R7 vs Perth Glory | Friday 21st Nov | 11:45pm | SS2

I think you will see Lia to the bench. Just on statistics alone, they tend to favour Rodriguez. For those that says he does nothing, the stats say otherwise.

So basically back to the formation we had at the start of the season sans Krishna for Wee Mac?

To be fair, I am not sure either what Ernie wants to do with Alex Rodriguez - seems at the moment he ends up being the round peg in a square hole in every game.   Anyone care to do a spot of analysis on A-Rod's positioning through the gametime he had so far with us?

Sooo much this, it's like ARod is the new Tim Brown, a whole bunch of people think he does nothing, but the stats show he is clearly involved everywhere.

I am not dissing A-Rod, just wanted to have some more clarity where he actually is during the game (which formation he fits into). 

It is obvious even to me hat Ernie subs him to simply change the formation, not because he's doing sweet f-all.

Its what he does without the ball that helps the midfield. He closes players down eliminating them from the pass. He uses his presence felt which adds pressure on the opposition. His passes are usually short busi ess type passes, not grabbing attention 40 yard ones.

Right. Thank you kind sir. 

That's what I wanted to know - but also, if he his positional playing might not exclude him from being used more forward if need be?

It looked like at Sunderland, he was the man whom sat in the centre of the park and did it all. It looked like he was quite the pivotal axis of that side. As you come up the grades, unless you are a supreme talent like Ronaldo, sides generally are not built around you.  You have to fit into a role and that may not necessarily be the role you want to play or you think you are best at (and in some cases a role that does not suit your skill set) but you have to play that role. In the case of the Phoenix and our 3 import midfielders, it looked like Roly would be the defensive one and A-Rod would be the attacking one. Its reversed and I don't think I want to know what it would have been like if it was reversed be cause at the moment, it works. We saw a bit of A-Rod higher up in the FU tour and he can play that higher position. Today, in this team, he is needed in the engine room and does a good job. Tomorrow, he may be needed to sit higher up. 

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You have Pele and Maradonna up front. You drag one cause you need to make a sub. Does that mean they are shit footballers? A-Rod does get dragged early but in terms of the 3, Riera and Roly are producing more. That's not to say he is not producing (and the stats back it up to say far from it) but do you take those other 2 off over him? Some days, he may have a blinder and you drag Roly before him, but invariably, measured against the other 2, he is probably going to get pulled first. Looking around the team, do you drag your two CBs? e don;t have much FB cover. He seems to be the logical choice

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A-Rod is still 20 and his experience is youth football with massive raps about his potential and about to crack 1st team. So far, I have not seen anything to suggest that is inaccurate and he is doing a good job in there.

(Chrome really does not like paragraphing)

That makes a lot of sense. He is quite young but clearly has a lot of potential. 

I note he is one of the players (much like Riera) that tend to have better possession rate - I have not seen him do anything majorly foolish so far. 

Much like what martinb said, Ernie still has a "work in progress" sign hanging over his midfield/front line.

It would be interesting to see how the midfield is adjusted for the Perth game. Giving Thwaite the same freedom we gave Milligan to come up from the back would be just as risky.

Don't think he's good enough or confident enough (yet) without a 'minder' alongside him (Lia) to do the hard work required.

We will see Lia with Riera/Bonevacia in the middle of the park v Perth, no doubt. Ernie has already showed he doesn't trust A-Rod without Lia there.

Friday night football, fire up the NIX are in town.  Go to Facebook, Perth Phoenix Supporters Club for information on pre game drinks etc.

Doesn't mean he's literally following behind him. It means that Lia is there as an extra defensive screen to help A-Rod. It's not surprising, and not an indictment on Gorrin - he's still very fresh to professional football. I'm hoping he progresses to a point where we don't need Lia there anymore. From Ernie's squad picks and comments thus far, this is what it points towards.

Your examples aren't related in any way whatsoever.

I think A Rod will be benched.

They play a diamond midfield and the purpose of Lia and A-Rod was to squeeze the wide men and help the FBs with cover and turn over ball. Fact is I have never seen what you describe because they don't get near each other and ride opposite flanks hence I do not agree with your assertion 

Well, he's technically better than Brown. He also has a handy habit of dropping the ball on Dura's head for goals from corners...

Will be good to see Roly drop back into midfield a bit. Thought he was really effective there in the first couple of games. 1 each for Burns and Brocks would do just nicely ta.

Just because it's a diamond on paper doesn't mean it ends up like that.  Watch any game of the last couple weeks and you'll see Lia all over the shop trying to cover defensively.

I don't know about that Valeo... the positional mapping I've seen from the last few games suggests it's a pretty standard diamond in terms of the behaviour of the midfielders. 

I think Jeff sums it up well in the bolded sentence. 

Im not expecting much of a performance from this game. Some of the most un-entertaining football ive ever seen in the A-League has been between us and Perth.

I do wonder how that is calculated. If it is average position then a player that switches flanks and spends an equal amount of time on each flank will show up in the middle of the pitch (which I get is the case). A heat map is a better indicator of a player's position.

That was precisely my query earlier today, so both you and JV seem to have the answer.

Geez, will I ever get any work done on Fridays? This pre-game discussions make it near impossible to focus on much else.

I just wanted a simple answer. You're not helping!   :-)

Perth Glory are Twunts, The Referee is a prick, we are playing like wankers and Ernie needs to make a sub. *getting in Early*

WTF Lia? Pass to OUR players you **** etc..

Now that's exactly the level of "simple explanation" I asked for.

Who you calling simple ?

"Level-headed"?  :-)

The weather is shit has been pissing down most of the morning.

Rain has gone .

http://www.bom.gov.au/products/IDR703.loop.shtml#s...

In the dom post they said that Brockie will come in place of a midfielder, and then Merrick mentioned everyone in the midfield apart from A-Rod and how great they were, so its a safe assumption.

Lia is such a squeezed lemon!

I can see clearly now...

Sack Eddie

If we don't play A-Rod enough, eventually he'll get bought by another A-League team and be the next Rojas and Barbarouses and a mistake knowing "We should've kept him" .

From what I have seen of the average position map it seems we have been playing more of a 4-2-2-2 system in the last few games.

cant tell if this is serious or just getting in early with match thread ridiculousness...

So is it a 4 - 4 - 3 tonight?

McGlinchey out for Wellington tonight. He's back at home with his wife who's expecting. #PGvWEL

— Murray Shaw (@MurrayShaw1) November 21, 2014