Footy is won and lost in the midfield - and ours is currently all at sea. To emphasize how enormous of an issue this has become, here is a summation of our midfield's contribution to the scoreboard  so far this season.

Trac - 7 goals
Viney - 3 goals
Brayshaw - 2 goals
Harmes - 1 goal
Oliver, Langdon, Gawn, Tomlinson, Vandenberg - 0 goals


From 8 games, this is a diabolical return. Least damaging midfield in the comp. How do we fix this? Who do we move on?
 

It's a huge issue. Trac is our only midfielder who kicks goals consistently.

Oliver and Brayshaw looked more likely in 2018 scoring 12 and 14 goals respectively, but have both regressed in scoring and impact on matches since.

Harmes used to score 10-15 goals a year, but with role changes he doesn't score anymore.

Langdon is the type of player who should hit the scoreboard.

Our midfield needs to hit the scoreboard more, but so do our half forwards. The half forwards types like Neal-Bullen, Melksham, Hannan, have gone from 30+ goal a year types to bugger all. Coupled with massive drop off of tall forwards ( Hogan and Tmac both around 50 goals) and it's disaster. It all starts in the midfield, and ours is broken.

1 hour ago, RedFox said:

How do we fix this? Who do we move on?
 

Coaches...

As you've shown we have midfielders who can hit the scoreboard.

The FD have to take responsibly for the regression in performance across the board.

Selection and positional moves are not helping but..

We are not developing players, they are all going backwards with the exception of Trac. and even his development was slower than it should have been.

Edited July 31, 20205 yr by rjay

21 minutes ago, Lord Travis said:

It's a huge issue. Trac is our only midfielder who kicks goals consistently.

Oliver and Brayshaw looked more likely in 2018 scoring 12 and 14 goals respectively, but have both regressed in scoring and impact on matches since.

Harmes used to score 10-15 goals a year, but with role changes he doesn't score anymore.

Langdon is the type of player who should hit the scoreboard.

Our midfield needs to hit the scoreboard more, but so do our half forwards. The half forwards types like Neal-Bullen, Melksham, Hannan, have gone from 30+ goal a year types to bugger all. Coupled with massive drop off of tall forwards ( Hogan and Tmac both around 50 goals) and it's disaster. It all starts in the midfield, and ours is broken.

It is unrecognizable from 2018. 

Goodwin playing favourites has to stop. Brayshaw needs to be dropped indefinitely. Rivers and Salem at the very least MUST be part of the midfield rotation, they can use the footy and would offer a point of difference to the inside mids. Harmes has to tag and nothing else, the experiment off half back is over. 

Ben Mathews please stand up? What have you done to this group? Heads must roll.

We move the ball so quickly it’s hard for midfielders to kick goals. Sometimes that’s great, sometimes it’s bad.
 

Midfielders kick goals when instead of all out attack you run and overlap, take the space the other team gives you and either kick on the run or hit up short kicks to mids pushing inside 50. 

When our mids get the ball they’re looking long.

Even our half forwards. Melksham is always keen for the laced out kick deep, often he’s good enough to make it work.

Hannan has been the chief culprit the last two weeks. He’s had marked across half forward and played on for the miracle kick under pressure. If he simply got back off the mark he’d have handball, short kick and long kick options. 

11 minutes ago, DeeSpencer said:

We move the ball so quickly it’s hard for midfielders to kick goals. Sometimes that’s great, sometimes it’s bad.
 

Midfielders kick goals when instead of all out attack you run and overlap, take the space the other team gives you and either kick on the run or hit up short kicks to mids pushing inside 50. 

When our mids get the ball they’re looking long.

Even our half forwards. Melksham is always keen for the laced out kick deep, often he’s good enough to make it work.

Hannan has been the chief culprit the last two weeks. He’s had marked across half forward and played on for the miracle kick under pressure. If he simply got back off the mark he’d have handball, short kick and long kick options. 

With respect, we were moving the ball as quickly if not quicker in 2018 and our midfielders were kicking goals every week.

2018:

ANB - 27 goals
Jones, Harmes - 15 goals
Brayshaw - 14 goals
Gawn - 13 goals
Oliver - 12 goals

*EDIT* not including Trac as he was a forward. ANB could be lumped in with the forwards too but he was also a link player through the middle.

Makes zero sense why this contribution from our most important players has regressed as significantly as it has.

Edited July 31, 20205 yr by RedFox

Are Melbourne the worst kicking side in the competition ?  Look at the way our midfielders deliver the ball inside the forward line. Kicking for goals is one endemic part of the problem.

I think they are all too busy setting up to try and trap the ball in than actually getting it through the sticks. 

We seem to have a team rule at the moment that nobody can take a shot from outside 40. That makes it pretty difficult for the midfielders to break the lines and have a shot on the run like most teams do.

We also do such a poor job of opening up our forward line that there is no room for the midfielders to drop into a hole and take a mark.

 

18 minutes ago, poita said:

We seem to have a team rule at the moment that nobody can take a shot from outside 40. That makes it pretty difficult for the midfielders to break the lines and have a shot on the run like most teams do.

We also do such a poor job of opening up our forward line that there is no room for the midfielders to drop into a hole and take a mark.

 

Not sure about the merit of that team rule comment. Have seen multiple players having pings from pretty far out, namely Trac, Hannan, Melksham to name a few. 

Agree regarding the opening up of the forward line comment - our forward structure is a mess. One obvious point I would make is that our lack of forward pressure is really killing us. Our mids are consistently put on the back foot when the opposition walk it out of the D50 like they've been allowed at stages this year (especially last night). When we were at our best in patches over the past 4 years, we've been able to lock the ball in our half of the ground with tackle pressure on the ball carrier exiting our 50. This gives the mids the best shot at scoring from inside 50 stoppages. I'm sure there are a multitude of factors, however it's kind of an E=MC x forward pressure situation. Without defensive pressure in our zone we are toast.