal, it’s often the case that there’s not been time to establish a pattern, or tactical trend, but in fact, here, the Heart’s route to the opening goal was practically a duplicate of the passage of play immediately before it – Engelaar winning the ball because of his height, and playing a quick ball over the top for one of the front three. In the move preceding the goal, Engelaar released Williams in behind with a lofted pass into the channel – the striker’s shot was high over the bar, leading to the goal-kick from which Thomas, of course, hit the ball directly at the tall Engelaar, who promptly played Ramsay in behind before moving forward to tap in the forthcoming cross.

 

Stylistically, the goal was also quite similar to Engelaar’s last week against Brisbane, and it’s worth noting how the 4-3-3 system accommodates those runs from midfield – with three central midfielders, there’s always cover in behind when one of them moves forward, as Engelaar has obviously done so to good effect recently.

 

Germano

 

Importantly, when the Heart had the ball higher up the pitch, Germano held his position in front of the back four. That meant the Heart had numbers behind the ball at transitions, and Germano did a good job of jockeying Finkler and Rogic towards the sides – normally, the Heart midfield trio is quite fluid and flexible with the three rotating positions, but Germano’s discipline as the most central player was vital here. A good example was when Andrew Redmayne mishit a kick, as the ball fell to a Victory player inside the penalty area – fortunately, Germano was able to fill in at centre-back and clear the danger.

 

Pattern

 

Afterwards, the game slowed down, with the Heart establishing a control of possession through slow, measured build-up from the back – the two centre-backs split wide, with Germano dropping in between to give them a 3v2 numerical advantage against the Victory front two of Finkler and Rogic, who pressed high up to prevent forward passes (with the wide players dropping back to create a second bank of four as has been the trend in recent weeks).

 

However, Kisnorbo still managed to play a number of penetrative passes from a wide-left position, sometimes moving forward purposefully on the ball, and sometimes hitting straight balls through the centre for Williams. Williams to Kisnorbo was he key combination – it brought attacks into the final third, with the former doing an excellent job of laying it off for supporting players. One such pass lead to Dugdanzic getting free on the right, and sending in a looping cross from the side, from which Ramsay’s volley struck the side-netting.

 

 

A few seconds later, Dugdanzic scored from a very similar type of cross – this, though, was obviously an enormous stroke of fortune, and not reflective of any particular tactical theme.

 

Heart possession

 

Still, the Heart were now 2-0 up, and had the freedom to dictate the game on their terms, which meant long spells of possession. This was a marked change from last week’s counter-attacking approach against Brisbane, where they had just 37% possession – contrasting with the 60% they enjoyed here.

 

Obviously, the nature of the opposition – as Brisbane are always going to dominate the ball in their matches – informed this approach, but it was interesting how calm the Heart’s passing was for long stretches of the first half, often happy knocking it around in deep positions. It was as if they deliberately wanted to slow the tempo, perhaps wary of how the Victory benefitted from the openness of last Saturday’s match against Adelaide, which lead to both sides counter-attacking frantically in a helter-skelter 4-3 Victory win.

 

Unsurprisingly, then, the Victory’s best chance came when they robbed the Heart high up the pitch – Troisi intercepted a loose Wielaert pass and broke forward to put a shot high over the far post. Aside from that, though, the Heart generally were able to play under the Victory’s first wave of pressure.

 

Heart attacks

 

As briefly mentioned earlier, the Heart’s major attacking pattern was hitting direct balls to the front three. Often, Williams would drop short in front of the centre-backs, pull the defenders forward and thus create space for both Ramsay and Dugdanzic to move inside on the diagonal run – the ‘false 9′ move. There was a moment where Williams hit a one-touch pass on the outside of his foot for Ramsay to chase – Thomas collected it cleanly, but it showed how and where the Heart were looking dangerous.

 

 

Shortly after that, in the forty-first minute, Ansell was sent off for pulling the shirt of Williams when the striker got in behind off a long, direct pass from the back.

 

Red card/Kalmar

 

Muscat’s response to the red card was to drop Leigh Broxham into centre-back, meaning Finkler in turn had to move deeper into central midfield, in a 4-4-1 formation spearheaded by Rogic. There were also, understandably, passive without the ball, sitting back and allowing the Heart to continue their patient passiog in deep positions.

 

John van’t Schip acted early to bring on Nick Kalmar in place of Germano twelve minutes into the second half. With 10 v 11, the thinking was probably that there was no need for Germano to drop in between the centre-backs (with only Rogic in the first line of Victory defence) – so Kalmar played slightly higher up, becoming a ‘spare man’ in midfield (with Engelaar and Murdocca occupying Milligan and Finkler) and so dominating the play with his passing. Considering he only played half an hour, it was remarkable he finished as the game’s 7th most frequent passer. The majority of his distribution was calmly towards the sides but he also hit penetrative forward balls towards teammates between the lines, while also providing a brilliant chipped through-ball for Dugdanzic to go 1-on-1 with Thomas.

 

 

The second most prominent feature of the second half was the Heart’s crossing – they seemed keen to target the makeshift Victory centre defence (particularly Broxham) obvious weakness of height. Dugdanzic missed a good chance on the volley from a Williams cross (the original move stemming from, unsurprisingly, a Kisnorbo pass to the striker), while later, Ramsay was only denied by a last-ditch clearance from Traore off a low Williams ball across the face of goal. Later, Williams somehow managed to hit a volley from five yards over the bar, but scored minutes later from a penalty box scramble that originated, inevitably, from a cross.

 

Substitutes

 

Meanwhile, Muscat made a double change on the hour mark, replacing his wide players with two direct attackers, Connor Pain and Kosta Barbarouses, which, on paper, made sense – both, as quick, dribble-first players, were ideal for leading counter-attacks. Later, Makarounas came on for Rogic, but this was an insignificant change.

 

Van’t Schip’s second change saw Harry Kewell replace Engelaar, playing broadly the same role as the Dutchman- he scored a fantastic goal from a clever position between the lines, the assist coming, fittingly, from Kalmar.

 

End notes

 

This was a fine win for the Heart: not only a thrashing over their local rivals but a tactically excellent display, and importantly, a completely different style of win from the preceding game – this showed how effective they can be when controlling possession, doing an excellent job in playing out neatly from the back to create space in the final third, particularly through that Kisnorbo –> Williams combination.

 

Of course, they benefitted from the extra man for the entire second half – but even there, Van’t Schip deserves great credit for his positive use of the bench , with Kalmar providing purposeful forward passing and proving instrumental in the final two goals. Furthermore, the obvious focus on crossing paid off, especially considering the number of chances Williams, Ramsay and Dugdanzic spurned in the second period.

 

Muscat will acknowledge the red card as a turning point (and in fairness, the Heart’s second goal was indebted to pure luck), but he’ll privately admit his side were still inferior at 11v11 – they didn’t press the Heart effectively to prevent them from building attacking moves, and struggled to cope with Williams’ clever movement in front of the central defenders.

 

http://www.australiascout.com/2014/03/melbourne-heart-melbourne-victory-tactics-analysis/

 

 

Impressive article. One of the best articles I've read about Heart in a while.

The depth of that analysis is fucking bonkers.

Aloisi has a lot of free time on his hands.

Hardly, Bayern play a lot of games you knowHaha, yeah. Good joke, out of likes.

[n i k o]

FFS

[Melbourne]

Loved it when Muscat was booed every time his head was on the big screen complaining to the ref. i bet he still can't understand why Ansell was sent off. Thank god we have a coach who remains calm and is thinking ahead.

[n i k o]

Kosmina gave an excellent analysis into the mentality of Muscat on the aleague show

Edited March 4, 2014 by n i k o

[Tbitm]

Haha, I know I'm part of the problem. But that is really a bitch on my phone

[AlexDaGroza]

Wore my jersey to training last night....still lots of butthurt from victory

[Tony999]

Highlight for me was the "There's only one team in Melbourne" chant. That must've eaten them inside.

[Embee]

Highlight for me was when they were doing their arms around each other bounce around thing (I have no idea what the official term for it is, if there is one) and Kewell scored the fourth.

 

They just completely stopped and you could visibly see them all sink, it was brilliant.

 

Reminded me of this:
 

Edited March 5, 2014 by King Malta

[Benji]

Special thanks to whoever it was who posted about foxtel go. Watched from out of town and wouldn't have wanted to miss that for the world.

Brilliant !

Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

I watched it on Foxtel Go on the Spirit of Tassie lol. Bailed up the only guy wearing a Victory shirt on the ship while wearing my Heart shirt and told him the end score. I have never seen a bottom lip wobble in anger so much.

[Murfy1]

Derby stats:

 

Passes completed

 

Kalmar 36 out of 37 (97%)

Engelaar 40 out of 43 (93%)

Kewell 13 out of 14 (93%)

Wielaert 65 out of 72 (90%)

Ramsay 13 out of 15 (87%)

Kisnorbo 59 out of 71 (83%)

Hoffman 50 out of 60 (83%)

Murdocca 44 out of 53 (83%)

Dugandzic 22 out of 27 (81%)

Garuccio 23 out of 29 (79%)

Williams 25 out of 32 (78%)

Germano 23 out of 30 (77%)

Redmayne 22 out of 29 (76%)

 

Apparently crosses aren't included in the passing stats BTW. Here's some crossing stats: Ramsay 4 out of 15, Dugandzic 4 out of 10, Garuccio 1 out of 2, Williams 1 out of 3

 

Clearances

 

Kisnorbo 3

Wielaert 3

Garuccio 3

Kalmar 3

Germano 2

Hoffman 2

Engelaar 1

Dugandzic 1

 

Tackles

 

Garuccio 6 out of 6

Hoffman 6 out of 6

Dugandzic 5 out of 6

Wielaert 3 out of 4

Kisnorbo 2 out of 3

Kalmar 2 out of 2

Ramsay 1 out of 1

Williams 1 out of 1

Germano 1 out of 2

Engelaar 1 out of 4

Murdocca 1 out of 6

 

It appears that there's an interceptions stat, which don't count as tackles. The interceptions stat isn't recorded too well either, but here's a few interception stats:  Germano had 5, Engelaar 1, Dugandzic 1, Williams 1 

 

 

 

My 2 cents. Heart is able to play out from the back easier now that Wielaert, and a little surprisingly Kisnorbo, are passing so well (and passing quickly). Also, Heart is defending much better higher up the pitch, as shown by Germano having so many interceptions and Dugandzic winning so many tackles.

[Huzie]

Imagine if Kalmar played the whole game!

[Blosstradamus]

watching the sydney derby, fox sports poll; "is this the most intense a-league derby" - 72% yes, 28% no...

 

 

 

the fuck?

[mcfc 68]

Pleased as punch with that result, 100% win record for Heart for me so far, keep it up.

[LR9]

Pleased as punch with that result, 100% win record for Heart for me so far, keep it up.

We lost earlier today, pal.

[mcfc 68]

Pleased as punch with that result, 100% win record for Heart for me so far, keep it up.

We lost earlier today, pal. Oops, just reading the thread now.