But given that our last three finishes have been 4th, 9th, and 7th, my major concern is that we just have a mid-table squad and they did an okay but not great job. It might take an exceptional manager to take what we have at our disposal to the top.
To go back to my wage bill point a little bit, I suspect that we have to pay a premium to get Australians over here unless we're signing them from the NPL. That would put us at a bit of a disadvantage from the off despite the salary cap, and -if- the wage bill correlation applies in the A-League then it will take an exceptional manager.
Except there's 2.5 million Australians per a-league team and 4.5 million New Zealanders. We have a huge advantage because we have 7 million people to draw our squad from. Our wage bill should be lower even if Australians are more expensive (and there's never been any evidence of that) because we have a monopoly on New Zealand players.
Access to 4,999,998 donkeys is not much of an advantage.