R24 V Melbourne Victory | Sunday 5th April | 7:00pm

You are right,  I forgot about the salary cap, so my argument isnt exactly right,  however I think everyone gets the idea.  I have calmed down a little,  just disappointed that we have played probably our 2 worst games of the season when we were in a position to show real intent.

Not sure what happened tonight ,a perfect evening weather wise but apart from Roly and Moss no one else turned up for us ,we missed Reira so much and to a certain extent the muscle of Lia (despite his obvious imperfections) Reira gears the game ,controls the pace ,a pivotal figure in the crucial midfield battle zone ,Mcglinchey was invisible tonight and Rodriguez struggled,Burns is still in business class somewhere between here and Germany! Krishna ran and ran and ran but at the end of the day Victory were a far more composed team.

We made an ordinary Victory team look a lot better than they actually are,not the end of the world but I agree with many comments about neutrals and fair weather fans,pretty sure a lot of them turned up tonight and won't be back for another three seasons at least.

All in all a horrible night,I'm putting it down the full  moon ,things will right themselves next week against Melbourne City and then we will spank CCM at home,onward and upwards !

Haazah! good to see you Steve-O. Yeah we were sh* t and we don't have a plan B. Archie p*ssed all over Manny. They knocked us off the ball when we weren't giving it away. 

To be fair though I'd not want to support that pile of sh*t. The conning of the ref and general rolling around even when they were 3 up was pathetic.

Doesn't even have to be German. There, that's more than 1...... your point is full of shark.

I'm a bit over the nice guys routine.  If the ref needs it spelt out to him we need to start doing so in caps. 

No excuse for loosing the game, but we are pretty dopey with our referee management. 

Sorry but Roly although good lost the ball or misplaced so many passes.

so frustrating!   at least we're playing away next week so may stand a chance!  what a turnabout from previous seasons!  And agree with others that one of the many frustrating things is there were loads of new spectators all around us tonight, and our great table-topping team played pitifully badly on the night ..... 

Their antics were very frustrating but probably still not as frustrating as our performance.

Muscat was very poor. A-Rod and McGlinchey anonymous. Couldn't get Burns on the ball enough. I had to laugh at Fenton getting MOTM too. 

Last week's game against Bling was shocking.  

This week's game was against a much better team than us.  They totally bossed us for most of the game.

However the ref is major twunt and the Tard players are a bunch of cheating pricks (who happen to be good with the ball so shouldn't have to resort to the usual Aussie fudgewittism).

Most of the play was going through Roly because fudge all else was on - bugger all effort from others to make themselves available.

Victory closed down and kicked the shark out of him once they worked out he was the key so yes he was under a lot of pressure and it didn't always come off.

That's a bit silly, do you think the players don't care about losing?

Football isn't really fundamentally about who wants it more.  Victory have A LOT of very good football players, that might have something to do with it

We beat that very same team just a month ago. Tonight we were nowhere near. 

The effort over the last 2 games just hasn't been there IMO.

Lets hope Griff is ok and he has a good recovery,  I know he has only been with us a short time but he is still one of ours

http://www.yellowfever.co.nz/categories/off-topic/...

What was the croud?

~8500

Deflated mostly.

Loads of frustrated comments around here and quiet rightly so.

You'd expect far more from the table topping team especially on home ground. But both weeks we came out of the sheds like chickens, being outplayed and conceded cheap goals.

Still a lot can happen with 3 weeks to go, although it's a real shame to get completely battered at home by 2 teams we'll likely play in the finals...

I agree . We are too happy to play the ball backwards all the time ending up with Durante and then try and thread it forward through the eye of a needle like defence who are expecting it and reading every pass and turn.

Not sure what happened tonight ,a perfect evening weather wise but apart from Roly and Moss no one else turned up for us ,we missed Reira so much and to a certain extent the muscle of Lia (despite his obvious imperfections) Reira gears the game ,controls the pace ,a pivotal figure in the crucial midfield battle zone ,Mcglinchey was invisible tonight and Rodriguez struggled,Burns is still in business class somewhere between here and Germany! Krishna ran and ran and ran but at the end of the day Victory were a far more composed team.

We made an ordinary Victory team look a lot better than they actually are,not the end of the world but I agree with many comments about neutrals and fair weather fans,pretty sure a lot of them turned up tonight and won't be back for another three seasons at least.

All in all a horrible night,I'm putting it down the full moon ,things will right themselves next week against Melbourne City and then we will spank CCM at home,onward and upwards !

I thought Boxall was good. Kenny almost made the difference, good save by the keeper, who injured himself in the most stupid way. Did Burns played? Krishna should pass from time to time. Sad to see The Griff going down like this. All the best.

Overall, another disappointing performance. We would have need one of this goals we laughed a few weeks ago to get back into the game. Those 2 last game put us back into reality, 6:0 is hard to take. But the good thing, next week we have another chance.

Another thing that annoyed me late on was at corners - 3-0 down, and yet at corners we have only 5 players in the box?! Victory had nobody up front either. Surely we should've been piling bodies forward?

That late in the game with score being 3-0 we were on damage control

Damage was done but 15 minutes to go, we should've had some more players in the box!! Inexcusable for them to have all 11 back and we have 5 attacking players. No wonder we never score from corners

Bonevacia had a rather poor game today - Gave away the ball too often and wow talk about one footed... the amount of times a pass was on which he wouldn't even attempt. He needs to work on that, as he becomes easy to mark, as Melbourne showed.

Think Cunningham was alright, a bit shaky initially, but ended up imposing himself on the game more than Burns or Krishna i felt. Boxall did well as well, definitely looks more comfortable at centre back, and wins alot of aerial ball too which is nice to see from a CB. I think the lack of Riera exposed both Bonevacia and Rodriguez due to the increased responsibility they had to take on in his absence.

Credit to Melbourne though, despite none of the goals being anything special (as per last weeks) they set up better than us. Never helps tho when we concede early. 

For a few patches of the game I counted the number of times a Tard touched the ball before passing. One or two touch for the most part.  Neat little triangles, players almost always passing and running.

We held on to the ball for too long and always had one or two of them closing us down.  When we did break and look to get into the box it was invariably through quick short passes.

As much of a donkey as Nathan Coe is I think the turning point in the game was his brilliant save from Cunningham's shot. If that goes in it's 1-1 and MV may possibly have cracked, as they've done a few times this season when they have been clearly dominating the game.

Turning point of the game was us conceding after 90 secs

*35ish

Not true at all, most people will tell you a story about bad doctoring, my parents doctor failed to recognise both skin cancer and dementia and he kept working through to retirement.

Agreed as I noted earlier on.  They played big triangles if you like and one touch..we carried on playing our short passing game with triple axles and too many degrees of difficulty.

Banner was nice touch as Nix rose from the ashes but bringing into down into the flames was a portend of BBQ-ed chicken to come..;>)

we did not get pumped 1-6  Be happy.

Usually we play with WeeMac dropping back into the tip of a diamond midfield, which means that Burns and Krishna can make angled runs into the space in the middle of our frontline that he's dropped out of. Yesterday we started out with Griffiths in the middle of a front 3 which meant that we a) didn't have someone in the hole front of our 3 midfielders to feed the ball to; and b) Burns and Krishna were forced to stay wide because the zone they normally make runs into was already occupied. As such, it was far too difficult for us to get the ball out of midfield and that's why Roly was spraying passes everywhere - because he didn't have easy options. 

Obviously the formation change also affected us on defence too because we couldn't press in the midfield as effectively with one less body in there, and of course we were missing 2 of our defensive workhorses in Riera and Lia. 

Conceding early really messed things up too, because it meant that Victory didn't have to commit men forward and we were chasing the game. I was surprised when Griff went off that Ernie didn't bring Hicks on because it was already obvious by that stage that we losing the midfield battle badly.

All up, I think that the criticisms of Ernies tactics in that game are probably justified but it's funny to say he has no Plan B, because that was Plan B. What really happened is that he didn't revert back to Plan A when Plan B didn't work.

It looked like Griffiths was down the guts to me, but your point still stands

Sorry, I meant Griffiths in the middle of a front 3, not in the middle of the park! I'll edit it to make that clearer

Griffiths played more down the right from what I saw from aisle 30 and was dropping deep as well.  Don't recall seeing him in up the middle role.  Also he went down in left midfield in our own half IIRC.

"Everyone" was all over the place really and struggling to find space.

I am less impressed with A Rod as each game passes...and whats with the bunny hop he often does?

.

Thats pretty harsh on A Rod,he has been very good for us at times.I think he missed Reira  more than some. We are just so bloody static at times,yes Roly gave away the ball to easily at times but he was also lkeft high and dry at other times by not being given options by his teammates.

We get a flat tyre and the comments here talk like the whole fudgeing car has exploded.

It was a poor performance against what is recognised to be the best team in the comp. Anyone not thinking they are odds on to win it all has rocks in their head. After that game, we have to question Ernie, formations, players......just wow! 

Plan B: we used that tonight vs McGlinchey not dropping to create space for Burns and Krishna and played 1 more striker and 1 less midfielder. If that's not departing from the normal game plan then you folk are not watching.

Ernie does not need to be questioned. It was a poor game with some personnel missing and some tired against a good team. Considering more than a few doom merchants never had us in the playoffs this year at the start of it (you were one JD) now we need to question Ernie???

I think the players know they were poor but if you look at the pattern of the season (and after the AFC is a good one) we have never turned in 3 shark performances in a row. We missed Riera whom showed exactly why he is the best DM in the comp and an emotional leader in Sigmund.

Just some real over the top reactions. It was a poor performance. That's all - not a reason to go re-investigate our reason for being.

got home about 1.am shark drive home by myself with nobody to moan to about the game , not happy but shark happens in sport so i guess i will be back for the next episode in a couple of weeks and hope things are a bit different.