Pre-season Hiccups For Roar

Berisha trains with Roar

I hate pre-season!

It's bad enough having to wait through it for the season proper to start, but what really pisses me off is the questions it poses.  Namely what to make of pre-season results.

Looking back over history it's pretty common to see teams have a shocker of a pre-season and then hit the ground running when the real stuff starts.  Conversely you see plenty of teams tear it up during pre-season and then fall in a massive hole when the serious stuff starts.

This brings me to Brisbane Roar.  During the last week we have now had two very disappointing losses in pre-season.  But I've got no idea if we should be hitting the panic button or not.  Last weekend we lost to Melbourne Victory 0:2 in Launceston and last night we copped a 0:3 belting from Adelaide United in Toowoomba.

Obviously on the surface it's a concerning situation having conceded five goals in two games and failed to struggle the scorer ourselves.  But whether we should panic or not I just don't know because well, is pre-season form really relevant?  As I've said, it's never really a very good barometer.

By all accounts we played both games on shocking pitches and clearly this did not help our style of football.  Interestingly when we played on an absolute carpet over in New Zealand we totally shredded the Phoenix 5:1. We all know that the Roar now play a certain way, and regardless of the situation and conditions we do not change.  That could be a bit of a weakness for us really because if conditions are bad we could struggle as we have in the last couple of games.  Also it does make us a bit predictable and one dimensional in a tactical sense.  Teams clearly know how we are going to play so it's going to be interesting to see how we deal with that.

To be honest we haven't really had the smoothest pre-season.  There's been injuries to Ivan Franjic, Rocky Visconte, Henrique and Matt Mundy.  On top of  that we've had the likes of Matt McKay, Mitch Nichols, Andrew Redmayne, Matt Jurman, Kofi Danning and Visconte away from the team on international duties.  Things have been further shaken up by the departures of McKay and Barbarouses and the late arrival of Issey Nakajima-Farran and Besart Berisha.  In both the recent losses we really haven't had our strongest squad together so it's a bit hard to gauge exactly where we are at.  Both Issey and Berisha are only just starting to play with the squad so who knows how much our forward line could improve.  It's clear though that things need to be tightened up at the back.

I think we might start the season a bit slowly.  We actually have a pretty tough start with the Mariners, Sydney, Gold Coast, Adelaide and Victory in our opening five games.  But hopefully we will gather momentum as it goes on.  After last season it's going to be tough to replicate what we did.  Let's face it the only way we can do better is to win the double undefeated and that's a pretty tall order.  The league is stronger this season in my opinion.  Adelaide in particular have a really strong side, while Victory and Sydney have recruited well.  The Mariners will be as strong a force as last season and Gold Coast will be a tough team to beat.  Perth have plenty of quality on paper as well but the question mark is always there as to whether they can actually get the most out of their squad.  I reckon if we finish top four its going to be a pretty solid follow up from last season given how much teams tend to struggle the season after winning titles.

It's going to be interesting to see what Ange goes with as our starting eleven.  Personally I expect Theoklitos in goal, Stefanutto, Adnan, Smith and Franjic across the back.  The midfield trio should be Paartalu, Broich and Nichols, with Issey, Berisha and Henrique up front.  Probably the player with the most focus on them is Berisha who really is our only out and out striker.  If he doesn't find his feet, and the back of the net quickly, we could be in a bit of trouble.

Anyway it's a couple more weeks to the start of the season and here's hoping that the last couple of results have just been blips on the radar rather than true indications of the season to come.