Ah the grumpy old men squad are here.
I see a young team who defended with all their bloody heart and when they made interceptions like Shermy did, got calls against each other.
How about Malik- all that BS about Roly (who by the way had two cheap shots on his knee) two late tackles in professional foul position?
Sure we made some bad challenges, but we also tracked, ran and shut them down time and time again. How many really good chances did they have? Not many. We have had some appalling displays in Hindmarsh and I remember every bloody one of them and this was not one of them.
Did Adelaide deserve to win? No they did not.
Problem is if you give the ball away like we did, offer basically no attacking threat and rely only on defending you give up chances and good teams will take them.
We got away with it against Central Coast, we didn't here. The referee didn't help with the goal but if they'd scored with one of the other three or four good chances we'd have had no complaints.
Shermy looked scared of the ball. Lia is Lia, Rodriguez is the new Lia. And our best attacker, the only guy who looks a threat on the break, got subbed, leaving Cunningham and Krishna, neither of whom have any sense of how to keep the ball up front. Very strange decisions from Ernie.
sure. So could we have scored on the counter 2 or 3 times. Those are the tactics and the risks. Worked against WSW, didn't work against Victory and almost and should've worked here.
Shermy was absolutely exhausted. Cos he'd slogged his guts out all game. and made a good challenge in the dying minutes.
Ernie played the hand he had. It almost worked. And At 92 minutes deserved to.
We had about 30% possession in that half. That's not tactics, it's rolling the dice
Are you serious? If Adelaide have got a high press on us we would have to be borderline retarded to try and play possession, all we'd end up doing is getting the ball picked off in our own half (as we did). When they have numbers forward like that there is less people at the back, hence your best bet is to stick your two quickest players up top and lump it over the top.
You can't create pressure if you don't keep the ball. The ball over the top is a pretty basic tactic that rarely works at this level because it's far too easy for defenders. We need to be able to get the ball down and play even when we're under pressure, you can beat a press in different ways but one thing you need is your guys up front to keep hold of the ball to get you up the pitch. And there wasn't much of that once we were left with Cunningham and Krishna out there.
Yeah sure its basic but the thing is when the opposition are that high up there is space in behind, Im not talking lumping it to a centre forward to hold up, Im talking putting it over the top into the space between the centre halves and the goalkeeper and letting two of your fastest players run onto it. The fact is we tried to play out but when there are that many players swarming in your half there is no space to play, and if you lose it its game over. Not only is it safe but it forces the centre halves to drop and chase, this brings back there centre mids, wingbacks and playmakers. This in turn forces their forwards to drop. Now at very least they have to break our defence again. Not only that but everytime their team drops they will tire and further take the pace out of the game. If we try to play out and we lose the ball they are already on top of us and often its only one ball before they are in on goal again. Im not suggesting playing Ricki from the start of the game but if they are playing THAT higher press, we have to atleast everynow and then lump it over the top and force their team to drop
"Phoenix till they lose"
