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World Cup Qualifiers


Shahanga
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team needs Tillio and Arzani - players with the ability to beat a man and create.  TBH our whole squad and gameplan should be built around these two, with Mooy sitting in behind ...

We tried to bully the win last night ... for all our huffing and puffing, the Saudis still made much better chances than us ... 

If Arnold sticks with the current crop of players, we will be lucky to make it, and if we do we wont get out of our group ... 

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On 12/11/2021 at 3:43 PM, Torn Asunder said:

team needs Tillio and Arzani - players with the ability to beat a man and create.  TBH our whole squad and gameplan should be built around these two, with Mooy sitting in behind ...

We tried to bully the win last night ... for all our huffing and puffing, the Saudis still made much better chances than us ... 

If Arnold sticks with the current crop of players, we will be lucky to make it, and if we do we wont get out of our group ... 

I agree with the problem. Frankly we lack quality. No one in particular’s fault. Certainly not the players or the coach.

Whether those two are good enough to be a solution or not I don’t know. Arnold is clearly aware he needs a fit and firing Arzani, it’s why he keeps picking him regardless of form.

Id like to see (and expect to) opportunities for Atkinson and Metcalfe, a couple of young blokes who might have decent careers.

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2 hours ago, Shahanga said:

I agree with the problem. Frankly we lack quality. No one in particular’s fault. Certainly not the players or the coach.

Whether those two are good enough to be a solution or not I don’t know. Arnold is clearly aware he needs a fit and firing Arzani, it’s why he keeps picking him regardless of form.

Id like to see (and expect to) opportunities for Atkinson and Metcalfe, a couple of young blokes who might have decent careers.

Atkinson 100% has the x-factor we need on the wing for the national team. He also plays with the kind of mongrel that I think our Socceroos team has lacked for a while now - a barometer of sorts who knows when to be aggressive, when to up the tempo and wrestle back momentum. 

Boyle is halfway there and I like his directness but he perhaps lacks a bit of technical ability at times, while Mabil is pacey but never uses it and falls out of games far too easily. Arzani has just fallen off a cliff, while Nabbout definitely looked underdone. It's a difficult problem for us.

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Qualification now is looking likely through playoffs. 

We still got Japan at home which will be a must win, and Saudis away, but seriously as most years it's going to come down to a final game.

Not qualifying would be disastrous for the game and even more so we will be hosting the womens the following year.

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4 hours ago, Torn Asunder said:

no culture in our game plan.  Dominate physically, run the other team of their legs, and wild crosses to Matt Simon, oh, I mean a fit and strong centre forward whose main job is to put defensive pressure on the defenders ... rubbish game plan and does nothing for the game in Australia ... 

Mitchell Duke?

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5 hours ago, Torn Asunder said:

no culture in our game plan.  Dominate physically, run the other team of their legs, and wild crosses to Matt Simon, oh, I mean a fit and strong centre forward whose main job is to put defensive pressure on the defenders ... rubbish game plan and does nothing for the game in Australia ... 

Do we still have a "national plan" for football? Are we suffering from the closure of the AIS Centre of Excellence in 2017? It almost seems as if it wasn't for City Football Group we wouldn't have young players with the right skill sets coming through at all.

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2 hours ago, Nate said:

By my reckoning, the Socceroos have named 10 players who have played for Melbourne City.

Socceroos squad: Nathaniel Atkinson, Aziz Behich, Martin Boyle, Nicholas D'Agostino, Milos Degenek, Mitchell Duke, Bruno Fornaroli, Denis Genreau, Craig Goodwin, Rhyan Grant, Ajdin Hrustic, Jackson Irvine, James Jeggo, Fran Karacic, Joel King, Mathew Leckie, Awer Mabil, Jamie Maclaren, Connor Metcalfe, Andrew Redmayne, Tom Rogic, Kye Rowles, Mat Ryan, Trent Sainsbury, Gianni Stensness, Marco Tilio, Danny Vukovic.

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14 hours ago, NewConvert said:

Would not mind having Danny Vukovic as a back up goal keeper. 300k Euros according to Transfermarkt.

@NewConvertYou mean at City? I think we need to get a proper GK coach before we can move forward. We've had some decent keepers, but they seem to go backwards once they are with us, or just vegetate as our back-up and then go to another club and seem to progress once again.

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A very concerning game at every level. Yes, there are mitigating factors - Covid, border closures, player unavailability, coach illness, but:

What is our style of play?

Was there any discernable tactical plan?

Terrible player selection for the starting XI

Timid substitutions, poorly timed

A coach who is satisfied with finishing 3rd in the group

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The loss of Souttar was a massive set back for the campaign. More than I realised at the time.

I’m not in the “it’s all Arnolds fault” camp. Our squad is very weak (probably the weakest since about 1982) and qualification revealed Arnold is not a miracle worker.

Where to from here? 
Might as well try to beat UAE. Obviously we’ll be underdogs in that one. Fortunately it’s not home and away qualification, which increases the influence of luck, which we’ll need, particularly if we make it to the Peru game.

The good news is I think we have stopped getting worse now.

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I can't fault Arnold. Guus had predicted at the end of the 2006 campaign that Australia was not doing enough to develop talent. Ange has made the same comments recently. For a long time we thought that once teh A-League got going that the talent would be developed. That is not the case. The A-League has too many people still playing for too long, too few clubs developing youth, not enough competition at youth level. And the biggest heresy of all - the Dutch system that has been implemented has not worked. Time to ditch teh Dutch system. Go back to the state clubs and let them develop their own unique styles, let the A-League clubs pluck them as needed and then continue developing them. Allow transfers and loans between A-League clubs for the under 23s.

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Arnold is the Socceroos version of Wazza, the team has become more reactive, it's been about grit and 'digging deep'. He thrives on being a backs-to-the-wall underdog, he even tried to claim that the Smurfs were underdogs! It worked well at Central Coast, but it isn't a style that suits the Socceroos.

I agree that we have missed Souter however we were struggling before that. I agree that this isn't the most talented squad, but we seemed to have lost our style of play, in part, because of player selection. Mitch Duke, an Arnold favourite, is a perfect example of a player that works best in a reactive system. It just seems that the clear direction we had under Ange has become very confused and now it's hard to know the direction of our style of play.

46 minutes ago, NewConvert said:

And the biggest heresy of all - the Dutch system that has been implemented has not worked. Time to ditch teh Dutch system.

The problem isn't just the Dutch system, irrespective of the system, young players aren't getting enough game time and so don't progress irrespective of the syllabus. Young Dutch players get far more game time

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3 hours ago, Shahanga said:

The loss of Souttar was a massive set back for the campaign. More than I realised at the time.

I’m not in the “it’s all Arnolds fault” camp. Our squad is very weak (probably the weakest since about 1982) and qualification revealed Arnold is not a miracle worker.

Where to from here? 
Might as well try to beat UAE. Obviously we’ll be underdogs in that one. Fortunately it’s not home and away qualification, which increases the influence of luck, which we’ll need, particularly if we make it to the Peru game.

The good news is I think we have stopped getting worse now.

I think for all the doom and gloom, we still have a really strong chance of qualifying (deserved or not).

On current form, we probably lose to the UAE but like you said, they're one-leg knockouts where anything can happen (see Italy vs North Macedonia). Peru are hardly stacked as far as South American nations go either - yes, they're a far better team playing in a far more competitive confederation, but it's not an unachievable task in the slightest. 

Reckon we're a 40% chance to qualify honestly.

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48 minutes ago, kingofhearts said:

We've been coasting on the golden generation success for years, it's only natural it would catch up to us eventually.

I'd be surprised if Arnold survives, even if we do make the world cup.

I don't think he should survive but I am not sure who you would need to get to build up the socceroos. Part of me thinks that the next coach should concentrate on a solid A-League base with polish & top ups from those that play overseas.

Unfortunately up front we don't have a reliable striker. JMac is doing OK at this level but once he gets the socceroos jersey he is MIA.

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