Anyway, I think the issue with our squad is the balance of the side and Ernie's tactics. I've been going on about this since the tail end of last season but the way we are set up and the players at our disposal makes it very hard for us to break down teams who defend deep and narrow. When we had Burns and Krishna firing they both looked their best when they had space to run into and could get pace up to wrong foot opponents. teams wised up and stopped us doing that, and Sarpong/Appiah/Powell cannot play the role like Burns was able to do anyway. So basically Krishna is our only outlet for our best attacking method, and teams have already worked out how to counter it. CCM 30% possession last night but managed to create more shots than us.
Because we don't play with real wingers, and this year our fullbacks aren't overlapping as much, it's left up to Krishna, Sarpong, or WeeMac to drift wide to create space; however when they do there is then no one in the middle to play to. Also none of them are naturally left footed, but Ernie seems to like overstacking the lefthand side of our attack. Occasionally that allows Krishna to cut in on his good foot and score (I think the Roar game had a good example of this) but otherwise it means that defenders don't have to worry as much about showing our players the sideline.
When none of that works we hoof long balls to Krishna, who works his arse off chasing them down and sometimes even manages to bring them to his feet, but then is just not the right sort of player to be trying to hold up the ball with his back to goal while waiting for team mates to run off him. Griffiths was brought in last year and gave us another dimension on attack but after his injury we haven't had a replacement. In fact, our whole recruitment policy since the end of last season has been bizarre. Sarpong is a dud as a replacement for Burns, but we lost Boxall, Cunningham, Boyd, Brockie etc and replaced them with state league players. Even if Burns had stayed I think he would have been far less effective this year for the reason I stated above.
Now these issues with our tactics have had a while to fester, and in the offseason Ernie looked like he was going to give the fullbacks even more license to bomb forward by getting our DMs used to slotting into the backline, but then as far as I recall we have never really looked like doing this except on a few random occasions. If anything our FBs last year (pre-injury Fenton, Muscat, and Boxall) were the main driver for us to create space and chances on attack by making those big runs down the touchline, but this year only Fenton has really looked like getting forward but when he does he always cuts inside, runs towards one of our players, passes to that player and keeps running towards him. Our guy then has Fenton, and Fenton's marker bearing down on him, no one out wide to pass to, and usually just passes all the way back to halfway, or into the traffic round the box but finds no way through. It happens so much it's infuriating. Also, we rely a lot on Roly unpicking defences from the middle but he gets no protection at all from refs and gets fouled out of games all the time. other than him, none of our CMs have enough vision or creativity to generate clear chances in tightly contested parts of the pitch.
Long story short, it's like Ernie's taken the tactics that worked last year but had been started to be figured out by the opposition, discarded the most effective bits of those tactics, and persisted with the least effective parts. Now I like Ernie and he's got a good enough record to justify giving him time to turn this around, but I just hope he's got something else up his sleeve because even at full strength the style we are playing is not going to win us much. Personally, I think we should reset and build ourselves up again from the back. Focus on sorting out our defensive shape and rather than worrying about possession and controlling the middle of the pitch just look to counter attack quickly when we get the ball. Our lack of width won't matter as much if we attack at pace from deep - which is actually how we ended up playing for much of the first game against Adelaide IIRC. A few solid defensive displays and clean sheets might help the whole squad's confidence too.
People like Coldplay and voted for the Nazis. You can't trust people.
, but wondering if you are going to have a job next season is going to be stressful. Lets face it how many of our squad would walk into another A league club? 
