Well there's a good recipe for a loss. Lloyd gets lost when he has the ball outside 50 and then there is no one closer to kick the goals. McPhee/ruckman/Ryder across CHF would be a much better option.
McPhee looked lost last week whenever he had the ball.
Ryder will play in defence and the point of resting a ruckman in the forward line is to actually rest him and not put him in the hardest position on the ground.
Knights best not shift him from the back line and if he stays on the park we should win. Fevola must be controlled and the delivery either stymmied or blocked in transition.
Stevens is a class player and should not be underestimated.
jimmyc1985 wrote:A good team. Glad to see that Knights didn't fall for dropping Slattery in favour of Peverill yet still leaving JJ in the team - that would've left us one midfield dinosaur too many.
Lovett really needs to play a good game. I presume, barring injury, he'll get a chance to string a few games together, and really, this is the sort of game he should be able to excel in. We're on the wide-open spaces of the MCG and playing on a Saturday night with fine weather predicted, Carlton are loose-checking and games involving them are almost always high-scoring - conditions are highly conducive to Lovett playing a good game.
If Essendon fall into a shoot out with Carlton similar to last week against Geelong, we are going to lose. Their midfield is vastly superior to ours and will make better use of the ball going forwards than we will. It the players don't go into the game with an accountable mindset we are bound for trouble. Stanton, Dyson and Lovett in particular need to work on this aspect of their game.
Well, if that's the case, you're conceding we will definitely lose - Carlton conceded an average of 132 points per game last year, and scored an average of about 99 points per game, so an average game involving Carlton (last year) was one in which 231 points in total were scored. Last year, us and the Bulldogs were the teams with the second highest aggregated points for/points against total - our games averaged about 208 points in total last year. Neither us nor Carlton appear to have changed our game plan a huge amount from last year in the sense that both teams play a very 'open' brand of footy.
In light of this, i'd say it's very likely that Saturday night's game will be high-scoring. The winner will probably have to kick somewhere in the vicinity of 18+ goals to win. If, as you say, we're bound to lose through the midfield, then we either have to shut down Fevola, or hope that Lloyd has a day out.
Me - 1; Gringo - 0. Notwithstanding the fact Fev still killed us and Lloyd was OK rather than brilliant.
