Midfield Trade Targets

[Valtello_Starkwind]

You still need to historically finish top 4 to realistically win a flag though (dogs miracle run aside).

Which requires your team to be pretty consistent throughout the course of a season and not drop games to bottom 4 clubs like Brisbane or Carlton. This is something Essendon really needs to improve upon.

[Laverde2Langford]

Hence the 14-16 wins as stated. Not 12.

[SillyBilly]

I’m all prepared for us to get Zilch of any best 22 player that isnt past his prime.

There is no decent FA now rocky has nominated Port.

We will take all our picks to the draft.

[Laverde2Langford]

Bahahaha.

Brandon Ellis went as Dustin Martin to their end of year shenanigans

Check out pick below. Lol. Tin rattlers

[Deckham]

It’s interesting that all the trade talk involving us seems to involves half forwards and back flanckers. I would have thought that our pressing need was pretty obvious: contested ball winning midfielders. All the talk about Parker made sense to me. But Saad, Stringer, Smith, I don’t know how this helps us. They are all good players but do they fill needs?

Seems to me we are planning on pushing Fantasia, McGrath and Tippa through the middle and want players who can do the same (Stringer potentially). Still, you need someone at the ruckman’s feet who will win the ball and feed it out to the outside runners. I would have thought that was our most pressing need.

There’s almost a delineated 3-stage extraction these days, imo. At the drop/extract1, push through/deliver2, receive&run3. Those three guys fit the 2nd stage well.

[Fairybread]

If it wasn’t for the banning of our players he would already be playing for us.

[karmabomber]

Doubt it!

[frosty]

So you want to create a gameplan around what we have , instead of what works, at present ?
Is that you sheedy?

Nice false dichotomy. How about a game plan that will work with what we have?

But your whole premise was if opposition teams hit their targets Richmond’s gameplan and style is useless.

Which is a simplistic way to look at it, again considering they just showed their gamestyle didn’t allow the opposition to use their skills.

Except it wasn’t my premise at all. My premise was that we make sure we get a competition in the forward half, and don’t give up intercepts. We don’t have the skills to hit targets under no pressure, creating a game plan around hitting up targets under pressure is hardly going to be sustainable for us at this time, so why would that be how I expect us to beat Richmond?

But again what if our strengths don’t allow foe us to produce the same intensity every week ?
There inlies a key issue.
You seem to assume hooker will always be in a position to half a contest , and that tax and tippa will always be sniffing around foe pressure and the rest well the rest takes care of itself.

But if tippa is having an off day, and hooker isn’t marking them or halving contests , then the load increases on tax and green to do the defensive work.

Whereas with the last 2 , if rioli and even another small were having an off game , there were still 2-3 other small forwards who were out applying manic pressure.

Which allowed the system they have in place to continue to function when players were off , or missing.

If hooker is off , or missing or tippa isn’t applying pressure then the ball just rebounds with ease.

That goes for every team. Maybe Richmond have more depth of pressure smalls, but they also have less depth of talls. If Jack doesn’t pull down the marks, and McGovern isn’t injured then Adelaide intercepts all day and the result is different.

And even if the match is exactly as it was, if one of their smalls doesn’t bring the intensity that’s a weakness that can and would be exploited, whether they have 2, 3, or 6 small forwards

You can say build a team around our strengths all you like , but if our strengths aren’t in sync with the current trend as a whole , then it’s pointless.

Unless you set the trend, rather than follow it. You know, like Hawthorn and Geelong and Sydney and Footscray and Richmond have all set trends in the way they’ve played over the last decade.

Otherwise you’d play both belly and Looney in the same side , just like in years past , just like when they wanted to play/try 3 ruckman.

Because that’s one random potential different way to play, so that’s definitely what we’d try

You say build a gameplan to minimise our weskness, then assume our strengths will always be our strengths just cos.

Whatever that means. We’re always tweaking and changing. Across seasons, matches and even parts of matches.

Like I said the blueprint is there foe how to win now. You can figure out how to adapt to it and implement it and then figure out how to score from there.

Except it’s not the blueprint. Richmond (and Footscray) managed to exploit weak years by hitting their absolute best form at exactly the right time, The Bulldogs finished 7th at the end of H&A 2016, and didn’t make the 8 this year. The top teams had 15 odd wins this year. Anything less than 18-4 historically has meant it’s anyone’s flag. Richmond got it done this year, but 3 wins don’t make a blueprint.

Or you can be sheedy stubborn and say no we have 3 talls, we will prove the 3 tall system works cos we are Essendon right ?

Ummm I don’t think anyone needs to prove that 3 talls works. What you need is enough quality, and a game plan that works with your quality. Richmond proved that 1 tall could work. To say that therefore 3 talls doesn’t work is logically false. (In my opinion you need 6 goalkickers first and foremost, and then appropriate defensive structure. How tall those goalkickers are is open to discussion. It could be 6 x 190cm+ if you wanted! (Daniher/Hooker/Francis/Stringer/Laverde/Stewart) or it could be 6 smalls.

Edit tax = raz … stupid new phone auto corrects like a ■■■■■■■■■■■■

I hate autocorrect, I am forever editing posts when I see stupid autocorrects. Hence had to wait until I got to a keyboard for this reply!!

[bomber_hero]

Surely there’s a 24yr old inside mid in the VFL out there somewhere

[JohnRain]

One of my good mates (from SA) reckons Sturt’s mid, James Battersby, is worth a shot. (*can’t confirm, as am a Melbourne lad).

[sj_2150]

Id love if they gave James Peters or Nick hind a run. Theyve been solid and are still young.

[Killer_Mike]

Would definitely have a look at Hind.

[Fighterbomber]

Langford, Leverde, Francis. Give em time.

[jonovdp]

I wouldn’t mind for us to have a look at Darcy Lang and Anthony Miles as fringe inside midfield options.

Bigger bodies which we serverly lack. Lang looked pretty good in the finals as well.

[Klawdy]

I’m afraid of the Prismall factor with Lang. Looks good with guns around him. But you never know, he could excel with more responsibility.

[Go_Team_2.0]

This is the biggest fallacy going around.

Richmond did not take 8 years to build up to this years win. They were just bang average for YEARS…

2013 - 15 wins
2014 - 12 wins
2015 - 15 wins

When did we last win 15 games in a season?

[Henry_s_Angry_Pills]

I would have thought that our pressing need was pretty obvious: contested ball winning midfielders.

I don’t.

We need to get parish and Heppell and Langford on ball as priority number 1

[PipetoNul]

Weren’t they on ball this year?

[Tone_Abet]

offer wines what he wants, exact type of player we need

[jonovdp]

Correct, we won’t win the premiership next year.

We don’t have the midfielders who can stand up in tackles. It’s vital in finals.