I don’t think it’s all doom and gloom for us, and while it’s refreshing to see the goo return to the forum, we need to consider that what we put out last night was far from our first 11. If we’re looking at having our best players in for the finals then I’m not panicking too much. I’m not expecting us to easily win the finals series, but I think we still have a good chance. A few underwhelming performances now should hopefully be a reality check so that we’re not too complacent when it matters.
About last night…
- Retre at RB isn’t a great fit, I’d rather have VDS there. I much prefer seeing Retre in a midfield role, and I think he does well enough there. VDS had a shakey game last round but I would have preferred Corica put him back in to give him more game time. He did enough before the COVID break to prove that he can well enough at RB (as a backup to Grant).
- King does a good enough job at LB but is clearly concerned about getting forward too much. Last night we had both King and Retre as replacements for Zullo and Grant. Given that our formation heavily relies on our fullbacks getting forward to create width in attack, it’s obvious why we struggled with both first team players out.
- I thought Caceres showed some real class last night.
- Baumjohan made some good runs, he can really trouble defences. He just needs to recognise when he has pulled in three defenders and make the pass at that moment. It’s an obvious thing, but if he has drawn in two additional defenders then it means that we have two players that should have more space to work with if they receive a pass. Still, he had a good game last night.
- Alfie really has gone missing since the restart (and just before to some extent). I really hope he can get back to his old ways.
- Buhagiar is great. He’s the player I most look forward to seeing at the moment The problem is, once an opposition is comfortably a goal or two ahead of us he really doesn’t have much space to work with. It’s good to bring him on against tiring defences but if we’re down he won’t be as effective. In that situation (like last night) I’d rather see him come on to replace ABJ on the right rather than up front to replace one of the strikers. Playing him on the right would allow him to sit a little deeper and unleash his pace onto balls played a bit wider where there should be a bit more space.
Anyway, on to the next game…