titan_uranus

I'd have thought Redden would fit nicely into our midfield. I wouldn't be moving heaven and earth, but I doubt that's what it would take given he's a FA next year.

Yet look at how we played in the Richmond, Bulldogs and Geelong wins, and you'll see the opposite of what you're saying here. The issue isn't whether the players are capable of playing tough, contested, physical football. They've shown they are. They problem is consistency. Whether that's between the ears or a physical thing, who knows, but we don't have the right on-field attitude weekly, which is a problem Roos needs to address.

No Tyson is disappointing. Lumumba holding his spot likewise. Bail holding his spot over M Jones is surprising. If Carlton aren't tanking (they may be, I don't know), I can easily see us losing this game. We are a better side, a much better side, but that doesn't seem to matter for us.

As a 49ers fan, the prospect of Hayne making the roster and getting some kick/punt returns is one of the few things exciting me about this season. Macca, I thought Tebow looked surprisingly good from those highlights!

I don't agree that our worst is worse. I don't think it's better though, and that's not good enough. Our best is better, which is the improvement I'm excited by. Bringing up the level of our worst but not touching the best was what Roos looked at from 2013 to 2014. This year, we've now added in a higher ceiling. It's not going as fast as I'd like, and obviously not nearly as fast as you'd like. But I expect in 2016 that we close the gap between our best and worst and start playing much more consistent football. If we do that, given the level of football we've shown to be capable of playing this year, we'll be a much, much stronger side.

While I agree I'd have liked us to have been closer in some of the losses, you've cherry picked numbers a bit here. You haven't mentioned the GWS game where we led by 33 points or the Port game where we led by 24. You haven't mentioned the North game where we fought back strongly with some of the best football we've played since maybe 2006. You haven't mentioned that, despite still having a couple of extraordinarily rubbish 'hoodoos' hanging over our heads, we've knocked off some big ones too. While you could cut the season up the way you have, you could equally look at it and say that there have only been a handful of the losses where at no point did we play AFL-quality football (Fremantle, Sydney, Hawthorn, the second St Kilda game). Even the Dogs game for a quarter we flipped it on its head and managed to dominate (that's not some sort of excuse for a 98 point loss, it's more an observation that that was another game where, at some point, we had the game on our terms and played better football than our opponent). So IMO that's 15 of the 19 games where we've dominated our opponent at some point during the game, if not for all of it then for portions. Next year, it's about making those portions into wholes. We've shown we can do it this year. We can't yet do it for four quarters, or weekly, but we can at least do it. Well then that's what I'm implying - there is a lot he is doing right, but there are things he clearly is underperforming in. It's possible to think Roos is doing a good job and that there are areas he can improve on, you know.

IMO, the obvious outs are Jamar, McKenzie, Terlich (despite being contracted, there is no point whatsoever to retaining him if he hasn't been close to selection all year), Bail and Hunt. M Jones, Fitzpatrick, Michie, Riley and Toumpas are questionable, but we won't cut everyone loose without having FA/trade players to bring in. FWIW, I'd keep Michie and Toumpas over the other three. Pedersen will stay, I can't imagine any situation where he doesn't get at least one more year. Grimes IMO stays, I've liked his renewed efforts to improve this year. If I had to keep one of Howe or Garland, I'd keep Howe - Howe's ceiling is higher. But if neither are here next year I'll understand.

He's our most consistent midfielder (though isn't consistent enough for someone of his ability, IMO). He's being asked to be the leader of a club with no other leaders. His support crew consists of Howe, Garland, Lumumba, Dunn, Dawes, Grimes, Jamar, Garlett, Cross, Vince - in other words, his support crew sucks. He has an enormous burden on his shoulders, and he's struggling with it. The focus should be on how to provide him with the required level of support, not whether to take the captaincy off him. He's captain material, but to captain any club requires a team effort and he can't do it alone.

Garland, Howe, Lumumba, Dunn, Garlett, Grimes, Dawes, N Jones, Vince, Cross, Jamar. It's a crap leadership group. Some say 'well the Dogs are younger'. True, the 2015 Dogs are a very young side. But they got to this point on the back of great development coaching from McCartney, and proper leadership (from Murphy, Boyd and Morris, and prior to that Gia, Griffen and Cooney (and, before that, Cross)). Proper, A-grade leaders. Beveridge has made some important changes but otherwise is reaping the hard work of the past 5 years. We have had a bunch of hopeless on-field leaders, the best of whom have reached some stellar heights but don't get there weekly (Vince and N Jones). The rest of whom either have no leadership bone in them (Howe, Dunn, Garlett) or have had bad years on the field (Jamar, Grimes, Dawes). There's no doubt IMO that Roos is struggling - he's not getting the players up weekly, he's not ironing out the inconsistencies, he's not eking improvement out of the NQRs (Bail, M Jones, McKenzie, Terlich - all at the same level or worse than under Neeld), he hasn't worked out how to get the players to balance offence with defence. But he's also struggling to deal with a list that has no leadership, most importantly no on-field leadership, and hasn't had so since 2006 (or earlier). He didn't come to a club where the hard work had been done, like Beveridge. He came to the club with the hard work having been completely messed up (twice) and having to start again.

Appalling performance, truly woeful. The worst bit really is the third quarter showed what could have happened if we tried harder the rest of the game. We were clearly capable of running, transitioning and scoring, and we were able to stop them doing that too in the third. The fact they scored 24 goals in three quarters is an embarrassment. Doesn't matter who you are or who the opponent is. That's 186-esque. Not a lot of use in singling out players but Lumumba was insipid, must be dropped this week. It's all well and good to defend him by noting he tries to create movement but he's damaging the side while trying it. We'd be better off without his destructiveness.

That is the worst I have seen Melbourne play live. I honestly cannot believe we just played a half that bad, in 2015, with Roos as coach, with 6 wins already, having had a good month.

If you're boiling it down to one stat only, shouldn't it be W-D-L?

What is all this talk about a 'low ebb'? The week before they played us they ran Fremantle to within 13 points. The week before that they played a rancid half against St Kilda, sure, but the week before that they'd beaten Sydney in Sydney. The week after they played us they annihilated GWS who were coming off a three-week winning streak which included wins over Hawthorn and Adelaide. I was at that game the week after - they were not in any sort of 'ebb' that day. Fair dinkum - we played a great game the last time we played them and we beat them all ends up. Let's at least acknowledge that. Doesn't mean a huge amount for today, but it still happened and shouldn't be downplayed.

Are these stats online?

Whose list is worse? Carlton or Essendon? It's a fun game to play.

Well, Tyson. The main issue with Bail replacing Tyson is that we lose a clearance player and don't get one back in. Tyson's work in the clearances last week against North was important for us, but then again we were operating with Vince and N Jones at reduced outputs, so if those two fire up hopefully it'll even out.

Jamar, McKenzie, Fitzy, Riley, Michie, Bail and Hunt would all have to be pretty worried, surely. Terlich should be delisted and paid out as well. Jamar, McKenzie, Riley, Hunt and Terlich are all easy decisions IMO. I have a gut feeling that one of Michie and Bail will stay as some sort of depth/insurance kind of thing (Bail's not great but occasionally has played a useful role, may do so again tomorrow in fact). Fitzy could too, given Jamar's going so we'll already be losing one tall, but I doubt that.

For a bit more optimism (this assumes Richmond beats GC tomorrow and keeps Geelong in 9th): The Dogs haven't beaten a top 8 side since Round 5; In fact, they haven't even played a top 8 side since Round 7; Since they last played us (in Round 8), they have played 9 of the bottom 10 sides, with the 10th and final side being us, who they play this weekend. Their recent form is good, but should be considered in context (I think we'll lose tomorrow, for the record).

In fact, I think this is the problem too. Neither are adding strings to their bow. Riley is starting to get more of the ball at VFL level but his disposal remains poor and that's been the main reason why he's struggling at AFL level - he's a liability with the ball in hand. Meanwhile for Newton he's laying more tackles but he still doesn't appear to be getting enough of it through the middle, which again is why he's struggling at AFL level - doesn't impact games enough.

Just in case you'd forgotten, when we beat the Dogs in Round 8 both Bail and M Jones played. So, too, did Riley, Spencer, Fitzpatrick, Newton and Toumpas, all of whom have since been dropped to make way for better-performing players.

If GWS loses to Port today, they are going to find it mighty hard to make the finals I think. With our Round 23 game being on the Sunday, they'll know by the time we play them whether they have a finals spot on the line or not. Most likely, I think, is that they'll be out of the running, which, although could help us get an extra win and cap off the year nicely, could also make the game a boring snore-fest at Etihad (compared to GWS at full pace trying desperately to make finals).

Disappointing for both Fitzy and Toumpas, both appeared (from the comments/stats at least) to have started the game well and with both having uncertain futures, really disappointing for them to not be able to finish the game. Hopefully whatever injuries they've got aren't too severe.

Tyson out sucks. Salem not being fit to play sucks. Bail as the inclusion isn't the end of the world though, he played well against the Dogs earlier this year and there are plenty of runners he can be given a job against. Our total record is 16 wins, 34 losses. We have, however, lost the last 21 games there, which means prior to this we were 16 wins, 13 losses. In fact, at one stage we were 14 wins and 6 losses (this was reached after beating Richmond by 10 goals there in 2005).

I'm not trying to make excuses, but we copped Essendon in the one week they were going to lift - the one after losing to St Kilda by 100. I'm still furious that we lost to them though.

Fair enough.