Puzzle #1: What on earth was Ian Ferguson thinking pre-game?
Three central mids in a flat midfield four. A lack of pace down either wing. A totally isolated front two. A recall for Adam Hughes straight into the starting XI. All these questionable decisions and more were on show for fans as Glory lined up against Central Coast. Liam Miller, after several games running the show from the middle, was pushed out wide to the left so that the defensive-minded pairing of Jacob Burns and Adam Hughes could control the middle of the park, with Travis Dodd in charge of the right wing. 

Now I have previously said that Hughes could do a good job for us in midfield, but the aforementioned setup was not what I had in mind. For Central Coast, it was an absolute godsend. Miller was isolated and struggled to have an impact, needing to constantly guard a wing in a role that does not seem to suit him at all. Hughes was clearly not up to starting the game, given that he gave the ball away with high regularity and was a mile off target with his ‘shot’ that could have drawn Glory level with five minutes to go. His inclusion was all the more bizarre considering it meant playing Miller out of position and shoving Andrezinho, a pacy player who naturally gravitates to the wings, on to the bench. 

On the subject of pace, the midfield four lacked it in spades. Miller and Hughes seemed to have the stamina to run up and down, but nobody had the searing pace of an Andrezinho or Amphlett that is needed to cut past fullbacks and put in a dangerous cross. What’s more Travis Dodd continues to look short of match fitness, and even a headed goal couldn’t mask another sub-par performance. One wonders what the long off-season fitness regime at the Glory has been about given that many players – Dodd, Hughes, Burns, Andrezinho, Howarth, Neville – seem to be struggling to run out a full 90 minutes (60 in some cases) so far this season.

Dropping Tommy Amphlett, one of the players who does have pace to burn, back to the youth team seems an inexcusable decision given the struggles we faced on Saturday. Hopefully the young lad’s goal for the junior side will propel him back into first-team selection for the coming week. The inevitable call for Mile Sterjovski to return will come, but if that’s the case it better be at the expense of Dodd heading to the youth side, because Amphlett provides the movement the senior side sorely lacks at this point in time.

Finally, for all those people out there who might protest criticism of a side sitting high in the table with just one loss, it’s not the result which concerns me but the effort and performance in the last one and a half games of football. To quote Craig Foster – and I don’t do this often – “Performances don’t follow results; they precede them”.

Puzzle #2: What to do with A-League referees?
Anyone who watched the Mariners-Glory game had to be wondering what referee Ryan Shepheard was doing during various points of the game. Whether it was not sending Matt Simon off, giving Jacob Burns a yellow card for practically nothing, not giving Jacob Burns a yellow card for just about murdering a guy, or just losing control of the game in general, this was yet another game this season in which a referee took centre stage for a prolonged period of time. When the normally friendly/sympathetic/on-the-FFA-payroll Fox commentators start criticising refereeing, you know it has to be pretty poor. 

Now I’m not going to pin this all on Mr Shepheard – after all, the FFA tells me he is an internationally recognised FIFA Futsal Referee and will be travelling to exotic Turkmenistan in November to officiate the AFC Futsal Championship Qualifiers. That’s a hell of a job. No, I simply wish to open my palms in a questioning manner and once again ask, “Why can’t we pay referees properly, and thus attract better ones?”. New FFA Director of Referees Mark Shield better have some good ideas, because we’ve seen some cringeworthy decisions so far this year from linesmen and referees alike, and we’re seeing them with alarming regularity.

It seems like referees will face some form of sanction for poor performances this year – and this is a step in the right direction towards some accountability – but I do wonder if the old adage “pay peanuts, get monkeys” still applies.

Puzzle #3: How can anyone complain about sub-10K crowds when that is the entertainment for the evening?
Central Coast haven’t exactly set the world on fire with their play this year – in fact, a lot of it has been pretty dire. Perth Glory haven’t done much better. Put the two in the park, throw in an amateurish referee, and is it any surprise that people stay away? Yet the way some people demand attendance from locals, you would think that every A-League game is an El Clasico. The fact is, whilst hardcore football fans will go in and see their club week-in, week-out, the wider community does demand some form of entertainment (cue shock, horror, furious denial, etc).

Put simply, a match like yesterday will not win any new fans, except perhaps in the Matt Simon Angry Man Impersonations Club. Poor skills, loads of turnovers, and a referee who had lost control of the game does not meet the expectation of the paying public, no matter how educated they are about the game of football. Take for example a basketball game – you could take someone with no idea about the sport to a Melbourne Tigers game, and if both teams shot at 15% they’ll be unimpressed no matter what you say. The same logic applies to a game of football. 

Really, the ‘problem’ of Brisbane Roar playing well in front of ‘just’ 11,000 people is a good kind of problem to have; great entertainment brings the prospect of increasing attendance. Turgid football on the other hand does not. It was especially disappointing to see the Mariners, the home team who should have all the advantage, start sluggishly and resort to physical and cynical tactics. You’d expect this if they were the team travelling to nib, but you must wonder why they couldn’t set out a little more expansively at home in front of their own fans (the same, by the way, applies to Glory and the way they shut up shop after going 1-0 ahead at home).

Whilst coaches are always going to take three points ahead of entertaining a crowd, the fact is teams like Brisbane Roar are lifting the bar in Australia to heights that the old Glory sides of Bernd Stange’s era used to achieve – that all-too-rare phenomenon of winning whilst looking good. If clubs are scratching their chins and wondering about their attendance puzzles, it wouldn’t hurt to think about the football quality on show compared to the prices being charged.