World Cup 2018 | PUNT ROAD END | Richmond Tigers Forum
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World Cup 2018

You can see how worried they are with Cahill Ridley and he is 38 for goodness sake.

Unless we can find and develop strikers and pay better $ to our talent we can never compete with any other real soccer nations.
 
Craig Moore is very annoying as a commentator. Everything that happens to a Australia is unlucky. Arzani’s Shot sailed miles above the crossbar but it was unlucky ::)

The second goal we conceded was due to rubbish defence but he called it unlucky.
 
Now Bert takes off our best player Rogic and replaces him with Irvine. Yet leaves spud Juric on ::)
 
Got the volume down.

Lucky I'm at work.

Dissapointing performance after our first two games. Just not good enough.
 
Oh well. We played out of our skins in the first two games. Don't forget this team is missing genuine world. Class stars. Bert got us playing in a way I didn't think possible.

At least we got a point

Baloo said:
Australia not to score in open play isn’t a bad bet.

I should have backed myself in.
 
We just don't have enough players good enough to play in quality leagues. We could barely score in qualifying. Anyone who was hoping Timmy would save us , obviously hadn't watched much soccer the last twelve months. He couldn't get a regular game at Milwall. We really had only half a side out there. Many of our players have a terrible first touch and are technically poor. How many of our players could have scored Peru's first goal? Maybe Tim of four years ago, maybe Rogic. Hopefully Pasquali continues to develop overseas, but we desperately need strikers, and there aren't many good young ones in the A League
 
joegarra said:
We just don't have enough players good enough to play in quality leagues. We could barely score in qualifying. Anyone who was hoping Timmy would save us , obviously hadn't watched much soccer the last twelve months. He couldn't get a regular game at Milwall. We really had only half a side out there. Many of our players have a terrible first touch and are technically poor. How many of our players could have scored Peru's first goal? Maybe Tim of four years ago, maybe Rogic. Hopefully Pasquali continues to develop overseas, but we desperately need strikers, and there aren't many good young ones in the A League

I have little doubt Cahill would have scored in this world cup if used correctly, especially against Denmark in the last 30 minutes of domination. He looked dangerous for periods when he came on after game was all over.

Some odd choices when you are playing for a win, Luongo should have played in front of Jedinak and Arzani/Cahill arguably could have played in front of Juric/Kruse. Kruse works so hard but is let down by his final touch constantly.

Arzani/Rogic/Sainsbury/Risdon/Leckie/Mooy/Luongo & Behich are young enough and have enough quality to form a core moving forward. If Behich had a better first touch he would be fantastic, he works extremely hard and gets himself into great spots (eg should have hit Timmy in front of goal late in game). Same with Leckie.
 
I am surprised about the lack of focus on Milligan. He was woeful the entire tournament. Defending one on one is well below standard.

Selection last night was all wrong. Why persist with the same line up that has netted us 0 goals in open play?

At a minimum Arzani and Luongo should have started.
 
Smoking Aces said:
I am surprised about the lack of focus on Milligan. He was woeful the entire tournament. Defending one on one is well below standard.

Selection last night was all wrong. Why persist with the same line up that has netted us 0 goals in open play?

At a minimum Arzani and Luongo should have started.

Milligan is a good A-league player who is at the end of his career. A mistake to play he and Jedinak in the same side.
 
Juric is hopeless. For all the hard work Leckie and Kruse do they are not good enough. Jedinak offers little offensively. These 4 need to be replaced asap and find players capable of putting the ball in the net in the next 4 years. Disappointed luongo and petratos didn't get a run as they have potential and the experience would have been good.
 
We don’t have the cattle to do much damage at this level. We’re between a rock and a hard place because there probably isn’t enough latent support for the game to flourish while a long term approach is used for the national team. I think we can prepare for more of the same with Arnold unfortunately. Hopefully the clubs regain some power back from the FFA so they can at least have the right incentives to develop players and their clubs
 
Harry said:
Juric is hopeless. For all the hard work Leckie and Kruse do they are not good enough. Jedinak offers little offensively. These 4 need to be replaced asap and find players capable of putting the ball in the net in the next 4 years. Disappointed luongo and petratos didn't get a run as they have potential and the experience would have been good.

Bit harsh on Leckie.
 
Harry said:
Juric is hopeless. For all the hard work Leckie and Kruse do they are not good enough. Jedinak offers little offensively. These 4 need to be replaced asap and find players capable of putting the ball in the net in the next 4 years. Disappointed luongo and petratos didn't get a run as they have potential and the experience would have been good.

Agree on Juric; nowhere near good enough at this level. Disagree on Leckie and 50/50 on Kruse.

For all the hoopla the Bert appointment has fizzed. He turned out to be a very conservative coach who didn't change a line up that netted us zero goals in open play in the first 2 games. To not score a single goal in open play in 3 matches is extremely disappointing. What did we get for our million dollars? We could have got the same result with Arnold for a quarter of the price; if that.

Very underwhelming campaign.
 
Disappointed, the first goal should have at least been looked at for offside, the second came from a deflected shot, you can't blame our backs on a deflection.

We more than held our own against France, Denmark and Peru, and we can improve if a couple of players like Arzani can come through, we need a couple of good strikers.
There are some good players like Borrello, Ugarkovic, Mustafa, Amini, Gersbach, Hrustic and Goodwin, i hope Arnold has a good look at them and gives them a chance.
 
Disappointing sure, but the outrage is ridiculous. We performed better than we could have realistically expected against some very good nations on the biggest stage. We also had to find a new coach at the last minute.

Calls for Cahill are like calling for Richo to put his boots back on.
 
Baloo said:
Calls for Cahill are like calling for Richo to put his boots back on.

You don't think he should have been given 15 or 20 minutes in the first two games.

I agree that he has had his time in the sun, but i'm sure he had something to over as a sub, and i'm near positive he would have got a head on some of those crosses against Denmark.
 
tigerman said:
You don't think he should have been given 15 or 20 minutes in the first two games.

I agree that he has had his time in the sun, but i'm sure he had something to over as a sub, and i'm near positive he would have got a head on some of those crosses against Denmark.

Against France when we went down yeah. Against Denmark our goal was to not lose the match moreso than trying to win so no.

Last night I would have put Arzani on before Cahill. He has No match fitness. At 38 that means your reflexes are no where near as sharp.

But the outrage over not playing Timmy more is about the romance of Timmy heading our winner rather than any rational thinking.
 
Baloo said:
Against France when we went down yeah. Against Denmark our goal was to not lose the match moreso than trying to win so no.

Last night I would have put Arzani on before Cahill. He has No match fitness. At 38 that means your reflexes are no where near as sharp.

But the outrage over not playing Timmy more is about the romance of Timmy heading our winner rather than any rational thinking.

Yes, agree the outrage is over the top and that Arzani should have come on earlier. Not surprised that Burt didn't use Maclaren after initially missing out on the final squad, i think he should have used him though.