Round 22: Victory vs Mariners

[Roy Law]

Wombat – my take on the players:
Reddy 6; had no chance with any of the goals. There were no problems with his distribution this week.
Seip 6; some good covering in defence; got forward willingly but hasn’t the skills to support the winger and crossing was woeful. Can’t fault his effort.
Anderson 8; easily our best defender and one of our best players on the night. Strong and intelligent in everything he did. Very unlucky with the handball; nice composure for his goal.
Griffiths 6; An underwhelming game; he needs more game time to show if he is good enough but won’t get it because he probably isn’t. Some of his positioning was good but almost gave away a goal with an errant pass.
Sim 7; Diligent in his defensive duties (of the 8 defending against Finkler he definitely wasn’t ball watching; he was tight to his opponent). Got forward willingly; put in a great cross early on. Is clearly relishing his A League opportunity
Caceres 8; Some extraordinary footwork in confined spaces; occasionally gave the ball away but one pass over the top to Trifiro was pure class. Brave – as he slipped over he tried to head the ball when he was on the ground despite flying boots from oppo. If others make him MoM there will be no argument from me
Hutch 7; Very steady; when the Mariners had good rhythm he was at the heart of it. Didn’t hold back in letting Ben Williams what he thought of his decisions.
Ibini 6; very frustrating. We all know he has the talent but seemed to go through the motions without any great hunger. Instead of driving straight forward he was often going across field. I don’t think he went past his man on the outside all game; nor did he have a shot at goal.
Kim 5; He didn’t like the school of hard knocks – and Victory were not particularly hard. Went missing in the midfield; spent the game rubbing his legs or, ACL style, rolling over. Does take a good corner though.
Fitzgerald 7; On another day he would have been a hero; like the early days of McGlinchey he lacks the vital composure to take his chances. Worked hard but had his blinders on. The missed header seemed to affect his confidence.
Duke 8; All action display like the Duke we used to know; played with determination, and with a smile on his face. Chased everything and willingly took on defenders. Should have scored from the Anderson rebound. Two late volleys could easily have been goals. I am not saying he should be on the plane to Brazil; I am saying he is doing his best to be considered.
Trifiro 7; an eye opening performance. Started slowly but then produced some confident football; great technique and physically strong. I think he quickly realised he has nothing to fear at this level. Caused problems for Victory whenever he got the ball in the penalty area.
Simon 5; Can’t score him more because only on for a short time but he was up for it. Won a lot of ball in the air; a 4-4-2 playing alongside Duke would pay dividends.
Sterjovski 5; again, not on for long but long enough to provide Seip with a chance.
Moss 5; The team played some good steady football without real belief in getting the result. It is his job to prepare the team mentally as well as physically and he failed today; as I said Victory were there to be taken. He knows how good Trifiro is; that is why he signed him. With Kim clearly not at the races he should have been strong enough to hook him much earlier.
3 points Duke
2 points Caceres
1 point Anderson

 

[true believer]

very good ray roy

 

[gull]

Trifiro looked excellent when he came on.

It's very telling that the new players are showing up some of the more "established" players with their desire. Rose has been great for us for a long time, but Sim has been very good in his absence and it would be quite unfair to drop him.

We fought hard all the way which was nice to see, but so sick of us not killing off our early domination of games and then paying the price.

 

[gull]

Spot on with your comments re Moss Roy.

I understand that we need to be patient, but it just seems like changes are made way too late. Lack of flexiblility can be a real problem for a team, and we seem to be locked in to changes only at certain times in a match unless there is an injury.

Many times when Arnie was Manager you would think "maybe it's time for a change", then look to the side lines and it was already happening. It feels now like we are a few steps behind the play rather than on top of it.

 

[Bladesman]

Difference with Arnie as well was the change was usually the one you were thinking of where as Mossy has quite often surprised me with the choice of the player to be replaced and changes it has meant to the system.

 

[dibo]

You would have taken time to get used to Arnie (as we all did) - same will be true of Moss.

 

[true believer]

I think a problem mosey had last week was no pace off the bench. either Bernie or fitzy needed to be injected at the 60 + minute mark
the help finish or win a game.
sterjo creates quality chances early and would help take some of the hackers off kim .
also caceres is improving at DM I disagree with the school of thought .that moving him forward would have helped
in the spot we were in . we needed pace ,we didn't have it

 

[bikinigirl]

. interesting discussion regarding the substitutions ... and it has been tough on mossy recently

. he admitted to struggling early days and this was part of the shift from offering suggestions to arnie ... to having to make those decisions himself. he has said he needed to build confidence in his own ability to make those decision when they needed to be made

. as a consequence he often delayed making changes too long. since then he has been burnt by making the changes earlier and perhaps has now become a little gun shy again, but not without reason

. a few weeks ago (i can't remember the game now because most recent games have not been that memorable) ... he ran out of subs and was forced to move zach up front when he picked up an injury and others played on too with cramp, etc. since then he has been forced into substitutions for injuries to bosnar and rose (in the same match)

. now that we are into the 'acl season' it has become even more complicated because he has to manage workload and 'niggles' ... he can't afford to run out of subs again and force an injured player to play on, there is a bigger picture to consider - so he has played it safe and held off once more. tricky for the most experienced coaches dealing with injuries, a constantly changing squad and a heavy workload ... so i can forgive his conservatism

I think a problem mosey had last week was no pace off the bench. either Bernie or fitzy needed to be injected at the 60 + minute mark
the help finish or win a game.
sterjo creates quality chances early and would help take some of the hackers off kim .
also caceres is improving at DM I disagree with the school of thought .that moving him forward would have helped
in the spot we were in . we needed pace ,we didn't have it

. good observation but his options were pretty limited to begin with. he started with his younger players who had performed well the week before ... and by rights should be fitter. if they had converted their opportunities the 'experience' would have been available off the bench to 'shore up the win'

. it has now been posted elsewhere, but my thoughts are kim to start in the acl game, but provide a bit of 'spark' off the bench against that other team on the weekend. i have no doubt he will be bullied on the weekend, tomorrow is more his style

 

[true believer]

I think with the kim situation . mosey needs to keep asking "why isn't my playmaker being protected" this is granteed to get whistle blowers going .
also Williams has a track record of ignoring Melbourne atrocities . remember muskrat nearly taking off kwaises legs.
then Williams red cards kwaisee for getting upset about it. he has form ,this should be exploited .
Arnold was expert at media manipulation . it's a step learning curve indeed for mossey

 

[nebakke]

.
. good observation but his options were pretty limited to begin with. he started with his younger players who had performed well the week before ... and by rights should be fitter. if they had converted their opportunities the 'experience' would have been available off the bench to 'shore up the win'

I realise that it's the lot of a coach, but I still think we need to bear in mind as well that, to some extend, Mossy is caught between a rock and a hard place. While also playing him out of position, he was copping a LOT of flack for using Duke as an impact player, similar thing for Bernie while he was settling back in. We can't have it both ways, complaining about him not starting the young guns and about not having them on the bench

.
. it has now been posted elsewhere, but my thoughts are kim to start in the acl game, but provide a bit of 'spark' off the bench against that other team on the weekend. i have no doubt he will be bullied on the weekend, tomorrow is more his style

Yeah, I would tend to agree... I still reserve my judgment though.. I think Kim does alright when he gets to the ball, but often it seems like he's struggled to get to it... In a sense, it seems to me a little like Caceres - Who btw, I think has improved significantly after just a couple of more games, he no longer runs straight for the biggest group of opposition players - I'm wondering if it's simply a matter of settling in with the team and getting confident about who is going to make what runs and plays. For all that is heaped on Seip, he actually did have a couple of decent crosses on Friday - But they went wider than Kim and so, in a sense, he was circumvented... Once that's said, he did also send a couple to Trifiro who repalced Kim, so I dunno.

Anyway, just found out I have a LATE meeting yesterday and now concerned that I won't be able to watch the game at all, let alone at BT #disappointed

 

[Tassiemariner]

Was not the worst performance I've seen this season heck even this month. We constantly threatened them for large periods, just with Kim coming so recently and Duke being played out of position of late, the cohesion is just not there.
How fitzy missed that header I willl never know! Sim and Anderson were also good value, certainly not a 3 goals conceded perfromance from the defence.
Good evening in the away bay as well, bring on the Heart in 2 weeks!

 

[dibo]

I'm with you there TM. Plenty to be encouraged about. We lost having a go. We didn't limp home. We moved the ball, we pressed on, we had a go at them. A teeny bit more composure in front of goal, a teeny bit more composure in defence (Hutcho and Anderson not doing a great job of defending as a team for their first goal showed up a little bit of lack of communication and composure) and we're in business.