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Official South Melbourne Hellas thread 🔵⚪

southmelb said:
If i had to break it down it would be 45% South east (oakleigh and surrounds) 45% North (Northcote and surrounds) 10% West.

Now here is the problem, 90% of our significant fan base areas are stacked with local Greek clubs.

The nsl has no relevance, in a national comp you want to be centrally located, everybody would flock to the city to watch South, no different to going in there to watch afl.

Whilst it does nothing for the clubs bottom line, the geographical distribution does at least give the team good support for certain away games.

A relocation to Oakleigh 20 years ago would have been met with hostility as they hate South so i dont think it would have ever been on the cards. If you look at where South home games have been played when Lakeside is unavailable we tend to be more liked in the North and West. Our matches in Northcote during 2010-11 seasons were well attended, would have been even better if they had lights at the time.
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lol I know mate I was just being silly....
 
Disappointing result despite the frantic finish... 1st half was frantic but we just cant convert and playing Bonada 3 kms in front of Mells WTF? They Victory lads where fast but shit not THAT fast..... After the classic Esteban (Keeper goes down with cramp lets have a huddle) Andy tucked in more, Max was wider (and Lampard) and Mells stepped into the hole to feed Bonada quicker .... should have put it to bed in the first half (less said about the apaling ref the better) Second half was poor, subs where strange, Andy was cooked and we let them dictate the game ... they where kids FFS and we gave them the ball and stepped back??? I love the guy but I really dont get what he is trying to do somedays?
 
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Probably our most disappointing performance since the Avondale grand final. No fluent attacking moves, the midfield was well beaten and was too slow with Inglese and Archibald in there being turned way too easily by more mobile Victory kids and the defence was uncharacteristically poor which is our greatest strength.

Credit to Victory they played like it was their cup final but that’s 2 disappointing performances from 3 games. Hopefully this isn’t a trend going forward
 
Esteban treats too many teams like they're Real Madrid. We started the game with 3 defensive midfielders ffs, why? Where was the manic aggressive press we showed against the Knights? We could have pinned these little brats back but instead we let them come at us and they grew in confidence the longer we kept them in the game.

Bonada has been great up front but we are going to burn him out forcing him to chase like a dog all game whilst his teammates are 2km behind him.

Eventually we will likely have to go 2 up top with him and Moller. Brennan is proving to be a massive concern, still has a good burst of pace but often leaves the ball behind, young sub Durso similarly has pace but seems to struggle with it at his feet.

Also what happened to Leech? Was decent in round 1 and has since vanished, injured?

We will win a lot of games again this year, a good chunk of the league cant handle our long throws and aerial ability, but i think we will fall back to the pack, unless we do something miraculous in the back end when the transfers reopen our championship window may be closed.
 
southmelb said:
Esteban treats too many teams like they're Real Madrid. We started the game with 3 defensive midfielders ffs, why? Where was the manic aggressive press we showed against the Knights? We could have pinned these little brats back but instead we let them come at us and they grew in confidence the longer we kept them in the game.

Bonada has been great up front but we are going to burn him out forcing him to chase like a dog all game whilst his teammates are 2km behind him.

Eventually we will likely have to go 2 up top with him and Moller. Brennan is proving to be a massive concern, still has a good burst of pace but often leaves the ball behind, young sub Durso similarly has pace but seems to struggle with it at his feet.

Also what happened to Leech? Was decent in round 1 and has since vanished, injured?

We will win a lot of games again this year, a good chunk of the league cant handle our long throws and aerial ability, but i think we will fall back to the pack, unless we do something miraculous in the back end when the transfers reopen our championship window may be closed.
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Right on the money that post.. teams are reading us as we seem more predictable than previous years, and im not seeing any adaptability currently which has always been my concern with Esteban.

We still have enough quality across the park but it will be a long season!

Leech is a mystery for me also.
 
Where does one start with Monday night.

We let them come at us and try and play on the counter attack. Rather than force our game on them, we were passive and in parts just barely holding on.

The Victory kids came to play and good on them. They knocked the ball around and looked to move the ball quickly stretching our defensive lines.

I don’t want to hear about we made a great comeback. We were 1-2 up with minutes left. Close the match down.

For me, it just shows how poor the standard in the NPL Victoria competition is. We are ugly to watch. It is at times effective, but I think Monday night highlighted our glaring weaknesses when up against ball playing teams.
 
We clearly have an issue when we come up against ball playing teams. What we faced on Monday night was a kiddies version of Avondale in terms of style of play and we got ripped. We are very fortunate only a handful of teams play this way.

Whats clear to me is that Esteban is genuinely petrified of teams that can play through the lines quickly on the deck, so we just play behind the ball. The other issue is these teams will knock it around and they try keep the ball in play, which limits our set piece opportunities. Only generating 3 corners in this match is simply not good enough.

Tricky week next week, St Albans on Monday and then the very short turnaround to Preston on the Friday. Assuming we will see some heavy rotation on Monday night but the 3 points are a must.
 
southmelb said:
Esteban treats too many teams like they're Real Madrid. We started the game with 3 defensive midfielders ffs, why? Where was the manic aggressive press we showed against the Knights? We could have pinned these little brats back but instead we let them come at us and they grew in confidence the longer we kept them in the game.
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- 100% this ... totally diff game plan, he must have been worried about their pace???? I can't figure it out?
southmelb said:
Bonada has been great up front but we are going to burn him out forcing him to chase like a dog all game whilst his teammates are 2km behind him. - he does look ultra fit this season and ultra motivated ...
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. I worry he will burn out but for now he is playing like 2 players...
southmelb said:
Eventually we will likely have to go 2 up top with him and Moller. Brennan is proving to be a massive concern, still has a good burst of pace but often leaves the ball behind, young sub Durso similarly has pace but seems to struggle with it at his feet.

Also what happened to Leech? Was decent in round 1 and has since vanished, injured? -
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was on the bench I think???
southmelb said:
We will win a lot of games again this year, a good chunk of the league cant handle our long throws and aerial ability, but i think we will fall back to the pack, unless we do something miraculous in the back end when the transfers reopen our championship window may be closed. -
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southmelb said:
southmelb said:
transfer window is far to late to affect the regular league... lets hope our depth sees us through..
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southmelb said:
southmelb said:
transfer window is far to late to affect the regular league... lets hope our depth sees us through..
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SMFC1959 said:
Where does one start with Monday night.

We let them come at us and try and play on the counter attack. Rather than force our game on them, we were passive and in parts just barely holding on.

The Victory kids came to play and good on them. They knocked the ball around and looked to move the ball quickly stretching our defensive lines.

I don’t want to hear about we made a great comeback. We were 1-2 up with minutes left. Close the match down.

For me, it just shows how poor the standard in the NPL Victoria competition is. We are ugly to watch. It is at times effective, but I think Monday night highlighted our glaring weaknesses when up against ball playing teams.
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TBF we havent, at least in recent memory, had to deal with such pace in front of our backline .... The "NPL way" of attacking us, is usually dealt with by pushing them out wide quite easily .. Lampard and Painter were, at least until midway through 1st half, always 5-10 meters behind their wingers, and couldnt push the player wide when they turned and ran at them... they both struggled afterwards to keep up... I agree, we SHOULD have (and could have) sewn this game up by half time, and iced it with 15 mins to go if nothing else.. Never thought I would have to worry about our defence....
 
southmelb said:
We clearly have an issue when we come up against ball playing teams. What we faced on Monday night was a kiddies version of Avondale in terms of style of play and we got ripped. We are very fortunate only a handful of teams play this way.

Whats clear to me is that Esteban is genuinely petrified of teams that can play through the lines quickly on the deck, so we just play behind the ball. The other issue is these teams will knock it around and they try keep the ball in play, which limits our set piece opportunities. Only generating 3 corners in this match is simply not good enough.

Tricky week next week, St Albans on Monday and then the very short turnaround to Preston on the Friday. Assuming we will see some heavy rotation on Monday night but the 3 points are a must.
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Kiddies version of Avondale was the perfect description....
 
Interesting opinion. Personally i thought the team was trying, to me it looked like we were unsettled with the technical ability and speed of ball movement of the opposition that we perhaps arent use to most weeks (Avondale, Oakleigh and Heidelberg aside)

I trully believe Estebans teams give 110%. We've all seen this movie though the past few years, we cant combat this style of play. When a team is running rings around you and can create the illusion that effort isnt being applied.
 
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