I was going to submit a completely different column this week, but that can wait. Why? Well, last weekend the current playing group at Perth Glory took a massive step towards rekindling the faith of thousands of fans Australia-wide, and that simply can't pass without comment.  The reactions of neutrals, fans, and even the players themselves during and after the game on social networks and online forums said it all:

Fan that_dood on forum Gloryboys.net
"What a performance, I am so proud of the boys"


Glory midfielder Steven McGarry (on twitter)
"What a fightback from the boys! When we were 2 nil down I knew we would get ourselves back in the game I just had a feeling. #letskickon!!!!"


Countless Glory fans on Facebook and Twitter after Shane Smeltz' equaliser
"FUUUUUUCKKKKKKKKKKKK YESSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSS"


The Football Sack (on twitter)
"Fergie Saved."

What we saw from this Glory team on Sunday is exactly what has been missing from prior Perth sides in the A-League; the self-belief, fighting spirit, and skill needed to fight back from a situation where all looked lost and snatch a point from the jaws of defeat. Losing 2-0 and a man down, everything was against Perth - the crowd, the referee, even sheer luck. Yet even before Andrezinho smacked the ball into the postage stamp at the top right corner of the goal, you could see in the players the desire to rail against the injustice of the situation and get something from the match. This is in stark contrast to previous beltings that Perth have been given over east, 5-0 or 6-0 results where after one or two goals heads have dropped and certain players have simply given up. Not on Sunday; no sir.

From the moment they were introduced onto the field, all three substitutes played like they were chasing a win. Despite having a ridiculous penalty awarded against him, Bas van den Brink kept making last-ditch tackles that a lesser man would have shirked. Even Adam Hughes, whose ability to make the first team I had openly questioned just last week, showed what an immense contributor he could be in the middle of the park, reopening the old "Why do we need Jacob Burns" question again in the process. It was nothing less than a mammoth never-say-die performance from the whole team, and one that hopefully a season can be built on.

Funnily enough, it was also perhaps one of the few performances this year that reinforced the club's marketing slogan for this season - "No Guts, No Glory". An interesting campaign to say the least, it has had its moments - the idea of selling cheap t-shirts with player faces imprinted on the insides to show during goal celebrations is actually very clever, and provides cheap merchandise options for fans. Yet it has also managed to shoot itself in the foot somewhat, first with a bizarrely North American basketball-style voiceover in the television commercial, next with B-Grade celebrity endorsements from people like "Scary Spice" Melanie B (pictured in Sydney with the shirt, no less), and finally with the team producing some insipid periods of football with no guts to be found at all - apart from maybe one or two players needing to speak with the fitness coach about weight tracking. Thing is, if you're going to espouse your team as a group of fighters to follow, they actually need to show a bit of fight. Defensive boring football accompanied by long balls - the bane of many Glory first halves this year - is not going to do that. What happened on Sunday at Etihad Stadium will. Positive performances on the park are the best marketing tool of all.

For all the positives to come from Sunday though, questions still need to be asked around Ian Ferguson's starting lineups. For example, there was a notable impact once Andrezinho came onto the park, yet once again he came on at a stage of a match where Perth were already two goals to the negative. Surely starting with the mindset of 'we need to score a goal' is better than switching to it once you've already conceded two? Ferguson's starting formation appeared to be slightly different this week as well, with from what I could see Glory lining up in a compact diamond formation in midfield; the only width really coming from attacking runs by the full backs. Jacob Burns sat at the rear of the diamond, Mile Sterjovski seemed to be the point, and Liam Miller and Adam Hughes appeared to have box-to-box duties in the middle. Whilst this meant that Miller had more time spent in the middle of the park, it also meant that he needed to do a lot more defensive work and therefore had less time to spend being purely creative and attacking in the space behind the strikers. The other problem was that Melbourne Victory appeared to try and score goals on the counter, and the way in which Glory required their full backs to track forward to give them width opened them up to this perfectly. For a good example, look no further than Archie Thompson who burst through against three, two, even one sole defender time after time because there wasn't enough covering being done at the back.

Another criticism I would have of the formation played against Victory away was the continued reliance on the partnership of Mehmet and Smeltz up front. Whilst I have nothing against either striker, it seemed to me that the focus should have been on controlling the midfield against Melbourne from the get-go; and with the insistence on playing Jacob Burns, I would have thought a five-man midfield would have balanced creativity, width, and attacking impetus with solid defensive positioning and an ability to win the ball back. For long periods of the first half, Glory played a lot of long balls up to their front two, effectively bypassing the midfield and the creativity that Mile Sterjovski occasionally showed. The biggest problem for mine however was the lack of movement shown by Ian Ferguson after the Miller red card. Instead of pulling Billy Mehmet straight away, he instead elected to continue with a rather unbalanced 4-3-2 formation which saw Sterjovski, Hughes, and Burns run around in midfield with an even greater prevalence of long balls to Mehmet's head. It was at this point that Perth lost what control of the midfield that they previously had, and started having to respond to Victory's midfield play instead of dictating it themselves.

At the start of the second half, Ferguson did make a tactical change - but it wasn't to remove a striker from the pitch. Instead, Sterjovski was switched for the more defensive-minded Steven McGarry leaving the midfield three a toughened trio of Burns, Hughes, and the former St. Mirren player. Yet this still left Billy Mehmet and Shane Smeltz up front, with a lot of work to be done to create good opportunities for them. Mehmet wasn't switched off for Brazilian midfielder Andrezinho until the 69th minute - and it was in this period of time that Victory scored their two (perhaps somewhat fortuitous) goals. Once Andrezinho came on however, Glory scored within two minutes thanks to his very boot. Then with two minutes left of normal time, they scored once more. On the Melbourne side of the fence, once the Brazilian was subbed on the Victory only had a single shot for the rest of the game - and even that was off-target. Perth's players were not only pushing hard, they were back dominating the midfield to feed chances up front. One wonders if this move had been made earlier if the scoreline would have been any different?

So whilst this isn't a final nail in the coffin of the Glory career of Ian Ferguson, there are still questions that need to be asked of his tactics; especially when you consider the quality of the opposition Glory were up against. Now you can talk about the depth of the Melbourne squad with players like Covic, Thompson, Carlos, Rojas, etc. But let's face it - that was probably the easiest opponent that this Glory team had come up against all year. Victory were just that poor - it was hard to believe this was the much vaunted 'best club in the land' we're all told about ad-nauseam on this website. Their manager, Mehmet Durakovic, has problems of his own - and we may end up looking back on this match as the clash of the two A-League managers most likely to get the sack.

In the meantime though, Glory fans can smile knowing that not only have their team managed to avoid defeat on the road - they've also shown a lot of heart in the process. Of course, it's going to take  a lot more than heart to take out Brisbane Roar  next week...