Adam The God

No, the Dogs still needed good ball movement. In order to adequately switch as they did for most of the day, that's good ball movement.

I think Harmes needs to lift. There's no doubt about that in my mind, but he's also being played out of position. He could play half back much better than he is, and really rebound hard off half back, but I think he'd be more valuable up forward.

Turns out Fritsch made the decision for us this week... I could be totally wrong, but I get the sense that right now, Fritsch is happy just kicking his goals. He doesn't want to get his hands dirty with pressure acts. Maybe this is a confidence thing and his focus right now is trying to increase his accuracy. Who knows, and of course I'm only speculating. Plapp is the forward coach. I think the opposition let him lead to the pockets a bit last week, because it's harder to kick them from there. I think we need to be smarter in our forward set ups. And on another point I've made a bit on here is about Goodwin's philosophy of setting the system and the player's roles within it and then in-game deviating very little from that. Here is a quote from Richo on Goody's philosophy as per The Talking Points release today. "We're going to get what we deserve [if you don't bring the required work rate]". This to me demonstrates we will continue to show little movement in the box and the players must take responsibility (and this is obviously wider than Fritsch and Melksham) for their game's and their work rate. It's player empowering. Are they up to it?

Yeah, he clearly hates Langdon. Just hates him.

If we win or lose it will not be because Fritsch has been omitted for failing to remember he's a professional athlete allowed to travel to another state because he is there to play elite sport.

I'm always late, but I work for myself. Fritsch is living amongst his team mates and manages to be late. I know no further details, but given the club dropped him, I'm betting there were no extenuating circumstances. It's [censored] unacceptable. You are half way to bloody training, given you're living with team mates. And it's about accountability, so yes, work place culture does fall apart with no accountability.

Wow. This is a genuinely a mind-boggling post. Do we know why he was late? If not, how the hell would you know? Culture doesn't come through turning up to your job on time? Are you kidding me? Take some responsibility. He has. He copped it on the chin and came out today and played well in the practice match.

It depends on three things for me: 1) do our medical staff think his body's stuffed or do they believe his body will hold up? 2) the cost in money terms and years of contract. 3) whether he'd even come to Melbourne. I have a feeling we'd be a better proposition than Sydney...

I initially scratched my head at this a bit from both a team selection POV and a balance/cohesion POV, given there are so many new names in this week. Now that I've had a little bit of a chance to think on it, I don't mind them, as long as the team balance and cohesion isn't thrown out too much. I don't think it will be. * Clearly Max replaces Preuss. * Jones will likely play some midfield minutes this week in place of Sparrow, but I'd prefer Jones just stay forward as a pressure forward. Maybe the Sparrow role is for Vandenberg? * It seems like Wagner for Harmes. I've been pretty vocal on Harmes playing forward, so this is the one that pisses me off a bit, but we'll likely play Jones, Vandenberg and Viney or Petracca forward, so it might work. * It looks like Rivers for Lockhart and I reckon listening to Richo on The Talking Points, we want more run off our half back line. Rivers provides this. I'd have Lockhart in the team, but let's see how we go there. Lockhart certainly is a Nev clone in that he doesn't attack enough IMO, but I think that will come in time. * Continuing the theme of run, we want to play Tomlinson on the wing and stretch their two way running here, so Oscar comes in and Tomlinson moves to the wing. This will probably push Vandenberg forward to play Jones' role, while Jones takes Sparrow's, or Vandenberg will take Sparrow's. Either way, you'll see Tomlinson and Langdon on the wings. We need to turn St Kilda slingshot weapon into a vulnerability and if our defensive mechanism is on, we'll be able to do that and ping back the other way. Tomlinson and Langdon will be needed for this. In effect, it becomes Oscar for Fritsch. I wonder if Tomlinson will play a defensive role on a Brad Hill, to free up Langdon to sweep and attack? * Brown clearly comes in for Tom. Tom's hampered by his foot and can barely move. He'd be a liability on the counter, so playing Brown and keeping the two talls is probably a good move. Let's see if Brown can bring the pressure acts and get involved in scoring chains. I do have questions over the pressure side of his game and ideally we'd be playing Jackson in this role, but let's see. Overall, lots of moves, and I think their success will depend on whether we can get strong rebound off half back from the likes of Wagner, Rivers, Langdon, Tomlinson, Salem and Hibberd, and add more offence to our game, which we severely lacked last week IMV. I like the idea that Vandenberg and Jones will play forward. I hope Viney does too, but I fear he won't. A forwardline of Weideman, Brown, Melksham, Kozzie, Jones, Vandenberg, Viney and a resting Petracca is potent enough and defensively (with the exception of the two talls and Melksham) far more defensive, which I think we need with St Kilda's sling shot game. Let's see how we go!

Even more so when you have an elite fitness base like our guys allegedly have, working under an elite fitness boss.

Interesting. I'd be inclined to say that we could be transformative in the way teams go about team selection/balance if we played a bunch of mids as permanent forwards, in Harmes, Jones and Viney, if it works. The latter two are good kicks for goal and Harmes is a good kick for goal on the run, so I'm getting impatient to see something like this tried. It comes down to who we leave out then. Is it Fritsch? Is it Melksham? Or both? It's clear the FD haven't settled on the best mix for the forwardline, so I hope the above is the path they take.

Good post, Bob. What's also clear is that our CP game is not anything like what it was in 2018. We're way down on CPs. Is this a product or 6/6/6? Or is it a product of teams working out how to make us dispose of the ball under more duress than in 2018? Or is it similar to the balance we were trying to find in 2017-2018, but this time the balance between defensive system and winning CPs? We're certainly not generating the same amount of CPs, but we've won 1,450 CPs (one less than Carlton who are also a game behind many others) and we're averaging 121 CPs per game. So let's say we add 121 to 1,450, we get 1,571, this would put us in the top 4 for CPs (or top 5 depending on how Carlton continue tracking). I really believe work rate is the key to getting the game played on our terms. We just don't bring it consistently enough.

Well, we're blessed to have you, Doctor. Thank goodness for you.

Fascinating stats there, mate. Appreciate them. Great post. I'm not even going to bother with 2019, but I'm astounded to read that 2017 was a season where we generally smashed it in UPs. That's very surprising. I had always felt over Goodwin's tenure that we slowly built our ability to create UPs, but that CPs were mostly our go. 'We're building from the contest out' mantra. It shows the stats and the eye can be misleading. What the 2018 stats could also tell us is that we increased our uncontested marks and these probably resulted in higher potency / scoring chains. I'm not really sure what to make of that, other than we were certainly a far more potent offensive team in 2018, so I suppose the stats bear that out. In 2018, it seemed to the eye that we played a more aggressive / all or nothing defensive game style than it 2017. In 2018 we had that chaotic and aggressive 18 man press, and given the much higher marks differential and our really great CP game that year, it seems like we balanced the UPs pretty well (although slightly down on the previous year's UPs, we dramatically increased our CPs by 629). If we measure the 2020 stats against those from 2017 and 2018 (again I'm discounting 2019 because I think it confuses things), we essentially see that we haven't really got going in the same way offensively, but when we win, our UPs are up and our Marks differential are up, but when we lose we get smashed on both. That was at least a trend or characteristic of 2018. But I think in 2018 that was about our all or nothing system. In 2020, it's about work rate and willingness to implement the system. What I don't think the stats bear out that I'm coming to believe is that we are actually a stronger defensive side in 2020 than we were in 2018 and if we can get our scoring side to click a bit more in 2020 (ie higher UPs and Marks differential), and develop a consistency to our defence and offence in this way, then come (hopefully) finals time, we'll be far better placed to launch an attack on the flag than we were in 2018. I also think our defence this year is focused on defending without the ball (a bit like Geelong), as opposed to say Hawthorn or Collingwood who have traditionally defended by playing keepings off and spreading the opposition zone with the ball. In 2018, despite our scoring power, our aggressive press was always susceptible to counter attacks and leaking goals out the back. Our defensive systems are much better this year. We just haven't found the balance between this newer defensive system with its increased accountability, and our offensive game. It's also fair to suggest that the shorter games have hampered our ability to really put the foot on certain opponents throat's (increasing the UPs and Marks differential), but I think it's only a matter of time before we find this balance and when it does click, we will beat a lot of teams. I'm hoping it's this season.

Hore will probably get delisted IMV. Good enough interceptor, turnover merchant by foot. Reckon Lockhart is a neat, handy small defender that will get better with more game time.

In my mind, if you're attending a stoppage, you're playing in the midfield. Doesn't matter where you are on the ground. Therefore, stoppage work is applicable to being in the domain of the midfield coach no matter where on the ground the contest is taking place. Each to their own though, mate.

Mathews is the midfield coach to my understanding. So instead of having stoppages and contest coach, it's just a midfield coach, which to me, makes sense.

I've mentioned it a couple of times. He was introduced as forward coach by Ben Gibson in this video at 4.40: https://www.melbournefc.com.au/video/785404/rd-9-before-the-bounce?videoId=785404&modal=true&type=video&publishFrom=1596091546001

If Mahoney goes, I wonder whether Richardson would be a good candidate to take the Head of FD.

How about this beauty from you? "When we win, we win despite Goodwin, not because of him." You're not holding anyone to account mate. You're not inside the club. They're not listening to you. You're on a football forum. It's not match committee.

There's also difficulty comparing the difference between how the game changes in finals football, versus the home & away season too. Do you need to win more UPs during the regular season, and win more CPs to win finals? I wonder if this points to how, say, a Geelong seems to capitulate in finals, but always makes them? I think it was @titan_uranus that mentioned St Kilda's game style the other day and questioned whether it would hold up in the pressure cooker of finals. It may well be their focus on UPs that could be the defining factor....? Whilst I do think we get done on the outside in our loses, this has certainly been a trend longer than just this season and my feeling is (without any data to back it up) that we've closed the gap a bit on the UP differential this year, even in our losses. When we play well, we can shut down the exits to the quicker teams and prevent them from spreading from the contest and getting it on the outside. So I don't think it necessarily translates that teams just need to get it to the outside and they'll beat us. I think that has certainly been the problem for us in the past, but now with the defensive system we're beginning to see it gives our backs a bit more cover and we leak less goals. Bulldogs got it on the outside a lot, but we still managed to stay in the game for the vast majority of it. @Canary M Burns's post was great and I wonder how the club measures its strengths and weaknesses with regards to the stats on hand. Would love to see whether our UP differential this season is better than the last 3 or 4. That might point to a sign of improvement and strength in the system that we're trying to play. Alternative measures other than tackles and pressure acts would be fascinating to analyse. Is it simply a case of the midfielders not two-way-running to stop teams spreading? Or is it that the sliders and additional mids aren't blocking off the exits from the contest? Or is it both? Or some other factor? I'm sure there is something in the forward imbalance too. Not only did it take us a long time to work out a reasonable mix, until finally settling on something through that Hawthorn/Gold Coast/Brisbane stretch, I'm still not sure they know what the correct balance should be. I'm inclined to agree with the idea that we should be playing a similar style in our forward 50 that fits with the combative style of the midfield and half back line. It'll be interesting to see how they set up the forwardline this week with Jones fit to take his place. UPs will be the go for St Kilda if they're on song, so it'll come down to can our half forwards and mids bring enough pressure off half back and at the contest, to prevent them generating scores, and can we use the ball well from stoppage and convert Max's work?

Only problem with this, and no, I'm not a Libertarian, is you only need a Peter Dutton in charge of this stuff and the laws become very easy to warp.

I appreciate it mate, but the idea was jumped on by the misinformation crowd and my business will be fine.

Yep, I think that may well be the problem. Where's the balance? I think it lies with the forwardline we could play this weekend, if we wanted to know that Jones has been passed as fit - Jones, Harmes and Viney in the forwardline.

Agreed.