Post Sydney player angst (was Lochy 442)

Post Sydney player angst (was Lochy 442)

Started to read the article on the front page of Lockhead saying we should be attacking more.Given he hangs Leo out on his own more than he helps he has to taking the piss. Pot kettel black Mr Lockhead,one of the biggest underacheivers in our squad since he came back from his trial. ballane2009-08-31 12:53:15

Yea, was thinking on similar lines. We'd be able to attack more last night if he wasn't giving the ball away.

i must say, if he said that he is an id*** he could have attacked more but instead he sat on the halfway line, even the commentators said he needed to be further up in attack.

Indeed, it would be great if he would put his money where his mouth is.  But at least his mouth is sharing my sentiments.

Yeah, because the views of Robbie Slater are to be taken as gospel.

I personally thought Lochhead was the least of our problems, while Byun rampaged up and down the other side Danning was jammed in Lochy's pocket to the point where he was yanked, and he deserves some credit for that.

Considering we pretty much had no penetration from the middle of the park, to slag a full back who is being constantly bombarded with waves of attacking players coming at him for not getting forward seems unnessecary.

I thought that Lochy did good defensively. If he went forward he would have left us open to Danning who is one of the quickest players in the league. He did very, very well in closing him down - almost to the point that Sydney could only attack down Muscat's side.

Agreed, some people seem to not realise that a full-back's primary role is to defend...and he did that pretty well yesterday.

It did look bad when Bertos went on a big run at one point and in the replay you could see Lochhead miles away in the background when that particular move was crying out for an overlapping full back.

His defensive game yesterday was pretty good consider who he was up against. as for attacking more. I wish he'd go like he did in season one. Him and Leo overlapping would really give the oppo something to think about. Let's see how he goes on Friday. If he says he wants to be more attacking, no better place than on the pitch to do it.

In response to El G:

In Capital 16 and Masters 1, yes, but I would expect a FB at this level to be able to raid the flanks pretty well.

I take the point about him being hemmed in - and I can't help feeling that the Midfield were largely responsible for the presure on both FBs.

More importantly for me is that this is an open critique of rather poor coaching that seems to have only one expectation for away games: let's try and nick a point.

Trouble is, poor game plan or not, there were times when Bertos was clearly looking for the support of his full back to no avail. The sorry implication is that neither the collective or individual come out of this well     HarryHotspur2009-08-31 14:55:16

I took this as more as Lochhead kind of revealing how Ricki told them all to play. Its obvious Ricki takes away games way too defensively and maybe Lochhead is trying to say we should be attacking no matter what

But it's not as if Lochy did not go forward at all - in fact, I can remember at least 3 crosses from Lochy from the top of my head last night. But you can't expect him to run up and down the field all day, you only have a finite amount of energy to expend in a given situation. If you have a fast-paced wide player to contain, you have to make sure you can keep up with him at the back, which means that you can't just headlessly rush forward because one of your team-mates run himself into a dead-end, or if the team hasn't committed enough numbers forward to make your overlapping run worth making (and this happened a few times yesterday, especially in the later second-half, when our players were in good wide positions but just had no targets at all in the box). It's basically combination of team tactics employed in a game and player's own judgment, and I think Lochy's just being a victim of angst here.

Considering we have been told time and again its his ability to get forward that is one of our weapons.What so know thats not the case.Considering some of our defensive problems have been caused because he gives the ball away to easily to begin with,i should hope he is there to try to fix things. He has been very lucky that there dosnt appear to be a genuine option to him. 

I haven't been happy with his performances since about midway through last season to be honest.

I think he's on the improve and it's harsh to call him on last night where he was one of the few I'd give a pass mark to.

Kiwi Jambo would give him a run for his money

No not angst at all.Frustration that he has shown little since he came back from England last season.Dont get me wrong i enjoyed the way he played in our 1st season,its just apart from the odd very fleeting glance we havnt seen any  of that form for some time.

Angst at the team and tactics YES.Angst at yet another midfielder YES.Angst at the way we seem unable to hold any decent possession YES.Angst shyte YES
ballane2009-08-31 15:13:22

Angst.

Yeah... we'll give it a day to calm down and then I'll ship it all to chants and angst where only Coops and Greene will read it while composing another modern rock opera... altogether now...

His flashy boots tell us he's greek...

Betos, Bertos...

Angst does not = wrong.

These comments by Lochead may in fact be aimed at Herbert and his over conservative away tactics. Are the phoenix tied down by Herberts defensive mindest when we play away. What does he say in the dressing room?

We do play more defensive away from home and it annoys me. I've always believed you play to your strengths, and ours is in attack this year with Ifil, Greeny and Bertos. We can cause problems.

While I was happy that we didn't go a goal down in the first half, shifting to the more defensive seemed quite unnecessary and was pretty much our undoing.  Hopefully Ricki will listen to these sentiments and take some chances to win games instead of trying to squeeze through draws.  The Phoenix can be fantastic when we're attacking, but we're really not being helped by these defensive strategies.

Agree with that. Disappointing that for two weeks in a row now we've been looking for draws away. Particularly given how well we were threatening against roar and our good record against sydney.

Also if i remember correctly it was Lochead trying to get forward and lost the ball in the follow up to their second goal so it really is a tough call whether to get up with leo or leave sig and dura in the lurch.

We only seem to attack when we're a goal down. Often it seems we're just waiting for the opposition goal.

I was reading in the paper the other day that Micheal Ferrante was playing very well, I almost laughed. Has anyone else noticed that he seems to stuff up every opportunity the nix have had that he has been involved in? Last year he wasn't playing at all bad.

Does Durante know how to do anything other than hoof it straight up the park??

If we'd got away with a point would we all be screaming bloody blue murder? I know I wouldn't. We were 13 minutes away from a scrappy but valuable point against a motivated team (a win would put them top remember) with our midfield misfiring like a coal burning Model T.

I would have.  I still can't understand how we could go from last weeks display to this weeks.

If we had conceded early would we have suddenly lookied like a fluid attacking side ?  I don't know if people have realised this, but there is no rule that says you can only attack when you are down.

scribbler2009-08-31 20:56:45

But was last week's display really so impressive? I don't think so. It was good, in the sense that we took the game to Brisbane but after watching Brisbane's performance against CCM I now see that they allowed both us and CCM to steal the momentum through indirection and indecision. They clearly have some problems that we exploited, but which I feel made us look much better than we actually were.

The views of Robbie Slater should not be taken as gospel,
however he does know more about the game and has played at a higher level than 99% of people on this forum.
I agree with him, but I also think that this was Lockys best game for a year.
The views

This is true.

I could never possibly ever agree with anything that Slater says, but agree this was Lochy's best game of the season.