WPM R8 vs Macarthur FC | Sat 14th Dec | 5pm | RoF - 12 Pubs!

I agree .It's as If the team has been mandated to  hold onto  possession of the ball at all costs.No at any cost.
Football is not a risk-free game.

Mainland FC

LT01

Hughes has been at fault for 3 goals in the last 2 games - I love the giving young guys a chance but at some point you have to establish standards and drop players who aren't performing well enough.

Agree. Might be worth to play Payne alongside Wootton in CB at least for one game to give Hughes a breather and have Sheridan on RB with a different role than the very forward Payne plays there.
The danger is that Hughes may not get back in the saddle if he is on the pine. But at present i would take that risk.  Last two games, his (marginal) errors were the reason we did not get a point despite scoring.  So it is easy to conclude he is the weak link at the moment, and this needs to be corrected so the season does not get away from us.

No, you drop players for bad performances, not bad moments.

Hughes had 2 bad moments which could happen to any defender, at any level. On the whole, he's been by far our best young player.

If you look at the own goal in particular, if he doesn't get a touch there, Auckland score anyway. With the hand ball, I think he is a little prone to having his arms out to balance while in the box, and it was just unfortunate that it skidded off the surface.

Calling for us to drop him when we have no backup is incredibly short sighted.

IMO the bigger reason we lost is because Sheridan and Colakovski had negative impact off the bench. I've also been really disappointed with Ishige and Nagasawa. They both completely crumble in a more physical game. In the last two games, the ref let things go, and we simply couldn't compete in the duels and these two were the most culpable. 

I think we also have to be realistic. Our squad is worse than last season in several ways. Josh to Paulsen is a huge drop, and Paulsen was a major reason we managed to eek out 1-0 and 2-1 wins last season. Josh has done better recently, though imo he was still culpable for that goal v Auckland.

Surman, Old, Paulsen are all huge huge losses, not to mention Kreav and Zawada. We simply do not have the depth to compete at the top this season. It doesn't help that we're carrying an import that doesn't play, too - not to mention Rojas, our attacking fulcrum and what Chiefy wanted to build around, getting seriously injured and not being match fit yet.

All in all, I'm pretty happy with what we've done so far considering.

Paulsen gifted as big a gift wrapped goal to the opposition as you could possibly gift in the weekend.

Simon B

AucklandPhoenix

What was the crowd?

7384, not sure how many Macarthur supporters we hosted but the away bay looked mostly empty from where I was sitting.

Macarthurs home games are mostly empty, it's a given the away bay was empty in NZ.

Macarthur takes up the licence spot that Wollongong  / Illawarra should have.  Better support even if spread over a larger area.

Is there anywhere that shows xG breakdown after a match?

Macarthur first goal would have had 3 xG components, the first from when advantage was played, 0.8 for missed penalty, and then another relatively high score for the follow-up