Was - Phoenix Transfer Speculation

I think Lia has improved remarkably. He may be a bit inconsistent at times, but his distribution has got a lot better.

All he needs to add to his game is goals, and would make him a pretty decent midfielder, and would give him the credit I think he deserves.


If he and manny could start knocking in a few goals, our team would become so much more complete

I think Chief's aware of that.

+1

All well and good, but you seem to be forgetting that last year our 3 top goal scorers were
Greenacre 8
Ifill 7
Brown 6

And Lia chipped in with 1 !!

The season before he was 2nd best with 8 goals

Think Lia is gonna get Browns share?? Doubt it

hopefully Emerton will act as a role model for his former team-mate the Admiral Lord Nelsen in returning to the land of his birth, to a heroes welcome!

we can but hope ...

Some VERY quality players in the A-league now this season. I feel this season the league will be alot more competitive and at the moment it looks look we may be left behind. Wish we signed a player like David Williams

This point is well documented. This is why I have said Brown has been our "creative midfielder" in seasons past.

So if one of him or Lia were to drop put of the side for Sanchez or another player up front, then I would take out Brown.

Lia doesn't score goals, but that hasn't exactly been his duty. I always go the feeling Browny had the license to move into the box while Lia and Manny had to sit outside of it.
If Sanchez were to demand a starting spot, then Surely Brown's place should be more at risk.

Other than goals, what does Brown bring to the table? He is infamous for disappearing through games unfortunately, and isnt often the one making the cross field passes, or the last ditch tackles- that was Lia.


If we can have Sanchez return the same sort of goals that Timmy did, then surely Browny is out. Having both Brown and Sanchez in the side may end up putting too much defensive pressure on Manny and thats not good.
Even though Browny is one of my idols, I rate Lia over him currently in that second defensive midfield role.

Or I may be wrong

I havent ever seen Brown as our "creative midfielder." I  can see how it suits your argument to call him that and then to drop him for Sanchez, but it is a bit "creative" to do so.
Of the two I would rather drop Lia. He had about half the shots Brown had last year but wasnt anywhere near as clinical. Brown has the knack and is valuable for that. And we may need that gift of his more this season. Stats from last year, where Brown was involved in 10 goals actually, Vinnie in 3.

Brown 6 goals 4 assists,  44 shots, 18 on target


Vinnie 1 goal 2 assists, 25 shots, 12 on target

Interesting discussion

i havnt seen him as a "creative" midfielder, but in essense, he has had the same freedom afforded to him as other creative midfielders would be given which is more what I was trying to get out. Sure he does have defensive duties, but so would Sanchez or another creative midfielder if they were playing.

But how much does Brown offer on attack, other than goals? Sure his goals cant be taken for granted, but stats dont often tell the true story.

Brown has been given much more of a license to enter the box and shoot, whereas Lia has perhaps been told to sit out, or he is just not that type of player.
Lia's shots are generally all from outside the box, so you can forgive the lower conversion rate. He also doesnt mind to have a crack from distance where Timmy seems to prefer to lay it off to a wider guy so he can get in the box. Both could factor into the different stats.
To be honest I didnt realize Brown had so many assists, but again that could be due to his playing further up the pitch.

Lia's contributions are generally on defense, or distribution from deeper to our wide men. Hard to record those sort of stats. Brown does often seem to dissapear, and although he can run around a lot, I'd rather have a guy who leaves his mark on a game when it comes to defending.

At the end of the day, both are very different players, who can be often thrown into the same category and play similar positions. But I personally think Lia would be more suited to sit off Manny in the midfield, with Sanchez in front.

Obviously this is assuming Sanchez was worth knocking one of the two out.

And to be fair, I do feel like Ricki would choose Brown over Lia

if you combine brown and lia you get the midfielder that we need

james dean2011-08-25 21:02:30

?

Timvince Brownlia?

Vim Liown - weirdly when you cross an English born kiwi and an Australian born Italian you get a small Vietnamese man.

rofl

Tince Bria?

cant help think of south park with cartman thinking he is a Vietnamese prostitute

so is our new midfield saviour "sucki sucki... me wante... 5 dolla "

Tanny Branchez

I know it's now a popular thing on these forums to gang up on people who don't see the Phoenix as the greatest club in the world who are going to storm to the finals and win it by more goals than Melbourne did vs Adelaide when Thompson got 5, but our squad looks very thin and unless something happens (and I'm not holding out a lot of hope) there is only the slimmest of chances that we will be able to compete with the two Melbourne sides, let alone Perth and Adelaide.

yeh a worry for All Whites and 'Nix in the preseason

I've been Brown's biggest fan- well apart from Janelle- but I'm not sure he can keep this up this year-

At the mo he's fine in a Manny-Lia-Timmy midfield, and a worry in a Vinny-Timmy midfield. TBH his goals are a nice luxury and a bad necessity- want more prolific goal scoring strikers...doesn't mention Siggie's goals either that chart...

horrible South Park fueled stereotype

So by merging the two together we gain one position in the squad but sacrifice an Import Sport?

Worth considering?

Surely MacCalistar scored more than Brown. You sure you have the right season? The issue with Brown is that if you strapped a GPS device to him to monitor how far and how fast he moves during a game you would get a shockingly bad result. He can shoot and can tackle. But we consistantly lose the midfield battle for possession. It's particularly bad when we have guys out extremely wide when we don't have the ball. We need to play more central on defence and when the strikers press their guys at the back, the rest of the team has to back that up.

Sorry you are right, Big Mac did get 7. I was going off the A League official stats and they have left Mac completely off !!!

I <3 Nix2011-08-26 09:02:19

I would just like to say, that I counted it as one of my highlights of last season, that I was at the game watching when Lia finally got a shot on target. After 3 seasons of watching them end up in row FF, it was a proud moment.

 

Tim Brown says: "Bags the front end".

i think you will find timmy would run futher than anyone in the team.

To get as far away from the ball as possible?

Going back to Lia & Brown surely this is how we've been playing
               ST
LM        Brown      RM
   Lia               Muscat

So to keep him in the squad do we play more like this
LW           ST        RW
    Brown     Sanchez
              Many
LB        CB     CB      RB

You can't compare stats about shooting and assists when they've been playing different roles.

Ultimately I think we play a midfield of Sanchez, Brown, and Muscat it shows goal scoring intent, we drop Sanchez or Brown off for Lia and it shows a much more defense "see the game out" intent.

To me I see every team pressuring Manny when our CBs have the ball forcing low percentage longer passes to our further forward players. Lia is generally the player to receive the ball from our defenders and move the ball around. Manny and Lia also try and make themselves available for passes, so often you see Tim running away from the ball, if you could get a heat map of Tim's average position it wouldn't be too far off being a striker

Manny could still end up being our right back.

Dear god.  That would leave some challenging defensive issues in midfield.

I cant see manny going to right back unless downey does something very wrong. Tsatallios can play right as well allegedly?

If I was Ricki, I would be building my team around Manny playing in that holding role, and getting players who compliment him playing off of him. And Lia seems to fit better in that regard.