R4 vs Melbourne Victory | Monday 3rd Nov | 9:30pm

Save your ammunition for the podcast gentlemen. It will make my work day better on Thursday.

Could have "Podcast Death-Match", Hard News v El Grapadura and Smithy v 2nd Best

But that was always going to be the problem. With our team and the forward line they had they were always going to score.  The problem is we never looked like we would and our formation and plan to me looked like we never intended to try and that maths doesn't work.

We have never successfully parked a bus and we have tried plenty of times so why not (when they are severly weakened) make an effort to put them under pressure particularly when we're coming off good scoring records and attacking football.  If we push on them and get MIlligan back in the backline, get their youngsters in midfield and at fullback under pressure so the experienced players have to be worried about helping them then they don't have a chance to break.

Make them respond to us instead of us responding to what they do and leaving them to control it.  If the fullbacks are in trouble and the converted midfielders in the centre are too busy to cover them the wide players have to help and all of a sudden they aren't their when they try to break.

It's a pattern we have repeated for 8 seasons, I was just hoping that with plenty of warning about the reduced strength of Victory we might have changed the mindset and tried to take advantage instead of giving them the respect they deserve when at full strength.

Hmm, not sure I agree Newsy. Like I said, Ernie's plan was working in the first half, save for the set-piece we couldn't defend. Ernie has been burnt by Victory before - he knew that the likelihood of doing what you're saying probably leads to a 3-2 or a 3-1 loss for us. Even a weakened Victory side still has more shots to fire than us, and their attackers in space against our backline still trumps us throwing a kitchen sink at their weakened backline. It's just the reality of the two respective sets of players.

If we go into the half at 0-0, or 1-1, as we could well have save for two critical moments in the half, the second half is a lot different, and maybe we even have a chance to nick it late (this approach worked for us in away games last season, albeit with different personnel).

yay it's good when the mods disagree, instead of disagreeing with everyone else on the forum

I'm just fed up after 8 years of losing to every NYL team we face.

I don't think Ernie's plan was working. I thought our midfield played really well for a lot of the first half, which was more to do with individual play.

I really don't think the plan was working in the first half at all. All we had was one chance created out of nothing and the ball which was whipped across the face of goal. Victory had several good chances. Heaps of games of football would be different if you could just take one goal off of the opposition. Victory have a poor defence at the best of times so to only be able to get a few real chances is just poor. Ernie obviously thought things were not working at half time so he made changes. If he thought Victory's goal was an abberration he should have kept things as is.

You don't have to set-up in the 'throw the kitchen sink at them' formation to try a win a game. Sometimes a patient and methodical approach is required.

The issue about their first goal isn't 'if they hadn't scored the goal things would have been different', it is that it came through a situation you don't really game-plan for - you just have to defend the set-pieces, and we failed to do that. But the game plan of nullifying their strengths worked very well in the first half, it is the fact we didn't look like getting much forward out of the formation we had in the first half once we went behind that prompted the change. But the change just made us more vulnerable, without really improving our attacking oomph. That was the really disappointing part of the game for me (but not entirely unexpected).

well Im not reading 415 posts since I left it at half time last nite.....wel maybe..

Interesting in the post-match interview that Ernie insinuates that Rodriguez is still a bit young and nervous of the big occasion (crowd etc). Fenton also.

On another note, what's the deal with Boyd? Are we seriously not picking him based on him not signing a contract extension? Isn't that a bit spiteful/manipulative?

It didn't creep in the corner though, he genuinely didn't make a move at all. He could have caught it! It was in the middle of the 6 yard box

Teams should only play 15 year old midgets against us - look how it turned out for Kruse, Oar, Zullo etc

 

I am happy to distribute blame widely.

Haven't heard this - spill the goss.

on the free kick goal - I was expecting a crot from Finkler and was hoping we would have a very high line. Would have been interesting if we had.

out

Just players who used to get game time not happy for being dropped from the match squad?

Blamestorming.

Edit: covered in other thread.

So, basically we play the same line up 3 games in a row, get better each game, don't have any injury or suspension concerns, then we come up against a team we always struggle against away. They're missing key players and have a makeshift central defence and we just banged in 4 against a defensive team. We then completely change the balance of our midfield and attack who had just been firing, and try to go defensive. It doesn't work, we concede a soft goal, and have to resort back to our regular style anyway. In chasing the game we open ourselves up at the back and get killed off.  

It wasn't a terrible performance, but I think we are justified in questioning the tactical approach and selection choices. If we want to challenge near the top of the table we can't be scared to play our natural game against a weakened opponent. If anything we should have viewed that as a chance to make a statement regarding our new found flowing football, not a game we had to plug bodies into the midfield and hope they didn't overrun us.

The main difference was that they played much better as a unit, even though we may have had better all round players.

I call it being football smart.

Yeah, we weren't smart at all. I'm not against adapting your approach to suit your opposition, I just think that we didn't need to in that way. What we did yesterday was tell Victory we were scared of them, and that we didn't think we could beat them playing how we have been playing. Give your opponents respect, but not more than they deserve.

That is an interesting question. Instead of sticking with 'old' possession, attacking style plan of the last three games, the more defensive option killed to confidence.

I think the idea was correct, in hindsight some minor changes within that system could have resulted in possibly a better showing with the ball. 

Actually think that Leijer not being there helped MV. We don't offer much of an aerial threat and he is not as good as Milligan or Broxham with the ball on the ground. Even having Berisha out meant that MV could play a more mobile attacking front 3 (we always struggle with pace), which once we were chasing the game played into MV hands.

I don't think Ernie expected us to be so toothless up front with the starting set-up he sent out.

It was exhausting reading through a lot of that but I got there save for the odd skipped page ;)

Interestingly but not surprisingly, my perspective of the game was different than most!

Right up until the moment they took the lead, I thought Ernie's tactics were spot on. Nobody seems to have said this, but wasn't it actually a 4-4-2 with a midfield diamond??? 2ndbest's graphic seems to back that up... 

All this talk of Bonevacia playing a striking role or a 'false nine' seems bollocks to me. Aside from Moss looking to hit him with the goalkicks I saw nothing else suggesting he was playing up top. From what I saw he was at the tip of the diamond with Burns and McGlinchey buzzing around ahead of him...

In the first half we won a cr*pload of midfield ball, they couldn't get anything going, their foul count was getting out of control, I thought it was a matter of time until we started to create chances the way it was going. The goal was very soft and affected us hugely. As someone at work said today, perhaps we should set up like a corner for free kicks in those areas and have men on the posts. Either that or play a higher line and back Moss to save any Finkler shot from that angle. Soft soft goal, so very disappointing.

Aside from that, both sides had a one on one chance each - Burns fluffed ours, Pain nailed theirs, and that was basically the difference. Burns needs to put some serious work in on those one on ones - hasn't he missed one in every game this season?

Back to the diamond in the first half, I really liked it. I thought Lia and Rodriguez were doing well at getting out and double-teaming the wingers. Kosta showed some brilliance and Manny was rubbish, but aside from that match-up I didn't think we did badly defensively at all. We looked quite solid for me and our CBs and midfielders were dominating the 50/50s. Our passing was good at times but would eventually let us down as we moved upfield, so we were never able to make those interceptions count. 

Fenton is getting blasted but I thought there was a lot to like about him last night. His desire in the tackle is excellent considering he's a converted winger. I think fullback is his spot for me and he can only carry on improving there. With that formation he was helped a lot by Lia of course though. In fact someone bashed Fenton's positioning with the reasoning that at times Lia was deeper - but I think that was the whole idea. Fenton was supposed to get up and down and use his pace, and Lia would be there dropping right when needed. Same thing for the other side but Manny was a disaster. His yellow card was stupid stuff, if I was Ernie I would've whacked him in the chops at half time for that. Only 30 minutes in, with Kosta on fire, a stupid sliding challenge he was never going to win, just unacceptable from someone with that level of experience. If it were me I'd be starting Doyle and Fenton on Friday night. 

If we hadn't set up like donkeys for that free kick and Burns had nailed that chance on halftime the game would've been drastically different, despite the overall performance being much the same. It's a game of small margins. 

I like that Merrick is looking to change things up against different sides rather than persist with the same thing like old mate Herbert did for so long. Keeps the players on their toes and the opposition guessing. We just have to be able to adjust and implement the new plan successfully. IMO we didn't do that last night, but we weren't terrible.

The diamond formation always struggles to balance width with a goal scoring threat in the middle. With Burns and WeeMac drifting wider (as they naturally do anyway) and Roly being deeper, we actually had no real goal scoring threat in the middle of the park for pretty much the whole first half. Last year with that formation we had Stein up front and Carlos behind as a creative player. Neither Burns or WeeMac are suited the role Stein played, and Roly isn't really suited to the role Carlos played.

Agree with a lot. Small margins--- MV had 58% possession and their passing accuracy was 84% to our 78%. That was a couple of major differences.

Ernie singled out Muscat in the press conference as someone who stood out in our team as doing a good job.

he must have signed a new contract on the weekend. 

It's kind of strange that they dominated possession and still hit us on the counter. As for passing accuracy I think that shows they controlled the game better. A lot of those passes were probably simple passes which allowed them to control the tempo of the game. We played at the tempo they set for us.

I think you misunderstand. I'm not content with "trying hard". I'm buoyed by the idea that they tried at all and for so long.

Wouldn't the normal outcome to be something like 3-0 down at half time and just playing out the game in the second half?

I am surprised that our passing success rate was so high. We gave away a lot of possession.

A passing rate of 78% still means we have gave the ball away nearly 1/4 of the time, so every fourth time we touched the ball we gave it away.

I think Ernies tactics were right, but player execution let him down.

The specifically worked on not giving fouls near the box to keep Finkler out of the game... what happens? Someone clips a heel and boom we are down 1 - 0 and his plan A goes to shit.

Ditto...for me the passing and pressing game impressed even if the transition to Burns or Brockie lacked accuracy or timing. To go down by two which could have been one down or even a draw (brockie/burns); it could have been more. Not worried for now but get boyd back in the squad, stick with midfield, drop brockie to the bench.

Love how positive some of you can be after a defeat.But come on we were beaten 2 zip by a well under strength victory team.Still happy with the way the season is shaping up but im buggered if i can put a positive spin  on yet another defeat to a team we really should have beaten or at least pushed  harder.Frankly im sick of how often we either draw or lose to a team we really should be putting under the pump.It almost seems at times that we are to scared to really have a crack from the start.

Was moving Roly forward and putting Lia in really a good move?  if we backed the back 7 why change it?

Or he must have compromising pictures of Ernie and Nixie.