depends on cap space after Burns, Gorrin, and WeeMac we might not have any. Plus we can only sign someone on a one year deal. A one legged Ifill is still better than half the imports in the league.
Firstly, no-one has seen a one legged Ifill play. Secondly, and I feel like a broken record on this point but I think it's important, we need to focus on the next Ifill rather than pretending that Ifill 2014 is going to be the same player as Ifill 2008
Yes, if we can and if we have the cap space. Which I suspect we don't.
How do we have one of the worst teams in the A-League and not have any cap space? Also we still have 3 marquee spots. We don't need to get a super, super player as a marquee. Why can't we just sign a relatively average international marquee but pay him about what we pay our other international players. If Welnix don't want to buy another player then that is fine but having no cap space doesn't make sense to me.
Because the owners have said that its a marquee less team.
The cap space issue is an assumption based on a few factors. firstly Burns and Gorrin would not have been cheap, secondly we apparently offered McGlinchey much more than any other team was able to without making him Marquee, thirdly we only have a couple of roster spots left and are looking only at cover players.
If McGlinchey falls through then we likely will have the cap space to sign the next Ifill (but will only be able to offer a single year as foreign space is precious and you would think that we would like to extend Cunningham and Riera if they have a good seasons)
Who says we are one of the worse teams in the comp? I think we are going to be extremely competitive. I expect Krishna and Boyd to step up, Burns to show us what he can do, and Cunningham to get into double digits, solid pre-season, etc.
What I said seems to be the general narrative of this forum. I don't know how good we will be. Take a team like Adelaide which seems to have a lot of talent and no marquee to my knowledge (they were looking at a Chinese guy, yeah?). Is our squad really has good as Adelaide? On the one hand maybe there is a New Zealand premium in that you have to pay a player like Burns more to play in New Zealand. On the other hand our New Zealand players should be relatively cheap because many don't have a lot of options.
What the owners meant I think by no marquee is no Dwght Yorke, Del Piero, David Villa. It would be illogical to me to say we need a striker, we have an import spot, we have a guy who is willing to sign for 200k but we won't sign him because we don't have salary cap space. If we don't sign a new player it will be because Welnix/Merrick think we don't need a new player or because the funds are not available. I don't think it will be because of an ideological opposition to the use of the marquee. Why would you be willing to sign a player if you had the cap space for that player but not be willing to use your marquee spot on that same player?
Okay I should have said the owners have given Merick the salary cap. They might be able to spend an extra 200k on a player, but then that's not how the route to balancing books as they see it. And remember we went toe to toe with Adelaide for the middle part of last year.
Compared to last year I think our squad is overall better than the team that was unlucky at the start, and successful in the middle of last year.
Our midfield is arguably better, our defense looks better (despite slow centre backs we have settled full backs), our coaches are settled, our buildup has been and will be better, our attack is hard to compare, but to be honest Waffles wasted way too many chances and we are now at least mobile.
Strikers aren't cool anymore anyway, everyone wants a false 9 :P
"Phoenix till they lose"