A-League Finals - are we still doing this?

No where near as bad as letting Cazarine go.

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Disclaimer - Burgess is easily my favourite player outside our side.

Its not a huge error that we let Burgess go. He went to Jets, Sydney Olympic, Portugal and Olympic again before Nux. Itā€™s not until the 2nd half of this year he has consistently been playing like this (glimpses at Nux). If he had started bossing the league a season after being with us it would be different.

He is Ninkos replacement if he stays in HAL. His agent will have a hell of a time cutting his 19-20 highlights down to 5mins though.

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Ranko :sob:

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Chianese is a bigger loss than Burgess. Pretty sure at the time it made little to no sense to let him go unlike Burgess.

Simce Arnie our standards have been very high. Young players who would be important first teamers elsewhere (look at Wests XI for an example) have had to leave to play. It means we lose good players and only top kids who are lucky enough to be in the right position (e.g. King) get a decent go. I am consoling myself to that fact by looking at all the Champions merch Iā€™ve acquired over recent years. Wests are 3 years without finals footballā€¦

Iā€™ve said it once and Iā€™ll say it again, youth wont have much chances in clubs that are trying to dominate the league. We need to expand our benches to 7-man benches. You currently have 5 wth one goal keeper so you need to focus on proven quantities, not blooding new talent, especially when chasing a game. Expand to 7, and you can have and extra 2 youth players who can be thrown on for the last 20 when winning a game, to give them experience.

I thought this season teams could have up to seven players on the bench, on the proviso that at least two players have to be youth players. Itā€™s been a long season, though, so maybe my memory isnā€™t so sharp.

I think BlueSky remembers right - it is extended benches now as long as theyā€™re youth, Iā€™m pretty sure.

fwiw, I disagree. Chianese was pretty useless for us after he came back from injury: very lazy (unlike Burgess who runs like crazy all match); and also tackle/impact shy (while Burgess stands his ground). Had speed - so was good playing off eg Bruno - but poor first touch. He has clearly matured a lot as a person as well as a player but even so has only finally realised his potential in his late 20s and as a first choice player at Perth with Ikonā€™s injuries.

Burgess is still only 25, and SFC gave him only 1 first team game and that was late off the bench. In those few minutes, he displayed impressive footballing brain and technique but none on staff seemed to notice; Chianese got 40 games with us to show what he had. I am glad for Chianese that he has made something positive out of his career after sinking from the heights we offered him. But we were very generous towards him.

Burgess never got anywhere near that sort of support. He is already a top HAL talent and has the potential to go a lot further. As a very local and likeable lad (by all accounts), I look forward to seeing him back at SFC.

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Your summation of Chianese in his last couple of years with us is spot on.

The fact that people here just think these young guys will just come back to Sydney is hilarious.

Fair call, turns out I was wrong :stuck_out_tongue:

Still stands that a lot of the youth we lost was during the periods, and most went to the smaller teams that werenā€™t necessarily trying to dominate.

With extended benches, we know have multiple youth players being given opportunities.

Agreed.

So, who do we think is going to win? City look to be favourites but never underestimate their ability to choke at crunch time.

I hope Melbourne Victory lose.

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Counting down the days until we can get rid of fox sports

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Still talking about VAR saving WU after the linesman correctly called an offside.

Burgess has been great. I just so want him back.

For us Iā€™d much rather City jag this.

Iā€™ve also been calling Rudan a fraud for 2 years.

Soft penalty that

EDIT: Not so soft though he was falling before