Save Now, Suffer Later

 On the day after Perth Glory suffered another home defeat, SBS great Les Murray opined on Twitter:

“[I’m] stunned people are actually asking Postecoglou if he’ll change his style. Style won him a double and 36 unbeaten games straight… I’m not talking about changing game plans or tactics, but changing a style and philosophy. Some people don’t know the difference.

Why don’t people ask Tony Sage or Rini Coolen if they’ll change their style or philosophy? Whatever they are.”

This is a great point, and one that I would like to take some time to expand upon. You see, Ange was appointed at Brisbane because he impressed with the clear philosophy and direction in which he wanted to take the club. He made some tough decisions early in his tenure, and then set about building a squad that won the title, achieved ACL qualification, and until recently sat proudly atop the A-League ladder this year. The very suggestion that after a few losses his is a team in crisis is laughable. One or two tactical tweaks is all that is needed there – whereas when you look at Perth or Adelaide, the problems go much, much deeper.

Glory too have a philosophy that they follow – but it’s not quite as you might think. Students of the game may suggest that Perth has adopted a very ‘British’ philosophy in the A-League, one of hard work and graft in order to get results. Indeed, the signs are all there – the big man up front (Deane, Harnwell, Dadi, Mehmet) and the speedster or goal poacher next to him (Nikita, Fowler, Smeltz) along with a midfield full of uncreative but hard-working and combative players (Webster, Christie, Burns, Robinson, Hughes) and some wingers to drive attacks forward (Bertos, Sterjovski, Andre, Rizzo). It really does seem the philosophical British flag is flying high at nib Stadium – and you know what, I don’t think that would be so bad. I’ve seen ECU Joondalup play some pretty ‘British’ football in the state league, and it can be exciting if done right – quick runs from attacking full backs, long passes upfield that result in a footrace between attacker and defender, and crisp, clean crosses into the box that result in mayhem in the opponent’s defensive area. But in reality, the pseudo-British football Glory plays is just a side effect of the real philosophy which governs the football department at the Perth club: When faced with an option, choose the cheapest one.

Ian Ferguson may not be the A-League equivalent of Jose Mourinho or Guus Hiddink, and it is true that his tactical decisions have often left much to be desired. But Perth’s current position on the ladder and dreadful recent attendances aren’t ultimately his fault – the blame lies squarely at the feet of Tony Sage and the other administrative personnel who made the decision to appoint him. Perhaps in the time Ferguson has spent at the club he developed friendships in the backroom which lead Sage to ‘give him a go’, so to speak. But as a successful businessman in his own right, one wonders if the mining magnate operates his companies with the same deal of naivety. Looking at the club’s coaching appointments in an objective manner since the A-League started reveals a startling pattern:

It would seem that the philosophy governing football appointments at Glory since the dark days of FFA ownership has been driven by one thing: keeping costs down. This decision-making process is made to seem all the more ludicrous when you consider the vast sums of money that Tony Sage has forked out to pay players like Mile Sterjovski, Robbie Fowler, and Shane Smeltz. It was once put to me by another FourFourTwo columnist that assembling such an expensive squad and then skimping on the coaching staff was akin to gathering the world’s leaders in a state of the art jumbo jet and then asking an uneducated man from the world’s poorest regions to fly it; this conversation was now over two years ago, and little appears to have changed.

The short-term savings philosophy doesn’t just extend to the coaching appointments at the club, either. Sage’s personal remarks about crowd sizes at nib have long annoyed fans, and he only drew new blood recently when he commented on the poor turnout at the Glory v Gold Coast match, mentioning on the Hour of Glory radio show that “If fans want Perth Glory to be around next year, they have to come down to games”. From a purely economical perspective, he is of course right – the costs involved to put on a show each week for just 6000 people are hard to justify. Yet he completely misses the point as to why there are so few people attending these matches in the first place; like your favourite restaurant, if you continually have a poor experience on the night, you will just not want to go back. Like my old indoor cricket coach used to tell me, it’s not just about winning – it’s how you play the game. Someone should explain that to the Glory chairman, and at some length.

Sage’s obsession with stadium costs goes even further though; as time and time again he has threatened to move the club away from their home at the Allia Holdings operated nib Stadium and go over to pastures new – Subiaco, the WACA, a brand new stadium, and his latest fad the WA Hockey centre. In an article from the Financial Review on December 5, Sage stated Glory needed a crowd of 12,500 to break even at nib Stadium, claiming that “Every time Perth Glory have a home game I may as well write a cheque for $75,000 and throw it in the bin – that’s how much money I lose each time”. Now that sounds like a lot of money, but consider just how much money the club would save per game if they weren’t paying the wages of some of their highest earning players? If Robbie Fowler or Mile Sterjovski hadn’t been signed on the contracts they received, I doubt the stadium costs would rankle the Glory administration quite so much. For those who say this would put us at a competitive disadvantage – identify for me if you will the marquees in last year’s A-League Grand Final.

Everything at the Glory is done to a high quality, with the greatest of care and consideration...

Ideally, Sage told the Financial Review, Glory should move to a stadium with a smaller capacity – closer to 10,000 people – and thus would be able to break even with just 2500 attendees. Now that’s all well and good, and I’ve said for a long time that the A-League went too big, too soon – but what sort of long-term planning does that show? Where exactly does Tony Sage want  Glory to be in three years? Five? Ten? Saying that he’d like the club to move to the hockey stadium has all the hallmarks of the same decision-making that led the club to forgo a proper search for coaching candidates and install an assistant’s assistant in the main gig in the first place. It is a short-term saving that will leave us with big long-term problems. Ignoring the capacity issues and the costs with bringing the ground up to A-League and ACL standards, what about the absence of local pubs for gameday atmosphere? A lack of suitable public transportation options? The fact that the hockey stadium is nowhere near to the Perth CBD? And what kind of picture does it paint about our aims and ambitions when we’re satisfied with an attendance of 2,500? “Oh well – at least we didn’t lose money!”

If – or rather, when – the axe falls on Ian Ferguson, it is the ideal time for Tony Sage and his administration to take a step back and ask themselves exactly what it is they want out of Perth Glory. If it is simply an ongoing year-by-year concern, in which they take the cheap options, minimise costs, and hope that the players just happen to do well, then it may be time to pull the plug on their involvement with the club. If however Sage is genuine in his passion for both the shirt and the game of football in WA, then it is time to end the myopic cost-cutting philosophy that has dotted important areas of his administration. The club’s supporters are fully behind him when he claims the WA team gets a raw deal from the FFA and Western Australian government – we do. But they will not stand by and watch yet another poor selection process take place when choosing a new coach, and they will certainly not listen to the club’s owner blame them when they refuse to turn up and watch hastily cobbled-together tactics from a manager who was appointed only because it was the easiest and cheapest thing to do at the time.

There was a certain chant sung at the end of the Melbourne Heart game, directed at the Glory coach, which was arguably a little harsh to the man himself. Perhaps, instead of telling Sage to “F**k Off Ferguson”, we should instead be asking him to “Find A Philosophy”? Because as things stand right now, the next man in line might just be assistant's assistant's assistant Stuart Munro – because he’s the easiest and cheapest option we have – and in 12 months time, we’ll only be talking about the same issues all over again.

Addendum

What a difference 24 hours can make...

When I was originally writing this article, Glory had just suffered a loss to Melbourne Heart and supporters were bemoaning Ian Ferguson's style of play and Tony Sage's steadfast refusal to either remove him from his managerial position or acknowledge the fact that crowds are directly related to the quality of football on display. Now all of a sudden Sage has declared that he is pulling out of Glory altogether, blaming the fact that people insult him despite his investment and pointing out that he thought an A-League side was unviable in WA.

Tony's decision does not change my opinions expressed above one bit. He put a lot into this club, and despite what he may think fans are eternally grateful that he saved us originally. But he seemingly failed to recognise what was required to get people through the gates week in, week out - decent football. Added to this is the fact that the one area where the club continually skimped was the probably the most important - the coaching staff.

I firmly believe that there is a future for Glory in WA. We have a hardcore of supporters that does not exist in places like Gold Coast, where the FFA is still supportive of a team. We offer Foxtel and the FFA an extra timezone for fixturing and broadcasts. And we have a proud history that all fans of football in WA want to see taken forward. The next couple of weeks, indeed the next 12 months, will be a very interesting time for football in this state; at least I won't be short of material.