I agree mostly .
And despite others, I too thought Salo was good. Especially considering his considerable absence.
Anb and Kozzie too although Kozzys disposal at times was substantially errant.
But the fact we are mentioning only 3 players is very alarming
What has happened to our midfield? Tracca look like he was wearing cement shoes trying to chase Reid. But his midfield companions were all down in form and have been for a while.
Viney is a shadow of his yesteryear form. He must be struggling with some sort of injury.
And Sparrow never really seems to step up. Plays the odd good game but rarely back to back.
And our fwd line is to be quite frank a complete shambles. Despite Fritta and Kozzie who both give at most around a combination of about four goals, we can't kick winning scores.
We have kicked 100 points plus once this year. Petty really shouldn't be playing after only giving only one good account
But it comes down to a case of the cupboard being empty. I read the Casey reports and we don't really seem to have much depth. Besides the fact that we are already playing a fair amount of young players already.
And I'm not just referring to our fwd line depth. We don't seem to be overflowing with mids and wingmen.
This is the biggest concern for me. A lack of a bog bodied tall fwd or two like Hogan or Tmac of old who good boot four a game each.
And someone to come in when Langers can't or Sparrow gets dropped. There is no real pressure on players in terms of being relegated to the twos like a few years ago.
It used to be Sparrow was competing for his spot and players like Milkshake were also competing for a game.
All that aside you are correct in this being an incredibly close season.
This round was proof of that with all it's upsets. Being slightly off will see top teams defeated by lesser ones. So the top four is still wide open.
We have survived without a potent fwd line by having a power house of a backline. But it's just not enough when our midfield falls in a heap. Our slow starts are baffling and the coaches need to do something significant about our game prep.
All in all, unless we can fix our fwd line we are going to struggle. I'm sure our midfield will sort itself out soon . But it better hurry. Salo or Rivers in the middle will help. Or perhaps even giving Bowey a few rotations.
But I don't know about or scoring problem. Jvr has gone backwards in form to last year. Chandler has disappeared again like last year and should be dropped. But who do we replace him with?
So for me I think there are some pretty big issues that will exclude us from the top four despite the very even comp.
We are using players like Bbb who is really struggling because there is nobody else. And Bbbs been struggling for two years now. I know someone will say there have been no key forwards to recruit and maybe this is true so I guess it's nobody's fault.
As for our midfielders they really need a rocket up them. To see a young Reid show up our touted great guns was embarrassing.
We look woefully lacking in confidence and skills. There were too many unforced errors and poor decisions made often. In short some horrible panic footy. As much as I love Fritta it was not a good look to see him laughing at times. It wasn't a good look .
The players look like they have lost some passion and if they didn't fight back in the Carlton game I would be extremely worried.
But yesterday we got smashed by the third bottom team when a third top spot was on the line. We didn't want it enough. Pure and simple. No excuses.
I know we will be playing finals but I'm sure we won't be top four. Yesterday was a must win. And we got thumped.
We have done some great recruiting but we have also lost some good players. And we have recruited some bad ones too. Also losing Gus and Smith has been a big blow.
I really think the window of flags has started to swing shut now and I can't see how we are going to stop it.