Nah I don't think a couple of NPL players are going to solve Uffie's problems, more someone else's words. But that's now likely where any new players are going to come from.
FYI - here's Soccerway's profile on Sam McIllhatton, ex SFC U21 midfielder, who Voerman noted has been training with the Nix since pre season.
https://us.soccerway.com/players/sam-mcillhatton/4...
HHHHMMMMMM consider ..... A cursory wiki search of your average J-League club shows they have squads of 30 to 35 players. So there’s a lot of players in Japan who seemingly aren’t playing. And then there’s the J-League 2. I think the K-League is similar.
Its obviously not as simple as going and plucking a player at random out of the J-League but the early success of Danzaki (who has had only very limited first team opportunities with Consadole Sapporo) shows that there is an opportunity for A-League clubs to get more value out of the ‘+1’ Asian player import rule either as a permanent or loan signing.
Consider a loan deal with a non playing player in the J-League or K-League. Your owners are astute and have funds, but the Roar are not flush with funds and its working nicely for them.
As someone else wrote, you spend time negotiating, you have to wait to find an empty slot in the hotel MIQ system, they fly in and do 2 weeks in a Sydney hotel, they start training with complete strangers, get to know team patterns, fitness required, language barriers to possibly overcome (if you are talking someone from Japan) - season could be 2/3 over or more before they are ready to make an impact.
And the Welnix owners maybe wealthy, but it's just been reported last week that they are likely to make a loss of over $3M this season, about 3 times as much as normal, because of having to based out of NZ. Why should they throw money at another overseas visa player, when even if they do have a great positive impact, it's now likely to be too late in the season to achieve much.
Though a very cheap loan deal, could be attractive, as not a lot to lose.
I'm aware of a certain defender in Japan who would not need a visa and whose native language is English, he must be starting to feel home sick for the long white cloud. I have a feeling he's not getting much game time either ;-)