McKINNA OUT!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

[FFC Mariner]

The biggest problem with the club at the moment is the insane negativity and mindless stupidity shown by many of the dingbats and homesick poms on this forum.

I suggest anti depessants.

LOL

If you really think that the opinions of some people who recognise insipid shit when they see it is the biggest problem facing the club, can I suggest you dial down your own meds?

 

[David Votoupal]

It's generally acknowledged that coaching, tactics, technical development, etc ARE a wider A-League problem. McKinna is no worse than most A-League coaches in this regard, and has been better than some.

It's also clear, as I and many others have stated, that proven foreign coaches are needed to raise the level of play in the A-League significantly. That along with improved levels of professionalism- what even the lower leagues of Europe have over us is in terms of things like training intensity, etc which are on a par with top-flight leagues as professionals (more games help too).

Stability is desirable but stagnation is not. There has to be a fine line drawn somewhere.

 

[brett]

It's generally acknowledged that coaching, tactics, technical development, etc ARE a wider A-League problem. McKinna is no worse than most A-League coaches in this regard, and has been better than some.

It's also clear, as I and many others have stated, that proven foreign coaches are needed to raise the level of play in the A-League significantly.

Perhaps Lawrie should reneg on his Aussie citizenship?

 

[scottmac]

All this talk about needing a coach and that Mckinna is not up to it, is forgetting one thing. Our club is run by business men. We have just started a competition where even a succesfull Adelaide side lost $400,000. There is a snowflakes chance in hell of any serious money being spent on anything over the next year or 2. So your ideas of a coach being paid for what LM is doing now is a pipedream.

What we have know, is what we've got for the forseeable future. I think there is more merit in talking about the make up of the team, than arguing about who knows what about football.

For those who say we can only string 2 passes together, watch the replay. We had some flashes of a good passing game last night in bad conditions. Good sign of a team coming back to its best.

For those that say we played long ball football, watch the replay. There was a genuine attempt to rid themselves of the long ball tag. May not have been succesful, but there was an attempt.

For those that think we need a coach, your probably right, but it aint gonna happen............yet.

 

[clarence]

It's generally acknowledged that coaching, tactics, technical development, etc ARE a wider A-League problem. McKinna is no worse than most A-League coaches in this regard, and has been better than some.

It's also clear, as I and many others have stated, that proven foreign coaches are needed to raise the level of play in the A-League significantly. That along with improved levels of professionalism- what even the lower leagues of Europe have over us is in terms of things like training intensity, etc which are on a par with top-flight leagues as professionals (more games help too).

Stability is desirable but stagnation is not. There has to be a fine line drawn somewhere.

I don't necessarily agree with you that a foreign coach is the solution to any technical problems we have in the A-League generally.

This is a generation of players that have had to put up with the old bastion of Soccer Australia, and all that went with it, as youngsters. Their profesiional development, as mature age players pressing for a professional player gig, has been hampered by the last years of that regime, and the 18 month impasse while the Crawford Report was published and the birth of the FFA and a new approach.

WE had Baan out here rejigging and writing a coaching curriculum, for all levels of coaching. The FFA has also been sponsoring and placing coaches and coaching aspirants to European clinics and upgrading qualifications.

*THINGS* are happening......

But sadly it may be too late for the Wilkos and Hutchs of this generation of players who might end up being caught out on the field with inferior playing techniques as a newer, and hopefully more technically proficient generation of players take the field.

We may take a look at Lawrie's personality and deem the humbleness, and conservative nature is also evident in his coaching style. It may be a presumption that is too generally applied to the squad.

It may turn out that Lawrie is working with a double barrelled restraint, that being a technically limited bunch of players coupled with a club's management that wants to keep things under budget and not lash out $$ on technically superior players to what is going around in the A-League at the moment.

I suppose that alternative theory can only be tested if Lawrie takes charge of a team of superstars, and see how he manages them.

I'm sure that a foreign coach would not relish the challenges that Lawrie faces, and has faced, for the past 5 years.

Many of these foreign coaches - particularly the more successful of them - have little concept of the financial restraints this club and the A-League has, nor the concept that players coming up through the ranks have been left to their own devices in critical stages of their playing development due to past Federation incompetence.

 

[Bex]

We need stability more than we need an expensive foreign coach.

If we're serious about improving the quality of our football immediately, then theres not much choice but to start spending some cash on players that have higher skill levels. Firstly, the club has to have the money to spend, secondly, management have to allocate the cash to enable McKinna to spend it and thirdly, there actually needs to be a suitable player available who wants to come to the coast.

Its pretty obvious that we're being very frugal with our spending at the moment. I think thats a pretty smart thing to do right now in the face of the Global Financial Crisis, especially when we're also putting in place relatively expensive training infrastructure that will hold us in good stead for decades to come. We're a club that has just completed its 4th season; our focus must be on continuing to build for the future and to remain financially viable.

Don't get me wrong, I would love to see the Mariners play the best football. However, I can bear the fact that we're probably not a hope of winning the premiership next year when you look at it in context. That is, we've been building the club sensibly whilst at the same time we've been in 2 grandfinals, won a premiership and now we're playing ACL. We're seen as a club who looks after our players for the most part. And, you never know, based on past efforts we may just jag something next year. Those things are what makes me believe in McKinna. The Mariners players have always been seen as the underdogs, but as a team we exceed expectation consistantly. What more do you want from the coach?

In a couple of seasons time we will have a state of the art training facility. In spite of this, we're financially stable, so we should be able to survive until the economy gets back on its feet. Once we get the training facility and we've got money to spend, I reckon players may well be knocking down our door. And with the new facilities we should also be much more succesful with our youth development.

Once we've got better talent in the sqaud and the cash to spend, it may then be appropriate to look at coaching. However, I suspect McKinna will do just fine given those resources. Plus, the guy is all class - heard him on Fox Sports last night and I can't think of anyone I rather have representing the Mariners in the media.

 

[brett]

top posts.

 

[ponno]

 

[David Votoupal]

clarence,

what you say is fair enough. I remember the dying days of the NSL well, and I remember 2001 being the straw that broke the camel's neck with Carlton, Gippsland and Canberra all dying. Some have even argued that our failures to qualify for a World Cup in 1998 and 2002 proved a longer-term blessing in disguise because it hastened that league's demise.

Yet despite this, how come players of considerable ability like Carle and Pondeljak have been able to prosper despite coming out of that sorry period? Owens belongs to the same era, even though he's never fulfilled his enormous (and I really mean enormous) potential. Robbie Puca is still playing state league football in WA- ask Hutchinson who he is.

Bex,

I admit that I am an idealist who likes to see the bigger picture and longer term. Fair enough our clubs need players of greater ability, but the coaching side is equally important. I've said in another thread on this forum that we can learn from countries that brought in renown coaches to improve their level of football and how much it has paid off for generations to come.

You will see that when you play Japanese opposition. They took the best ideas from around the world and it shows in the end product in Japan, far more polished than anything we have produced thus far.

 

[Bear]

7 loses and 1 draw out of our last 8 games spells...PROBLEM.

Captain f**king obvious strikes again! Obviously its a problem, and one the players and coach are trying to fix, hence the much better performance last night (better than the 7 games before it, surely nobody can argue with that?)

Appalling style of long ball Football....PROBLEM.

Thats you opinion. Were you complaining that its an appalling style of long ball football before this year, you know, when we were doing really well with the same or similar tactics? Cos I dont remember you complaining about it before then. Hmm

Inability to string more than 2 passes together...PROBLEM.

Pathetic comments like that is what makes this place, well, pathetic sometimes. Im pretty sure, and im going out on a limb here, that we strung more than 2 passes together last night at some stage, and even made it look good at times

Ill sit here and say we were not the best last night, in fact we were far far from how good I know we can be, but we improved on our last 3 months play, and as a fan thats what I want out of my team when they are in a slump. Those expecting us to play at our peak 100% of the time have been watching to much overseas football, and are forgetting how young our league is imo

 

[Ursus]

It is a worry that we are just providing entertainment for Serious. That is reason enough to stop now.

You sir, are an idiot.  If that's what you took from that quote/post, then you need to learn how to read and analyse a lot better than you're doing now.

And you sir, a fool.

 

[David Votoupal]

Thats you opinion. Were you complaining that its an appalling style of long ball football before this year, you know, when we were doing really well with the same or similar tactics? Cos I dont remember you complaining about it before then. Hmm

On the flip side, the more monotonous and predictable a team's style of play is, the more quickly and easily it will be found out. There's plenty good examples of this.

Pathetic comments like that is what makes this place, well, pathetic sometimes. Im pretty sure, and im going out on a limb here, that we strung more than 2 passes together last night at some stage, and even made it look good at times

Ill sit here and say we were not the best last night, in fact we were far far from how good I know we can be, but we improved on our last 3 months play, and as a fan thats what I want out of my team when they are in a slump. Those expecting us to play at our peak 100% of the time have been watching to much overseas football, and are forgetting how young our league is imo

Fair enough, but the fact that our clubs are now competing against this calibre of opposition in Asia means that people's expectations are inevitably raised.

 

[Rubbernose]

You will see that when you play Japanese opposition. They took the best ideas from around the world and it shows in the end product in Japan, far more polished than anything we have produced thus far.

I don't really understand this. You mean Japanese players are far more polished overall, or the J-League? If the latter, it may have something to do with the fact it has more than a decade on the HAL and clubs are operating on budgets 10-20 times that of the HAL. Japan have about 7 players abroard and Australia have about 200. It's not really a subtle, minor detail, and somewhat skews comparisons and perspective.

But in an overall sense, I'm not saying Japan haven't spat out some wonderful players because they have, but to suggest that Australia have provided less quality exports or the Socceroos are somehow behind the level of the Blue Samurai...please, gimme a break.

You take Nakamura out of their current squad and they don't have players of the all-round calibre of Kewell, Viduka, Schwarzer, Neill, or Cahill. And they haven't had too many players of the class of Okon and Zelic, either, even just in recent times. And probably nor Emerton and Moore to be honest. And given that, like many Asian nations, they are notoriously poor in front of goal Scott McDonald would probably be in their squad too, and Aloisi would have been their first choice striker for most of his career. And I reckon I'm being generous.

Australia were in a different class to Japan at the WC.

Not now though, mind you, not since the overpaid no-mark fraud currently coaching the Socceroos backwards at an alarming rate spread his special brand of superior 'foreign' coaching morbidity about.

 

[David Votoupal]

I wasn't saying that we're not capable of producing fine players, but that they've focused heavily on technical development and it paid off in raising the standard of football on show. Look at the number of good midfielders, both box-to-box and playmaker types, they've got in the league who are home-grown. In our league, the best creative brains are two foreigners, namely Miller and Hernandez.

But when you consider that, and the fact that the gap between our domestic and foreign-based players is wider than most nations that have a large contingent of players outside their homelands, it's hard not to draw conclusions from that.

 

[dibo]

I wasn't saying that we're not capable of producing fine players, but that they've focused heavily on technical development and it paid off in raising the standard of football on show. Look at the number of good midfielders, both box-to-box and playmaker types, they've got in the league who are home-grown. In our league, the best creative brains are two foreigners, namely Miller and Hernandez.

But when you consider that, and the fact that the gap between our domestic and foreign-based players is wider than most nations that have a large contingent of players outside their homelands, it's hard not to draw conclusions from that.

we know the technical level is below our competitors. the problems you raise (and c. foster and others before you) have been acknowledged and that's why we now have technical and coaching development plans (devised by foreigners no less) in place and they will take time to yield results.

no amount of further whinging and carping will make young players in development come through any faster just like wishing it were christmas tomorrow will not make it so.

 

[Rubbernose]

I wasn't saying that we're not capable of producing fine players, but that they've focused heavily on technical development and it paid off in raising the standard of football on show. Look at the number of good midfielders, both box-to-box and playmaker types, they've got in the league who are home-grown. In our league, the best creative brains are two foreigners, namely Miller and Hernandez.

But when you consider that, and the fact that the gap between our domestic and foreign-based players is wider than most nations that have a large contingent of players outside their homelands, it's hard not to draw conclusions from that.

Perhaps one conclusion is that money attracts better players and coaches. We are one of only 3 football leagues in the world operating on a salary cap, and a paltry one at that.

 

[Rubbernose]

we know the technical level is below our competitors. the problems you raise (and c. foster and others before you) have been acknowledged and that's why we now have technical and coaching development plans (devised by foreigners no less) in place...

Serious question, what are they exactly?

I can't really figure out what it is Baan and the new bloke have done. Small sided games for little tykes...well that's fine, I think SSG games are beneficial, but for kids who have already been training that way for years anyway, I don't think it will be a silver bullet, and I think it could very likely have a minimal impact.

From my experiences young kids who will go somewhere in the game don't develop high levels of skill at training one night a week or a half our kickabout on Saturday morning, but rather with obsessive ball play on their own time. When we can figure out how to inspire more kids to do that - in a country with some serious competition from other sports and recreational activities - we'll be doing well, for a start.

A NYL wasn't really their idea or new initiative. But, now, I'm not saying it won't help, but I still find the whole thing a bit confusing, for example, is a talented 16 0r 17 year old better off playing in the NYL, or in the state league, which is arguably a higher level of football, and one which allows youngsters to adapt to senior football, something which is a big step for most young players?

I honestly don't know what else they've done. They kinda seem to be just teetering around the edges for mine.

I dunno, the whole thing is pretty complex, made harder by the difficulty in establishing some uniformity in a country the size of Australia. I think the best returns will come from pooring resources into elite level youth development.

 

[David Votoupal]

Well I've said in the past that "marquee coaches" would solve things far more easily than "marquee players". What we need is not this protectionist "head in the sand" mentality, but progressive ideas.

 

[FFC Mariner]

I can see both sides here but if we assume that the key years for developing technique in players is (say) 11-16, we have an obvious gap from the years prior to HAL/NYL

We should be measuring technical improvement in say our very young players who are reputedly benefiting from a better national coaching framework.

Ronaldo (C - aka diver) was identified at 11 and then worked on by the best coaches available. Slightly different from some kid at the same age who had to come up via a State structure and hope a Euro club picked him up at 15/16 (Kewell).

Rome wasnt built in a day

 

[David Votoupal]

Identifying natural talent at an early age and then refining such, though I've seen cases at the other extreme of players making it into League football rather late because they had been so good.