Wellington’s surprise win over Sydney meant a swift return to the foot of the ladder for Mitchell’s side, a factor which will have further deflated the collective morale of a squad already struggling to come to terms with yet another defensive horror show.

Exactly what Dave Mitchell can do to ensure that his beleaguered charges avoid a similar drubbing at the Telstra Dome on Saturday remains unclear and that has prompted a number of fans and pundits to openly question whether the former Parramatta Power boss is equipped to change Glory’s ailing fortunes.

Mitchell, of course, would expect nothing else.

The vastly-experienced 46-year-old is an honest, direct and likeable character who witnessed first hand how the tide turned against his predecessor Ron Smith at a similar stage of last year’s ultimately disastrous campaign.

While Smith retained the laudable, if naïve principle that fans would prefer to watch attractive football over winning football right to the end of his tenure at Members’ Equity, Mitchell is under no such illusions. He knows that in the cold-blooded world of the A-League, he will be judged solely on results and so far, they have been unacceptable.

There have been calls for the board to act quickly and decisively by bringing an early curtain down on Mitchell’s reign in a bid to salvage something from what is shaping up to be another wasted season. Yet would such a move really transform strugglers into top-four contenders? Almost certainly not.

Mitchell has undoubtedly made some errors of judgement this season and they have contributed to the club’s wretched run of results. He baffled observers by opting to hand Hayden Doyle his debut in an unfamiliar left-back position against Adelaide in Round One, having played the youngster at right-back throughout pre-season.

Unsurprisingly Doyle endured a nightmare at Hindmarsh Stadium, was at least partially culpable for United’s winning goal and has subsequently been consigned to the youth team.

In the same game, meanwhile, Mitchell clearly erred in believing that Eugene Dadi was fully match-fit. After stumbling through an appallingly lethargic first-half, the target-man was hauled off.

He has also perhaps persevered with Nikolai Topor-Stanley as a left-back for far too long. Since scooping the club’s Most Glorious Player award last season, the Olyroo has endured an awful run of form at both domestic and international level, with opposition managers clearly encouraging their attacking players to exploit his vulnerability in wide areas at every opportunity.

The goalkeeping situation has already been discussed in this column at some length and it remains at the very core of Glory’s ongoing defensive crisis.

The recruitment of Frank Juric defied any semblance of logic, as does the continued exclusion from the starting line-up of rising star Tando Velaphi.

Velaphi kept a clean sheet for Glory’s youth team on Friday, while Jason Petkovic produced a display of such ineptitude for the senior side, that he was arguably fortunate to avoid the ultimate professional humiliation of being replaced at half-time.

The coach, therefore, is by no means blameless for the club’s lowly position, but some of the criticism levelled at him has been wide of the mark. It has been claimed that he recruited poorly during the off-season and yet most, if not all of the club’s best performers so far this term were brought in by Mitchell during this period.

Scott Bulloch’s form has been excellent as he has made an apparently seamless transition from State League prospect to A-League regular, while Eugene Dadi’s goalscoring record of four from six games is beyond reproach in a struggling side.

Adrian Trinidad, meanwhile, may have gone off the boil in recent weeks, but caught the eye in the early rounds and Adriano Pellegrino’s workrate and persistence make him an integral, if often overlooked component of the midfield engine room.

Stuart McLaren’s signing as cover for Hayden Foxe admittedly made little sense with the hugely-talented Brent Griffiths waiting in the wings, but overall, it is hard to be overly critical of Mitchell’s recruitment record.

A number of factors have also been beyond the coach’s control. He could hardly have been expected to foresee that a defence almost universally regarded as one of the strongest in the A-League at the start of the season would in fact prove to be so porous.

He had no control over Dino Djulbic’s brain explosion against Sydney. He was not responsible for the latest chapter in Hayden Foxe’s ongoing injury saga, nor was he to blame for the cruel injury blow suffered by Amaral in Round 4, or Jamie Harnwell’s slower than expected recovery from hip surgery.

All sides suffer injuries, of course, but Mitchell effectively lost the spine of his first-choice side.

Neither can the Glory coach be held responsible for Paul Reid’s decision to opt for the lure of Asian Champions League football and a decent chance of domestic success at Adelaide rather than moving to Members Equity.

He has also suffered indirectly from the fact that Nikita Rukavytsya is clearly suffering from “second season syndrome”. The fleet-footed youngster burst onto the scene last term and took the A-League by storm, but this year defenders are wiser to him.

Now familiar with his searing pace, they tend to drop off and then force him onto his glaringly weak right foot, thus limiting his effectiveness as an attacking weapon.

Presumably Mitchell would have been keen to ship some of the dead wood out of the club before the new season got underway, but unfortunately he was hampered in that ambition by the A-League’s unique transfer system.

With rival clubs unlikely to be knocking the door down to sign any of Glory’s serial underachievers, Mitchell’s hands were effectively tied and he has been forced to simply wait for their existing contracts to expire.

That same system, of course, means that if Glory’s owners were to opt for a new man at the helm, he would have little scope to substantially alter the make-up of his squad until the present season had drawn to a close.

Ulitmately, Mitchell is not choosing to leave a host of world-beaters on the sidelines every week. With one or two exceptions, most notably in goal, the Glory coach is consistently picking the strongest side at his disposal and the majority of this season’s better performers have been players drafted in by him during the off-season.

Inevitably, questions are being asked about his ability to motivate the side and to make the most of the resources that he has available. Yet it is pulling a very long bow indeed to suggest that another coach could step in and, denied the option of introducing a host of new faces, transform Glory from wooden-spoon candidates to top-four contenders in the space of just fifteen games.

Dave Mitchell may not ultimately prove to be “Mr. Right” as far as bringing the glory days back to Perth are concerned, but with all things considered, he does seems to be “Mr Right Now”.