If you're going to get experience in to help, might as well get them to coach.

Agree and agree....
Mentoring is an important thing we've lost this season AND I think it is showing

Go Blues

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“Every single element of the Club has to be the best in the league, meticulously and methodically, and only by doing this will we be elite and challenge for number 17.”
Greg Lee

look, i don't want to call you a peanut, but you're making it very hard for me.

... what games did we work our way back into the contest? and what were the results of those said games, please?

hint: we didn't.

we're 1-14. bolton is outcoached every week. his game selections are horrible, his matchups even worse, and so far he's too reluctant/ stubborn to move from his strategy within a game when it's not working.

like throwing weitering forward and leaving jones down back on an island (against the Suns) while lynch had what, 6, 7 goals at HT?

like declaring Rowe as our defensive organiser, yet yday when phillips is injured he throws rowe forward? by bolton's own logic, jones should have moved forward and into the 2nd ruck and left our defensive organiser to do what he does best.

Curnow is triple teamed. and it never occurs to bolton to change up his forward line structure, re-direct the forward 50 entry to counter that?

dane beams has 27 disposals at half time. it didn't seem relevant for bolton to switch curnow onto beams, while the game was still in the balance?

these scenarios play themselves out week in, week out. bolton is too slow to counter and too stubborn/ bereft of ideas to move to a plan b.


i hope on top of hope he's sacked, and soon.

See, this is where you retain no credibility whatsoever. You make stupid outlandish claims and when they're countered, you move the goalposts and head off on another tangent completely.
Yesterday you said-



So according to you, Bolton can come up with ideas from looking at tapes etc but once the game starts and the opposition change strategies, he's lost. The reality is there have been numerous games this year where other teams have countered us during games or started better and we have arrested back the momentum through tactics or structures. (Richmond, Sydney, Geelong, Collingwood, Eagles, Bulldogs, Crows) But no, this morning it only counts if we went on to win the game!

I'm happy for Bolton to be open to scrutiny (even by vultures like you) but let's be factual in our criticism. Just making up shit or throwing out the usual "plan A, plan B" rubbish by posters who wouldn't know a structure if one popped out of their Coco Pops just makes you look like even more of a fool. By all means he should be accountable for strategies etc but only if the criticisms of them have some semblance of fact related to them.

If you want to direct your anger, look at the personnel he has available to him. Yesterday his backline consisted of Jack Silvagni, Jed Lamb, Marc Murphy, Dale Thomas and at times SPS. Before this season, how many games would you suggest those players had spent together as a defensive unit? The AFL average for marks inside 50 is around 8 per game. Yesterday Brisbane had 24. For every second inside 50 they marked the ball.

Now I'm not saying Bolton is the answer but the best coaches in history couldn't make a solid defensive unit from what he has available to him at the moment.
We are decimated and we'll rightly cop shit this week but turning on the club with uninformed rubbish doesn't help at all.

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Looking forward to seeing our potential realised.

You both make some valid points, don't know what to believe any more.

I'll continue to buy a membership until the day I die but I work to hard during the week to waste time watching Carlton play. It ruins my weekend, like most the CFC spoiled me in my early days but now it's
just so sad to see how irrelevant and insignificant we have become.

Pagan and Malthouse both premiership coaches couldn't turn it around, then Bolton gave us some hope. So once again we start to focus on the draft and trade period looking for saviours.

One thing for sure we were the most successful VFL team and we have been the worst performing AFL team.

It would be nice just to be competitive again and have a little respect in the football world.

No one can possibly defend yesterday’s performance, whether we had injuries or not. Everyone has injuries and everyone has bad days but we didn’t give ourselves a real chance from the beginning.
Our selections all year have been questionable along with playing under done and mediocre players. The lack of flexibility in our coaching and player movement is questionable and the constant return to that !@#$% zone defence, possession and boundary play is astonishing.
If they don’t want to win the game fair enough, play the kids and get on with it but let them play to enjoy their skill and enjoy their time.
If you want to try something for next year then move Cripps to the forward line so not to damage him and rotate the kids in the middle and give the spectators something to look forward to next year because this shit is getting tiresome.

I don't think a single person here is.

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WADA medical director Dr Alan Vernec describes Essendon* FC drug case as biggest scandal in team sport the world of sport has seen. #WC2WB

#GUILTY

Hey Blue Vaun
Why would play 2 rucks
Why not play Jones on Hipwood
Why would you play Murphy and Lang in defence
Why would you play Graham on a wing
Why would you play Curnow as the only
Key forward when we had Kerr Mac Jay and Casboult twiddling their thumbs
Somewhere else
Why would you play Marchbank after an 8 week layoff
Without giving him an extra week then play him in
The twos to get match fitness
Why play Polson at all when he has shown nothing
Why play Silvangi purely as a defender when we have tried him at
VFL level as mid when Cripps clearly is buggered
And could have played up forward to help
Curnow out
And most importantly why change your game style
From one that has at least has made us competitive

I have tried to stay positive about Bolton
And SOS and MLG but yesterday I felt different

I got home from work watched the third quarter
Then my wife and I went for a coffee

Sort of felt I’m over this
Either the coaching staff are clueless
The players don’t give a @#$%&!
Or we clearly didn’t want to win the game
I reckoned we tanked
Of course you can’t prove that

You can blame a lack of personal
All you like

There is still something wrong with the culture
Of the club
We have been putrid four times now

Said many of us about the final Ratts year.
Just saying.

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Let slip the Blues of war (with apologies to William Shakespeare) (and Sir Francis Bacon, just in case)

If we did tank Keogh (and i'm that way inclined after yesterday's performance) what does that say about our building a winning culture with this new hierarchy?
Do we really need to tank?
What impression do we have of everything else they have been spitting out?
Have we sold our souls again (what's left of them) for a ridiculous speculative #1 pick again?
Didn't we go through this with Pagan?
Extending his contract to tank for #1 picks, history repeating?

You're right. It's not about personnel.
I should have played Docherty, Simpson, Williamson, Alex Silvagni, Byrne, Plowman or Macreadie in defence before Murphy, Lang or Jack Silvagni. I don't know what he was thinking. Not to mention playing Marchbank in preference to them.
Just out of interest, who would you have played as defenders in their place?

_________________
Looking forward to seeing our potential realised.

Rowe and Jones were in on the tank. Some well disguised turnovers for Lion goals yesterday. Rowe in particular was awesome in his attempts to defend Rafa.

If playing a game plan that has failed us miserably all year is evidence of tanking... then Bolts is a @#$%&! genius.
I question why we're playing a zone defense that's dependent on pressure from players up the ground, when we have the worst midfield group in the comp. I question our forward set up that almost always sees us bombing to an outnumbered forward... I actually felt sorry for Charlie yesterday.

In reality I wish we were good enough to tank.

I'm not in favour of sakcing the coach yet, but we desperately need to do something about his support staff and see what evolves from there.

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“I would rather have questions that can't be answered than answers that can't be questioned.” ― Richard Feynman

Our backline was 'makeshift'. So why weren't they instructed to simply play man on man using basic defensive fundamentals, rather than a zone defence system they're not used to ?

Simplicity.

I'm so !@#$ trying to figure out what they are trying.
We know that zone defence is redacted, but we still go to it.
We know our mids are young and Cripps needs help yet he plays the wrong personnel through there.
We know we play a drab game style and we are picked off constantly/
We know our forward entries lack speed and diversity and to our disadvantage but persist with it.
We know we play under done and average players but continue to do so.
What other outcome could there be?

Before I hear it's injuries we have lost Doc and Gibbs from last year and every team has injuries. That doesn't explain the lack of effort, selections and game plan.

Is it shit teams who get more injuries or teams are shit because they have more injuries or both?

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Green Shooter

Fair point you make about our defence BV

Yep fair point.
Then why go a zone defence with makeshift defenders who are limited in that position?
We also had Rowe, Marchbank, Jones.

If injuries are no excuse, then why is last years Grand Finalists getting of scott free in the media and on this site and yet a team that has copped probably a worse injury hit getting blasted from pillar to post?

We have won 5 fewer games than last year and yet adelaide have won 8 fewer games thus far.

I hate comparing ourselves against other teams as a rationale to make an argument, however I feel this thread needs some perspective.

I can fully agree with some arguments around team selection and can't understand why McKay isn't getting a game, however there are allot of players that are carrying injuries because there is not enough fit players to cover them

You're right there. Playing 4 talls in defence then expecting to play a zoning, offensive game, just doesn't make sense.