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Match stats/analysis for recent Socceroo games

Decentric said:
This is a point that Quicky makes, but they may play too much.

Years ago Raymond Verheijen conducted evidence based research at the amount of football played and injury.

The Dutch , Portuguese play a 34 game home and away season, to the best of my knowledge, and Belgium play 30. Grazor and others may have posted it here.

The 40-50 game season is probably considered too long, with players receiving inadequate rest, and not being fresh enough for international football. Of course if one is a bench player, or reserve, a 40-50 game season is btteer than an AL 26 game season.

An AL 26 game season, plus ACL 8-12 game season, add a few Cup games, is closer to ideal.
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Yeah - probably true - I still think 26 is way too small and would like a 30 game minimum plus other games. At this stage a lot of teams just play 27 games but if you can keep a team together for a couple of seasons you can rack up decent game totals.
 
patjennings said:
To me it just highlights the inherent problems in the Popovic regime.

Andrew Clark was the Sports Science for years under Arnie and was wanted by clubs around the world as well as AFL and NRL. We never had a problem like this under him or his replacement.

Under Andrew Clark: The sports science framework was simple, deeply integrated with the head coach, and focused entirely on matching the physical baselines players were hitting at their clubs.

Clark didn't try to reinvent how a player lived their life when they arrived in camp. Instead, he built a meticulous, massive network tracking up to 100 players in the broader pool.He spent his weeks constantly talking to high-performance staff at clubs across Europe, Asia, and the A-League. When a player landed in camp, Clark didn't force a new fitness philosophy on them; he seamlessly continued the exact training metrics they were hitting at their club. This eliminated the risk of over-training or sudden exhaustion

Under Tony Popovic & Leigh Egger: The squad experienced a sudden, drastic shift to an uncompromising fitness regime. This regime essentially forces players to rapidly change their body composition, weight, and defensive running loads. This seems to be what lead to what Popovic called flat performances.

Popovic is notorious for micromanaging everything his players do. Egger's philosophy explicitly focuses on sleep, body mass, and lifestyle, which perfectly mirrors Popovic's old-school obsession with discipline.

Popovic and Okon have both been accused over the years of being poor man managers. Mile Jedinak, was employed as the set piece specialist but we under-performed in the World Cup there as have other teams where he had that role. Juric was a traditional shot-stopper - no modern keeper. So no work would have been done on sweeping.

Foxe I don't know enough about what he was doing.

All up the whole of the management team looks to be a set up that says yes to Popovic and not challenge him.

Surely we should be looking at the best management ensemble to take the team forward rather than minions to just agree with the head coach. i.e. These staff may be ok in their place but they aren't adding to the overall whole - just falling into line. A more diverse set, properly managed group, should lead to a management team greater than the team manager.
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Excellent and insightful post PJ.
 
Decentric said:
I defended Quicky, not Keeper.

I have disagreed with Q on many issues football, but I also see merit in the positions he proffers. Q has also started some excellent threads on G and G, like top Aussie scorers overseas/worldwide. We essentially disagree on Popa's tenure, and who he selects for the national team. Q is a valued, proactive member of the forum.

Conversely, Keeper posts a lot of pedantic , negative and 'gotchya' posts. He never starts threads proactively, but can find plenty of negatives in those who do.
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I know Decentric won’t see this because he has blocked me, but I can only say that disagreeing with his often strident assertions and correcting his (frequent) factual errors is not negative, pedantic and “gotchya” but is part of any debate.
 
Decentric said:
This is a point that Quicky makes, but they may play too much.

Years ago Raymond Verheijen conducted evidence based research at the amount of football played and injury.

The Dutch , Portuguese play a 34 game home and away season, to the best of my knowledge, and Belgium play 30. Grazor and others may have posted it here.

The 40-50 game season is probably considered too long, with players receiving inadequate rest, and not being fresh enough for international football. Of course if one is a bench player, or reserve, a 40-50 game season is btteer than an AL 26 game season.

An AL 26 game season, plus ACL 8-12 game season, add a few Cup games, is closer to ideal.
Click to expand...
Just to correct another Decentric “fact”, the Belgian Pro League is 40 games for the top 12 clubs, and 36 games for the bottom 4 clubs.
 
Keeper66 said:
Just to correct another Decentric “fact”, the Belgian Pro League is 40 games for the top 12 clubs, and 36 games for the bottom 4 clubs.
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Monoethnic Social Club said:
That is some fine "evidence based research" right there. hahahahaha Don't know how or why you bother mate...
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Fair point. Although taking a minute or two to confirm a fact and post the correction is not a big imposition on my time when I’m enjoying my morning coffee looking out at the trees and bushland.
 
patjennings said:
League 1 and the Scottish League (assuming you avoid injury) gives you proximity and eyes on you from the other English and European leagues and much longer seasons.
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Craig Foster used to talk about how few Aussies progressed to better leagues from these two leagues.

Of course moving to Rangers or Celtic is a big step up from other clubs in Scotland, as making the first eleven is difficult.

Burgess has progressed to the Champ, Devlin to Celtic, Miller to Blackburn in the Champ, Robertson’s club has been promoted to the Champ, but in recent times would it be fair to say these are the exceptions, not the norm?
 
patjennings said:
Yeah - probably true - I still think 26 is way too small and would like a 30 game minimum plus other games. At this stage a lot of teams just play 27 games but if you can keep a team together for a couple of seasons you can rack up decent game totals.
Click to expand...
Agree 26 is too few games.

If we had more AL clubs in the ACL it would help the length of season.
 
Decentric said:
I defended Quicky, not Keeper.

I have disagreed with Q on many issues football, but I also see merit in the positions he proffers. Q has also started some excellent threads on G and G, like top Aussie scorers overseas/worldwide. We essentially disagree on Popa's tenure, and who he selects for the national team. Q is a valued, proactive member of the forum.

Conversely, Keeper posts a lot of pedantic , negative and 'gotchya' posts. He never starts threads proactively, but can find plenty of negatives in those who do.
Click to expand...
I wasn't attacking Quicky either. I was just answering his question about my response to Keeper.
 
Did anyone notice the differences between the Scottish national team playing style in the North American WC compared to most teams in their domestic league?

I would think in an Aussie context, the national team and most AL teams play similarly.

Of course a few will say that Popa's current Socceroo 5-4-1, 5-2-3, 3-4-3 formation is different, but I seem to remember the days of his tenure at Melb Vic, when they often had a lot of ball in 4-3-3 attacking and defensive midfield triangles.

On the G and G podcast, Craig Foster labelled him a counter-attacking defensive coach, but I watched a lot of Popa's Melb Vic when they played proactive football.
 
Decentric said:
Did anyone notice the differences between the Scottish national team playing style in the North American WC compared to most teams in their domestic league?

I would think in an Aussie context, the national team and most AL teams play similarly.

Of course a few will say that Popa's current Socceroo 5-4-1, 5-2-3, 3-4-3 formation is different, but I seem to remember the days of his tenure at Melb Vic, when they often had a lot of ball in 4-3-3 attacking and defensive midfield triangles.

On the G and G podcast, Craig Foster labelled him a counter-attacking defensive coach, but I watched a lot of Popa's Melb Vic when they played proactive football.
Click to expand...
I agree with most of that. I think Foster's comments must be more about his national team set up. I think we could have been close to as defensively strong if he picked his squad with a 4-3-3 formation in mind - but with a much better offense.
 
LFC said:
That doesn’t help all AL clubs though.
Only those who qualify.
The comp needs a clean up flip and increase to 16/18 clubs so as having a decent length comp for starters.
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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 the next 5 years but I don't see a plan to do so.
 
patjennings said:
I agree with most of that. I think Foster's comments must be more about his national team set up. I think we could have been close to as defensively strong if he picked his squad with a 4-3-3 formation in mind - but with a much better offense.
Click to expand...
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 if we are playing teams a lot better than us but in the Asian Cup we will be playing teams mostly a bit weaker or of similar ability and we need a better transition to an attacking team setup rather than just rely on a quick counter by one or two players. I think we need to be flexible enough to play 4-3-3 or even the old fashioned 4-4-2 as required.

If he can't bring that to our play in the Asian Cup I think it will be time to say thanks for your service.
 
Decentric said:
This is a point that Quicky makes, but they may play too much.

Years ago Raymond Verheijen conducted evidence based research at the amount of football played and injury.

The Dutch , Portuguese play a 34 game home and away season, to the best of my knowledge, and Belgium play 30. Grazor and others may have posted it here.

The 40-50 game season is probably considered too long, with players receiving inadequate rest, and not being fresh enough for international football. Of course if one is a bench player, or reserve, a 40-50 game season is btteer than an AL 26 game season.

An AL 26 game season, plus ACL 8-12 game season, add a few Cup games, is closer to ideal.
Click to expand...
They play 38 in Scotland. All those leagues would be + cup and european games.
 
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