Ernies other blind spot is our defense......anyone can see they are past their use by date. Too old and too slow.....they will be our achilles heel again this season. Too high an error rate, often too slow to react, often too slow to move.
If I wasn't so lazy and if I knew how to work this interwebs thing, I'd search for my posts from Feb/March 2013 when I was saying that Dura and Siggy were done and we'd made a bad mistake by re-signing them both.
The other issue is that all their deficiencies aside, Carlos and Stein combined for 18 goals last season - and that was only good enough to get us 9th. Looking at all the forwards/attacking players we have now, can they score 20+ this season? I'm not convinced.
The reality for a side like the Phoenix in this league is that probably 70-80% of the games are really tight (there are occasional hidings from the top sides, and occasional big wins we get when everything clicks, but these are generally exceptions) - are our forwards good enough to make most of limited chances you get in such games, and do we have an attacking player who can win a game with one piece of magic?
And conversely, can we rely on our backline not to make dumb mistakes that cost us games that we shouldn't really lose - and did we get the answer to that question last night?
Exactly, we've both been on this for a while and it's so obvious I can't see how nothing has been done about it. There were posts from people in pre-season seriously arguing Siggie today is better than he was in 2010. Both these guys are getting on and you lose that edge which means things like yesterday happening very quickly. I really question Durante, I cannot remember the last time he had a good game for club or country. He just looks out of form and I wonder about whether his legs have gone
You can't just get rid of them though, they're on contract. There is a salary cap. Etc etc.