Adelaide United v Melbourne Victory Match Day Jamboree!!!©

[View From The Top]

Ahh 7 news hatchet job on the game , possibly the worst yet

What happened?
Did they set fire to the Pie Cart?

Saw a bunch of dicks punching on in the street between the Joiners and the Ent Centre, right in front of the 7 News vehicle. No idea who they were, no colours for either AUFC or Victory.

[Stuckey]

Ahh 7 news hatchet job on the game , possibly the worst yet

What happened?
Did they set fire to the Pie Cart?

Saw a bunch of dicks punching on in the street between the Joiners and the Ent Centre, right in front of the 7 News vehicle. No idea who they were, no colours for either AUFC or Victory.

Hopefully all those numbskulls are identified and banned.

[Old Gregg]

if it was those usual pimply black-shirted dipshits with matching haircuts they can get in the fucking sea.

[Futbol_Crazy21]

I watched the game again, and while it sucks losing to the Tards, we showed lots of positives out there and if this is where we are at in round 3 with lots of major injuries and the team not fully gelled, than I'm pretty keen for the rest of the season.

We really dominated the first half, and part of the reason for that was Isaias. The dude had a hand in everything. He harried the Victory midfield without the ball and carried the ball from defence to attack, he really links everyone together on the pitch. He ventured a little further forward, I imagine with the absence of Carrusca he kinda needs to, however with this Holland's role is becoming a little more clear. Whenever Isaias had the ball and or pushed further up to join the attack, Holland covered him in the center of the park. All game he did this and was happy to do it. For large periods you barely noticed he was out there but he was, providing all the cover Isa needed to go forward.

I'm not really sure why Makarounas was dragged at half time. He really wasn't playing poorly at all. He wasn't setting the world on fire either, but if I had to give him a rating he was on about 6.5, which was good I'd say. He'd press with Sergi when Victory had the ball in their own half, which he did well. He set up Henrique with a good chance with a dummy early on which Henrique should have done better with, he played some good passes, tracked back. Again, nothing outstanding but nothing bad. He is no Carrusca but we all know that.

There has been a lot of talk about Garuccio and whenever he good enough to play at LB. I think he is. He had play against Rojas who atm is much better than Austin, but for most of the game Garuccio did well to have him covered. From what I saw and iirc from last year, Gui wants both Garuccio and Elrich to play higher up this season. Both with the ball and without. Obviously football can be quite dynamic with positioning so there will be times when the whole team drops back, but generally they both seem to be overlapping more and they went up to press the ball early when the ball was near the wings. The trouble is when we lose the ball in certain areas. Near the oppositions box, no problem, they have plenty of time to get back, when its near the middle of the pitch like what happened for the first goal, thats where problems can arise.

Looking at the first goal. Guardiola is able to dribble past 2 players, fails after trying to go around the 3rd. Garuccio has pushed up to provide support with the attack, he runs back to position but our midfield is able to wrestle back possession, so crisis averted. Ball comes back to Guardiola, he again tries to dribble on his own, not much support or movement from midfield, gets surrounded by 3 and surrenders possession, Garuccio like he did before went forward to provide support, however this time Bozanic has plenty of time and space to find the pass for Rojas and take advantage of Garuccio being caught further forward.

The second goal though, Garuccio will have to take the blame on. Rojas has the ball out wide Garuccio moves forward to close the space, Rojas still is able to send in a shitty ball which our backline wasn't able to head clear. This is where he fucks up, he fails to see Pasquali making a run until the last second but its too late and Garuccio is too far out of his position to save himself. That error cost us the game.

Other notes of the game:
Sergi still needs to release that ball just a tad sooner.

Those last two shots from Choi and Sergi lifted the team a little bit to search for that goal in the final minutes but honestly we looked like we were running on empty otherwise. It was very stop/start after Henrique got stretchered off and killed the flow of the game, both teams struggled to get it going and probably around the 70 min mark I noticed more and more mistakes creeping in. Some tired efforts.

We definitely couldn't control the game like we did in the first half. I think as Isa tired, that was the catalyst for Victory to play with more of the ball, and our chances weren't as frequent.

Melbourne weren't that impressive tbh, Valeri was good, Georgevski was good, but most of the first half they could barely beat our press. They relied on counters that were well covered by us most of the time.

The referee was good for the most part. He should've waived play on just at the end of the first half, we were on at goal and it could have resulted in a goal. He also should have sent off Baro in the second half, but it was not as clear cut as Santalab last week. It was more just a collection of fouls that should've gotten him a second yellow, but oh well the ref had a good game otherwise.

I really like Kitto, I reckon he'll grow into the season nicely.

Henrique didn't play that well IMO. He could've had a goal in the first 10 mins. He was in space and he chose to go near post, poor, in that situation he really needed to go across the keeper, he was never gonna beat Thomas at his near post.

Sorry for the ramble, tried to quickly type out my thoughts before I forgot them.

[View From The Top]

Good summary.

[Stuckey]

Good summary.

Agree. Good point on the first goal. I've heard people blaming Garuccio for it but it was clearly Guardiola leaving everyone high and dry. I felt it was a silly thing when maintaining possession is a clear aspect of the game plan that he'd do something that risked losing possession twice in a row. I hope we don't see a repeat of that again.

[Futbol_Crazy21]

Good summary.

Agree. Good point on the first goal. I've heard people blaming Garuccio for it but it was clearly Guardiola leaving everyone high and dry. I felt it was a silly thing when maintaining possession is a clear aspect of the game plan that he'd do something that risked losing possession twice in a row. I hope we don't see a repeat of that again.

Isa and Holland just sat behind and watched it all happen. They played well otherwise but they really should have made a better effort to provide a passing option. Makarounas may have done a bit better but unlike Isa nd Holland its not clear where he could have ran other than where he was to provide support.

I think its also a risk that comes with Guardiola's game. He clearly has a lot of ability. He is so strong on the ball and he can run past multiple players. He can do it. We definitely don't want him to stop doing it, its good that he can back himself. But its not always gonna work out, occasionally he'll lose the ball. The coaching staff just need to make sure he recognises when there is too much risk to do so and also maybe it'll get better when he can understand the team better and vice versa.

But back to the main point. The team conceded that goal, not Garuccio, he conceded the next one

[shinAUFC]

I mostly agree with the above but i think we are being very harsh when calling elrich and garuccio out of position at times.

We play a hugh risk game which involves these guys getting forward. The down side of this is when the midfield turn the ball over cheaply and we have holes at the back.

A huge part of our strog defence in the last half of the season was thanks to a well drilled midfield who played the right balls allowing players to push forward. Conversely this was a huge issue to our poor start last season , on the surface it appeared our defenders were lazy but it was mostly due to cheap turn overs during transition.

[sevengoals]

Good summary.

[Ghost]

Maybe I was wrong with my comments about Garrucio and the first goal but Elrich seemed not to get caught out despite being on a quicker player and attacking quite a bit as well. Perhaps he was just luckier and also Rojas is the smarter footballer even if he is not quite as quick as Austin.
I also wonder whether La Rocca could have gone to try and put pressure on Rojas, it might not have worked but he just ran back alongside McGowan and he did nothing to help defend. Then McGowan over committed and Berisha beat him easily and then I felt Galekovic went to ground extremely early although I doubt it would have made any difference given Berisha's quality.
Also it is not only getting caught out by pushing forward which is clearly something Garrucio needs to do as part of the game plan. I feel he has been caught out playing too narrow a few times, although more so against WSW than against the Victory so perhaps he is learning.

I feel Garrucio is, overall, a very good player, but I think he might be better suited to the wing although he can certainly play well at LB. Goodwin had to improve his defence to play LB defensively very well and I feel he did so by the end of last year. Garrucio doing the same would be great.
I certainly would not be dropping Garrucio from the starting XI in the near future and when Marrone comes back then I would be in favour of Garrucio playing LW.

[EdDog]

I think Garuccio has been superb considering his age and that it's only his third game in our setup.

Very very impressive.

[mcjules]

I think Garuccio has been superb considering his age and that it's only his third game in our setup.

Very very impressive.

Agreed but I think we could really use his pace on the wing so I'm looking forward to Marrone coming back!

[shinAUFC]

I think Garuccio has been superb considering his age and that it's only his third game in our setup.

Very very impressive.

Given our LB woes for the socceroos, garuccio has a shot at making the travelling squad to the world cup if he continues to develope the way he has. Not to put the mockers on him but he is just the type of player ange would pick

[Ghost]

I think Garuccio has been superb considering his age and that it's only his third game in our setup.

Very very impressive.

Given our LB woes for the socceroos, garuccio has a shot at making the travelling squad to the world cup if he continues to develope the way he has. Not to put the mockers on him but he is just the type of player ange would pick

Brad Smith, Alex Gersbach and Craig Goodwin plus perhaps Callum Elder when he comes back from injury looks like reasonable depth at LB. It will be very difficult to make a Socceroos squad at LB.

[EdDog]

I think Garuccio has been superb considering his age and that it's only his third game in our setup.

Very very impressive.

Given our LB woes for the socceroos, garuccio has a shot at making the travelling squad to the world cup if he continues to develope the way he has. Not to put the mockers on him but he is just the type of player ange would pick

Brad Smith, Alex Gersbach and Craig Goodwin plus perhaps Callum Elder when he comes back from injury looks like reasonable depth at LB. It will be very difficult to make a Socceroos squad at LB.

Yeah I thought we had LB covered.

It's RB we need someone. Ryan McGowan should not be played there.