mjp2 wrote:
Agree with most of what has been said. Couple of points.
On Cernak OK-or-good? I thought in his 15mins or so Cernak made the rest of our central midfield options look totally second rate. That's any player we have played in a central attacking midfield position since the team started. Strong, fast, great passing range and speed and seemed to have good football nous. Brockie was so flat footed and surprised at one of the balls Cernak played from depth with pace off a turnover he created, within a foot of Brockie between the two CBs, that Brockie ... totally failed to move. A touch on that pass to turn and shoot was a dead set goal. We'd moved to the shade side so had a perfect view of that. I thought he played some great balls that a decent player might have anticipated, but our guys are so used to a poorer standard of passing that they did not react. I am probably labouring it a bit, but that's the way I interpreted what was happening. Only 15mins, but keen to see more.
Lots saying the second half was poor and lacked intensity. I thought defensively we were a bit looser on them, but we made several chances and a lot of quick breaks getting forward. Our problem is lack of finishing quality and organisation. I think we very much suffer because we do not have one natural instinctive striker in the squad, just a dozen or so wide midfielders Ricki has tried to convert. And we still, as others have said, fail to play the right cutback to players that should be making the late run to the top of the box.
Ordinary game from two ordinary sides, entertaining enough largely because it was close. One positive is that we should be on the table about where they are.
The other positives for me are:
- Cernak
- we held a reasonable crowd. i think with that weather with the team on a reasonable run we would have got 8-9k, so i reckon we've dropped a couple of k of fairly regular support due to the standard of play and poor results. I thought we might have dropped more.
- lochhead cannot play next week
- Totori surely has proved he must get more game time, in the reserve side.
- we were much improved for Ifill and Manny replacing Smith and Lia.
- despite some saying the effort wasn't there in the second half, I think it was, we were just disorganised and lacking combination from the number of changes. i thought we got improved effort all through the game. mind you, compared to previous weeks second halves that is not saying a lot. But hey, I thought they did keep up a decent workrate on a hot day. But easier to keep your heads up I suppose when you are not 2+ goals down by around halftime. I did say this was a positive ...
- i thought Fenton did pretty well in that more central position, but agree he's got room to improve. But Cernak will do better straight away I think.
The negatives
- still playing very ordinary at best overall (but as above, that might still get 5th/6th in this league)
- Ricki still seems to have no idea. Stein for Brockie was so obvious a sub to make, and the rest of his subs really did not help. [Edit: and agree with Austins post following about what a coach should be doing]
- agree Greenacre seems to have added nada, zilch, zero.
I'm picking up what you are putting down. Disagree on Totori. He should be released outright and I really hope the option on him is not taken next year.