WPM R1 vs Western United | Sun 20th Oct | 4:00pm | RoF / Sky Sport 3 | March 3pm

Marto

RR

Nommag

Shame about the crowd. It's a mint day.

We have 6-7k rusted on fans. Nothing to draw the bandwagon fans in today. Hopefully they turn up for the Derby.

I'd have thought the AFC debut win, us coming second and a cracking day weather-wise and first game of the season would have brought in a great crowd.

Economy and all the attention going up north probably just means you're getting mainly the belted-ons coming for todays game but I reckon after the first derby the crowds will start to be a bit higher than average as people get a bit more behind the idea of an inter-city clash. 

Oof that was dire.

Well fudge

Some solid ball watching by three defenders there

Rufer materialising there gave a bit of hope to retake the lead but ah well

Rufer should have done better there.

Big chance. Big, big chance wasted there.

Crowd 7535

Double post 

Stop fudgeing around with it at the back! FFS man.

5 mins to go, sub on a 17 yr old defender on debut: that's confidence!

We don't look particularly interested in scoring...

Just something resembling some urgency would be nice. But that's just not chief ball.

4 minutes to find a moment of magic

Come on!

Great bit of ball control from Payne there

I get the plan is to grind out results. But holy fudge can we see a bit of urgency to win when we're the more dangerous team???

That's disappointing, we easily had enough opportunities to get a goal or 2 more.

After Western's goal we really let them dictate play too much, let them keep having opportunities on goal whereas before their goal they barely had a chance

The neutrals are gonna be switching to AFC after that garbage.

Just a very average home performance if I'm being honest.

Haven't really seen anything that I would say was even a marginal improvement or adaptation on what was dished up last season.

Disappointing lack of urgency all round, and really quite poor from us. Western are shark, but we let them take home a point. 

Pretty crap performance tbh, I expected more of an evolution like what we were promised. Looked slow and lacking.

The big difference this season is we no longer have a superstar keeper and a surprisingly amazing CB duo.

Agree with the comments here re lack of urgency. That definitely feels a little disappointing.

WU were solid enough I thought. Considering we were missing a few key players I thought we performed pretty well. I'm pretty happy with a draw.

Wouldn't say I'm happy with the result but I thought these were two pretty evenly matched teams.  

Conchie looked very good - him and rufer for 60 mins ate up everything and controlled well.

We well and truly dissapeared the last 30 - just had nothing working. Quite a disapointing start to the season.

If we play the same way against a better team, we are in for a battering. 

Sheridan looked classy, he is wasted at RCB. I wonder if he could be moved into midfield somehow, as Payne doesn't deserve to be dropped.

Walker looks promising but isn't ready for A-League starts, hopefully Sutton is back soon.

Rufer and Kosta (apart from the goal) were both quite poor. 

Ball is completely past it. Should have been OVH on instead.

A lot of room for improvement. But we have a few good players to come into the side and (hopefully) a back 5 is not our regular formation. 

A few highlights, Kosta looks good, is huge in particular looks very promising. I was impressed with conchie and I have to say, the subs actually made things worse. Didn’t work out and I get that happens sometimes, but fudge me, we were slow, no urgency, and I really don’t think this keeper is the answer. Doesn’t look very comfortable with the ball at his feet and overall didn’t appear to be much evolution from last season. Think the crowd matched the overall play tbh, but I’ll reserve judgement on the team until we’re a few more games in and have the other 3 probably starts in the team. 

Think my mate summed it up, this team are set up to play away. Which obviously isn’t great for us at home 😂 

Chiefy said on the post match broadcast that he expects it'll take about 4-6 weeks before we start to see the team hit their stride

Half a Pint

Chiefy said on the post match broadcast that he expects it'll take about 4-6 weeks before we start to see the team hit their stride

I never understand that. We have the worlds longest off season. What have they been doing? The time to learn to gel is in pre season but whatever

I don’t think it was quite as bad as people are making out. There were glimpses of what looked like a dangerous attack. 

Add in the fact that we had some key injuries, many new faces and some inexperience, I think we did pretty well.

Chief has made it very very clear we haven’t had consistent preseason training as a squad to get us to the level he wants yet. 

Patience. The season is not decided in the first game - and I came away from that feeling reassured we can challenge again this season. 

Nagasawa and Ishige both look perfect for Chief’s system, and played very well. 

InsulinMachine

Half a Pint

Chiefy said on the post match broadcast that he expects it'll take about 4-6 weeks before we start to see the team hit their stride

I never understand that. We have the worlds longest off season. What have they been doing? The time to learn to gel is in pre season but whatever

He has said in other interviews that the amount of international windows/age-grade world cups means we have only really had 2 weeks as a full squad. 

That was shocking tbh. Looks like we’ll find it hard to score this season.

Why throw away 15-18 points to start the season.

Longest off season on the planet and he can’t get a team to play? 

Gee I thought we looked good in terms of our passing and connections out from the back. Compared to yesterday we had a midfield and they were used to playing together. 
Happy to see the 3 lads in. 
We should have put the game away. I think we’re potentially missing a striker. 

ClubOranje

Why throw away 15-18 points to start the season.

Longest off season on the planet and he can’t get a team to play? 

 
Apparently there’s too many players off on international duty or some sh!t..

I can't believe I spelt stressing wrong omg

There was some glimpses of brilliance in there with some amazing passing at pace.

Western United certainly pressed pretty damn hard hoping the goalie would mess up.  If we didn't keep our cool we coulda been smashed.

There looked to be some passing where it looked like the team passed where they expected a player to be.

So I'm certainly backing Chiefys comment that the team is still finding their feet.

I think we are just deflated because after leading, conceding a goal near the end of the game to level it up always just feels that much worse than it was.

I think we comfortably looked the better team, but some fantastic chances were missed which sucks.  Could have been 3-0 up, but kept WU in it.

Same number of goals by bother teams as the Auckland team.  Brisbane just didn't know which end to score.

I'm deflated but optimistic.

nixnation

I can't believe I spelt stressing wrong omg

I was pretty stresst to be fair.

I can't believe I spelt stressing wrong omg