I know I've generally been a bit more kinder on Popovic than you but I'm also thinking on the same lines as you. Popovic's preferred formation can be flexible, but I think he has focused too much on a quick transition to the defensive formation rather than the attacking aspects. Understandable...
To get more teams we need a bigger league. AFC limits you to a maximum 1/3 of the teams in your top league and for us they don't count the New Zealand teams meaning we are capped at 3. We need more teams (and a higher coefficient) to get to 4 or 5. We should be aiming to expand to 16 teams over...
Nor do I, but you need to go back a post to in the chain to keeper to see it's origin. It was keeper who referred to arguments that we performed OK because we beat teams with more valuable players as such. Mine was a comparative post rather than an absolute one.