Season 23/24 - Round 1 - City vs Generic United Saturday 21st Oct - 5.30 pm kickoff

[fensaddler]

Any views on the disallowed goal? Know it was offside but was it marginal and crap, or genuine?

[rayv36]

If we kept Florin instead of Sakhi and replaced Jakolis with a cone we’d be dominating. 

[Mr MO]

Sahki invisible and the two wingers not being able to make a difference will be key to get this team going.

[KSK_47]

4 minutes ago, fensaddler said:

Any views on the disallowed goal? Know it was offside but was it marginal and crap, or genuine?

Correct call. Off by a metre or so by hhe looks of it

[citypool]

I wish they would stfu with the microphone at the stadium

[KSK_47]

I'm overseas at the moment. You can just watch games live on YouTube on keepup channel. I had no idea.

Edited October 21, 2023 by KSK_47

[haz]

9 minutes ago, KSK_47 said:

I'm overseas at the moment. You can just watch games live on YouTube on keepup channel. I had no idea.

Use a VPN while in Australia and you can watch them all on YouTube. 

[KSK_47]

1 minute ago, haz said:

Use a VPN while in Australia and you can watch them all on YouTube. 

Time to fuck paramount off! The coverage is way better lol

[haz]

I hope Jakolis' salary is only a Sausage Roll and a can of Coke. Waste of a Visa spot. 

Galloway should be there. 

[rayv36]

2 minutes ago, haz said:

I hope Jakolis' salary is only a Sausage Roll and a can of Coke. Waste of a Visa spot. 

Galloway should be there. 

Caputo or Galloway 

[kingofhearts]

Aslan is God. Rest of the team is ass

[fensaddler]

Think Arslan will be OK...

[fensaddler]

Western are back to their old ways. Horrible side.

[kingofhearts]

Very disappointing.  We had more then enough talent on the pitch tonight to win but didn't deliver.

For the love of God though how many more times do we have to watch talbolt turn the ball over before he gets dragged? No idea howthe keeps his spot. 

[haz]

Thoughts

Jakolis - trash

Sahki - underwhelming

Good - Not good

Reis - eh

Natel - Let him cook

Arslan - BALLER

[KSK_47]

[neio]

The real winner here is the manager of Jakolis. The story of him finding out he is a long lost Aussie and wants to play for Socceroos in Asian cup and getting him to the most well resourced club in the country. For him to resemble a potato, he must be outstanding at his job 

[cremorne]

It's going to be a long season. 

[rayv36]

Hopefully Leckie isn’t too far away, him, Jmac and Arslan can carry us. 

[HughJass]

29 minutes ago, rayv36 said:

Hopefully Leckie isn’t too far away

Think I saw him walking around with a knee brace on so not sure how true him being close to returning is 

[kingofhearts]

It's like we saw how bad we were defensively last year and decided to double down.

[MHFC-FAN]

1 minute ago, kingofhearts said:

It's like we saw how bad we were defensively last year and decided to double down.

Having Nuno in the "best 11" will usually result in that...

[rass]

Agree that Jakolis was really average early on. However i do think he grew into the game and looked better in the second half as he became more involved.

Disappointing to lose but i actually thought we played ok, well better than i expected us too. 

I left excited thinking it will be a privilege to come and watch Arslan playing for us. A real player.

[jw1739]

Quite frankly a fucking awful display overall. So negative, first instinct always to turn the ball backwards. Slow telegraphed passes. Little creativity and no penetration. Jakolis and Good the standout worsts. We're going no where but down with Rado. Going to take a lot to get people to turn up to see this rubbish for a whole season.

3 hours ago, citypool said:

I wish they would stfu with the microphone at the stadium

I agree. Diabolical, both content and volume.

[rass]

2 minutes ago, jw1739 said:

Quite frankly a fucking awful display overall. So negative, first instinct always to turn the ball backwards. Slow telegraphed passes. Little creativity and no penetration. Jakolis and Good the standout worsts. We're going no where but down with Rado. Going to take a lot to get people to turn up to see this rubbish for a whole season.

I reckon this is crap JW. Feels to me like you're at a point with this club that even if we won 10-1 tonight, you'd still find criticism. 

Wasn't the best display but f me it was panels better than that awful ACL night and i for one can see improvement.

[belaguttman]

Oh dear, what a Hearty performance that was. It felt inevitable that we would be paying for our failure to take our chances.

Positives

Arslan - great signing

We'll be good when we click as a team.

 

Negatives

Porous defence; Nuno is too slow (although he was unlucky to concede the penalty); Ugarkovic needs to improve to match Aidan O'Neill, both defensively and offensively.

Service to JMac needs to improve.

It'll probably be a fairly ho-hum first half of the season

[fensaddler]

44 minutes ago, rass said:

Agree that Jakolis was really average early on. However i do think he grew into the game and looked better in the second half as he became more involved.

Disappointing to lose but i actually thought we played ok, well better than i expected us too. 

I left excited thinking it will be a privilege to come and watch Arslan playing for us. A real player.

Fair comment. Jakolis is an 80% player, he has a lot that you'd want, but frustrates for the lack of the 20%, which in his case seemed usually to be the final ball. Has pace, finds space, but nothing comes of it. There's potential, but he's not there yet. 

Also agreed that we looked better than I feared we might, though we have been finding some shape and form as pre season has progressed. Still some way to go yet.

Yes, Arslan is excellent. And Macca looks up for it. Defence worries me most.

[Tommykins]

There were bits that looked good, but I have major concerns over both wings in their current guise, as well as Sakhi - I'd be very inclined to see Leckie (and Caputo) starting out there as soon as possible because that was a dirge of a performance. 

[n i k o]

13 hours ago, jw1739 said:

Quite frankly a fucking awful display overall. So negative, first instinct always to turn the ball backwards. Slow telegraphed passes. Little creativity and no penetration. Jakolis and Good the standout worsts. We're going no where but down with Rado. Going to take a lot to get people to turn up to see this rubbish for a whole season.

I agree. Diabolical, both content and volume.

 

13 hours ago, rass said:

I reckon this is crap JW. Feels to me like you're at a point with this club that even if we won 10-1 tonight, you'd still find criticism. 

Wasn't the best display but f me it was panels better than that awful ACL night and i for one can see improvement.

Im not liking what I saw yesterday either. And I feel I normally look at things positively. Nothing to do with the squad. It's all about Rado. We don't move the ball fast enough. Slow ball movement means stagnation in shifting it forward. As an example i lost count how many times Good and Nuno would just stand on the ball waiting to pass. At least move it side ways quickly to move the play around. I think under his style of play we will struggle a bit but he's fortunate to have arguably the best squad out there playing under him. 

Edited October 22, 2023 by n i k o

[jw1739]

10 minutes ago, n i k o said:

 

Im not liking what I saw yesterday either. And I feel I normally look at things positively. Nothing to do with the squad. It's all about Rado. We don't move the ball fast enough. Slow ball movement means stagnation in shifting it forward. As an example i lost count how many times Good and Nuno would just stand on the ball waiting to pass. At least move it side ways quickly to move the play around. I think under his style of play we will struggle a bit but he's fortunate to have arguably the best squad out there playing under him. 

This the nub of my point too. While they're standing on the ball all of our other players are static - no movement whatsoever. The tactic of Western was obvious from the start - just also stand and wait until we decided to make a move. Then we lose the ball by over-elaboration in front of goal and they counter-attack with speed. Poor tactics from Rado - smart tactics from Aloisi.

We also have problems up front though - trouble in converting.

[Torn Asunder]

Good, Nuno, Talbot and JMac are the only ones from last year's team on the pitch... pretty much completely new ball game.

Def gonna tale time for us to gel. Jokalis hasn't got a final ball in him ... has been the way in every preseason game as well

Overall team balance seems a bit off. We've got quality in the squad. Just not clicking. Will take some time. I think a bit of player rotation may help as well.

If we are always going wide on attacks, at least try to get in behind ... this will suit Jmac.  The Brazillian seems he has a few nice tricks. He should start over Jokalis

[belaguttman]

1 hour ago, Torn Asunder said:

Def gonna tale time for us to gel. Jokalis hasn't got a final ball in him ... has been the way in every preseason game as well

I'm surprised that he was a Croatian junior and played Ligue 1. His assist to JMac's offside goal was a glimpse of what he is capable of, but generally his final ball has been poor and he's been bundles off the ball too easily, even against NPL opponents

[belaguttman]

I'm not feeling quite as negative about this season; I do think that we'll be struggling until December, though. Players are definitely too static and playing with too little ball speed, hopefully that will be shown to be a result of player unfamiliarity. It worries me that Souprayen isn't good enough to start as our defence will be pretty poor for quite a while; this also means, in our style of play that our gegenpressing and first ball into attack will also be poor; this slows down our game enormously

[jw1739]

13 minutes ago, belaguttman said:

I'm not feeling quite as negative about this season; I do think that we'll be struggling until December, though. Players are definitely too static and playing with too little ball speed, hopefully that will be shown to be a result of player unfamiliarity. It worries me that Souprayen isn't good enough to start as our defence will be pretty poor for quite a while; this also means, in our style of play that our gegenpressing and first ball into attack will also be poor; this slows down our game enormously

It doesn't seem quite right to me when your visa players are not all starting.

[kingofhearts]

1 hour ago, belaguttman said:

I'm surprised that he was a Croatian junior and played Ligue 1. His assist to JMac's offside goal was a glimpse of what he is capable of, but generally his final ball has been poor and he's been bundles off the ball too easily, even against NPL opponents

Couldn't agree more.

He has a decent touch on the ball and a bit of pace, but his decision making is horrible. Yesterday he had a golden opportunity to cross the ball into the box and instead of doing that, dribbled the ball all the way up to the keeper, then ran out of bounds.

Watching the replay of the game, we definitely have the quality. It's not a question of talent, but can rado get this team to gel? We showed flashes of what we could do, and a healthy leckie with aslan will be beautiful to watch. We've also had a large turnover of players this off-season, so I'm happy to give us the first month or two to see what rado can do.

I would still say that this team needs an injection of youth.  We look old as fuck out there (especially our cb pairning) do we not have at least one youth player who we could give a start to?

[rayv36]

6 hours ago, jw1739 said:

It doesn't seem quite right to me when your visa players are not all starting.

From the brief glimpses I’ve seen of Souprayen the only thing he has over Reis is height. 

[Jovan]

Man this rebuild looks very dodgy.

Defensively we look week. Good and Reis need to improve. Talbot I'm feeling is at his highest level which with decent CBs and holders is probably okay, but when they are below be looks average. Behich I think is a level up and will improve us.

Across the middle we look very poor. Ugarkovic is way below Oneil.

Sakhi I'm worried for, I'm hoping he is better. Lopane seems similar. Jakolis I think will be decent. Arslan will rip it up, but needs to be able to 90 minutes in summer conditions. 

JMAC will continue to carry us goals wise and for all his flaws he is still the greatest striker the League has seen and we are lucky to have him.

Natel worries me, and the sooner Leckie returns the better. And Antonis for me has seen his best seasons ago.

My biggest concern is on the bench, Rado for me needs to improve in nearly every aspect. 

It's going to be a long season, and the only thing that gives me hope is none of the others look very good either.

Now this is all based on yesterday's game.

[jw1739]

24 minutes ago, rayv36 said:

From the brief glimpses I’ve seen of Souprayen the only thing he has over Reis is height. 

What I meant by my comment was that if your visas are not starting then why sign them? Some will disagree with that view of course. I have no idea why Rado has players such as Galloway, Hall and Caputo and doesn't play them What's the point of bringing on Caputo with 4 minutes to go - hoping for a miracle?

The young players in the squad that I have on record are Politidis, Durakovic, Sulemani (out with an ACL) and Caputo.

[belaguttman]

56 minutes ago, rayv36 said:

From the brief glimpses I’ve seen of Souprayen the only thing he has over Reis is height. 

He seems to be a slower Reis.😱

Edited October 22, 2023 by belaguttman

[Le Hack]

On 21/10/2023 at 9:09 PM, HughJass said:

Think I saw him walking around with a knee brace on so not sure how true him being close to returning is 

Saw him walking across the ground and up through the stands on the Northern side. Didn't see any brace and seemed to be walking and climbing stairs fine.