Each year, managers around the country strive to build a perfectly balanced team; one that can attack and defend with equal vigour, one that holds talented players but plays as a unified team, and one that plays attractive football but actually wins games.

This year, Perth Glory manager Ian Ferguson is under more pressure than ever before. If you want proof of that, look no further than Tony Sage's recent comments on Perth radio station 92.9:

"The pressure is on obviously the whole team and especially on the coach. They have to make finals this year and hopefully top four. I want a home final here in Perth."

Pretty clear goals, eh? So ignoring for a moment the 'slippage' that seems to annually occur with these goals at the Perth Glory offices, it's interesting to note that the club is also demanding a better style of football than what has been seen in the past year or so - one of the hot topics of conversation out of the Hatt-Charlesworth Report earlier in the year was the fact that the club needed fluid and attractive football to ensure success off the park as well as on it. When you consider this, it makes Ferguson's job that much harder - not only does he have to try and get the team winning, he needs to try and make it win well. For a side that had enough trouble doing the former last year, it's going to mean Ferguson and his team stepping up a whole other gear this season.

So it is with interest that this author has watched some pre-season games and saw the results and reports of others file in during the past few months. To begin with, the club was a stickler for the 4-2-3-1 formation that was recommended coming out of the review earlier this year. It meant that players like Burns, Hughes, Miller, Dodd and Sterjovski could all be on the park at the one time, provided balance between attack and defence, and allowed players like Hughes and Miller to cover for Jacob Burns's lack of mobility, allowing him to play more of an anchoring role without being dragged out of position. Unfortunately, it also exposed some difficulties going forward - namely that while Shane Smeltz is an excellent poacher, he still needs someone to create opportunities for him.

Now Liam Miller looks to be an excellent acquisition in this respect, but he alone is not going to be able to carry the entire weight of supply. At Gold Coast United, strikers like Joel Porter could hustle and bustle down wings and through channels, drawing players to them and allowing Smeltz time and opportunity to score. But as Smeltz is playing alone up front in a 4-2-3-1, there is no room for another striker. Now we do have Mile Sterjovski, who will likely start on the left wing, and Travis Dodd, who you would imagine would start over the other side, and both players are quite capable of scoring goals. Sadly, neither are what you would call spring chickens and probably cannot offer the blistering pace of say, Nikita Rukavytsya or even young Tommy Amphlett. So they will rely more on skill and guile - of which they have plenty - to split apart opposition defences. For whatever reason though, this doesn't quite seemed to have happened in pre-season.

Ignoring the ludicrous 9-4 result against what was a very debatably 'best of' WA side, Glory have struggled to put a large number of goals away against opposition teams whilst playing their 4-2-3-1. The best showings seem 3-goal efforts against Bunbury Forum Force, Bayswater City, and South African Premier League strugglers AmaZulu. Now it could just be that everything hadn't quite 'clicked' for the team and their new formation, and as a result 5-0 smackings just weren't on the cards - but it is worth noting that when I watched the side comfortably thrash WA Premier League winners Balcatta 6-1 a few weeks ago, the team was playing a 4-4-2 formation and Shane Smeltz wasn't even on the park!

One player who was playing though was 27 year-old Billy Mehmet, a big scary-looking bloke who bagged a couple of goals and showed enough trickery to suggest he can have a part in creating them as well. For those wondering just how scary he can be, imagine this face charging at you atop a six-foot-two frame:



Mehmet is what some people might term a 'bitser' - born in England, he's part English, Irish, and Turk-Cypriot, captained West Ham United's youth team, spent most of his professional career in Scotland, and has also appeared for the Irish Under 21 national side. Importantly, he also spent a year at Turkish side Gençlerbirliği, which is where he met fellow Glory striker Smeltz. It's been said that Smeltz had some input into the signing of Mehmet, and if that's true it might hint at a partnership that has already had some time working together. With young forwards Adam Taggart and Jesse Makarounas waiting in the wings, Mehmet's signing brings the number of Glory strikers on the books to four - and this is without counting sometime-strikers like Mile Sterjovski. For a club that was originally going to play 4-2-3-1, this seems like a lot of alternatives for a single position - and with Mehmet's impressive frame and decent footskills, it suggests that Ian Ferguson may actually have a 4-4-2 with Smeltz and Mehmet lined up as his plan B - or even his Plan A?

Here then is where the idea of striking a balance comes in once more. It will be interesting to see just how aggressive Ferguson is prepared to be home and away when playing A-League opposition. In their most recent pre-season encounter with Central Coast, Glory played to the 4-2-3-1 formation with a somewhat second-string defence available - Berger, Mitchell, Isaia and Risdon at the back, Mehmet up front and a fairly strong midfield in the form of Hughes, Burns, Miller, Dodd and Sterjovski. The result was a 1-0 loss, which against last year's finalists isn't too bad, especially given that they're not unfamiliar with handing out 5 goal beltings to the men in purple. But whilst players like Coyne, Neville and van den Brink can come into that team to improve the backline, it does again raise questions of whether we're capable of scoring with just one man up front.

But perhaps that's Ferguson's plan - to primarily concentrate on defence away from nib Stadium, and then go on the attack with Smeltz and Mehmet once teams fly over to Perth? He wouldn't be the first Perth coach to play with five across the middle in Melbourne and get something from a game, and nor would fans begrudge him for doing so against teams like Victory with attacking talent all over the pitch. What will concern fans though is the makeup of that middle four or five players when the lads first run onto the park.

As touched on earlier, Perth suffered a mobility problem last year in the centre of midfield. A combination of Burns-McGarry would too often be exposed by fast-breaking opposition midfielders, and the defensive nature of the Glory captain's game frequently spilled over into aggressive and unnecessary fouls. If Burns was partnered with Adriano Pellegrino, the combination appeared to lack the stamina to patrol the middle of the park all day. Likewise, the Burns-Srhoj combination of one season prior suffered similar problems with regards to mobility. But by placing a player like Adam Hughes next to Burns in central midfield, the Glory can at last have a box-to-box midfielder capable of tirelessly supporting his captain in defence whilst also connecting up with more attack-minded players further up the park. In fact, Hughes has pleasantly surprised many this pre-season with his late runs to the box and long-range shots from just outside the area, and may just be the sort of midfielder we've been missing - one with a decent amount of both speed and stamina.

Five men across the middle gives Ferguson the luxury of adding the extra defensive steel that Burns brings, or the vision and passing of Steve McGarry, without sacrificing the 'engine' of someone like Adam Hughes or the attacking intent of Liam Miller. But drop that midfield five into a four, and all of a sudden a very interesting question can be asked - does captain Burns even rate as a starting XI player? Indeed, with the mobility of a Miller-Hughes midfield pairing, there is more than enough gumption to win a ball at the back and certainly enough creativity to do some damage up front - all without the somewhat er, tenacious approach to winning the ball that Jacob often brings. But could Ferguson dare leave the club captain and reigning MGP out of the team, even at the price of a better lineup?

This question, above all others, might be the deciding factor in Glory's fortunes this season. Because it is not just about striking a balance between playing to win and playing well, or between going on the attack or concentrating on defence - it will also be about striking a balance between players' reputations, relationships and contract sizes and their form, usefulness, and overall team fit. It will be of no use to anyone to field a team of ageing, highly-paid players who cannot form a coherent unit - of this much we are sure, thanks to many years of in-depth Perth Glory research in this area. So if dropping a out-of-sorts Travis Dodd for a hungry Tommy Amphlett, or a disappointing Liam Miller for an impressive Jesse Makarounas becomes a real option - will Perth fans be able to count on Ferguson do what needs to be done?

Who knows - it might just be the tipping point between achieving Sage's vision of a home final and yet another year in the A-League post-season wilderness.