Rating A-League Clubs - Good, Bad & Ugly

Rating A-League Clubs - Good, Bad & Ugly

Craig Foster, in the Sydney Morning Herald, attempts "... to provide a mechanism for clubs to determine their football objectives."

He rates the Nix as: "High on results, low on football. A mostly counter-attacking and highly experienced group of players with a strong reliance on set pieces. Hard to beat rather than hard to contain."

Read the whole thing here: http://www.smh.com.au/sport/a-league/aleague-report-card-charts-the-good-bad-and-plain-ugly-20120331-1w51q.html#ixzz1qk1kfYRS




scribbler2012-04-01 11:53:37

accurate summary imo

I mostly agree although think our style and the mariners arent actually too different, they just have a few more technical players.

I have to say the amount of playing the ball backwards towards one's own goal, whilst in an attacking position amazes me.

It's like the players are scared to either play a forward pass or one across the pitch.

So what do they do? Play back to the keeper who then Gary Owen's it up the park for possesion to be lost.

And they have players with pace.

i like it

foster is just insufferably smug even though he makes some decent points from time to time. His obsession with every A-League team playing like Barcelona is bizarre- Manchester United have been the second best team over the period of Barca's dominance does that mean no-one should play like them? Or like Bayern?

We do play some of the worst football in the league though! But the idea that a lot of teams are so far ahead of us is just wrong - Newcastle especially.

I think Foster's opinions on this subject are far too strong for a guy who has never coached. You can give your opinion but there comes a time when you've got to put your own balls on the line so to speak

Some of his points are relevant.....however however his graph shows that results and asthetics are irrelevant. From a mathematical point of view you can't draw a line or curve through those results.

think a one on style for us is a little harsh, but ist funny to look at that table and see two unattractive teams are 3rd and 4th, and the two more attractive teams are top. Pretty much says it doesn't matter what style you play as long as you do it well the results will come.

I think we play some great stuff in bits.

It's just we've got a defence most other clubs would die for and this makes them jealous as all frick.

Our midfield is far from glam- but defensively it has been effective. Brown and Lia do deserve some accolades. They haven't scored flashy goals like Jeggo or Carlos or..., but they heaven't leaked too much either...

Just looked at it. What a load of bollocks.

Some of those clubs have played complete cack at times. We get a 1?

Jog on. Who wants to go all Slater on the the twitter?

I don't mind the criteria:

Consistently high possession rates
A predominance of short passing;
High levels of combination play;
Variation in attack;
The use of attacking fullbacks;
Lightning-fast transitions in defence and attack;
Varied pressing between high and medium; and
Building the majority of attacks from defence.

I don't think we've played a consistent style. Certainly when Ifill was out and we were winning with Sanchez, Daniel and Smith featuring in combination with Lochy and Manny we played fairly well by this criteria.

martinb2012-04-02 13:37:21

He has just ordered the teams so someone has to be last. Based on that criteria we would be down the bottom. We have the lowest possession rate, probably the lowest variation given we have low possession plus highest number of crosses, we have the lowest pass completion rate, we tend to not press on defence.

The only real ones of these we meet is that we do transition between attack and defence quickly and our fullbacks do get forward. But we are playing to our strengths. Shrug.

Also HTF are Sydney so high? This guy isn't from Sydney is he?rjmiller2012-04-02 14:05:06