On the talk of trading Wines and SPP:
Our main inside midfielders this year:
Rockliff - started weak due to a preseason interrupted by injury and being played out of position; dropped to the twos to get some ball, came back and played a handful of good games before fading out towards the end of the season.
Wines - pretty much the same form as the past two years. Hasn't improved since 2016, in fact seemed to get worse as the season went on and noticeably crumbled in some big-game moments, especially finishing in front of goal.
Ebert - after what I thought was almost an AA-nomination worthy 2017 as an inside mid where he'd consistently poll 10+ tackle games, he seemed to be in no man's land this year. Never seemed to have a designated position and didn't get a lot of the ball compared with last year.
SPP - after an interrupted start to the year with off-field drama, he came back and killed it for a nice stretch of games before also fading at the end of the year.
Our other inside midfielders:
Robbie - played more forward than mid and was well held this year I thought. When he was mid he seemed to have an impact, can't expect him to win the game off of his own boot every damn week.
Boak - barely got a sniff in the midfield as he was played in that high-forward role which doesn't seem to be the most effective for him. Can't really judge his midfield performance.
Polec and Motlop also spent a little bit of time running through the middle at points, but mainly as rotations or a bit of a change up tactically. My point is that it seems like all of our inside midfielders faded towards the end of the year, and none of them even played particularly well this year. When your entire midfield group, which consists of 3x All-Australians, what should be two future All-Austalians in Wines and SPP, and at the very least a better-than-average player in Ebert, is playing like shit, does that mean all of the players are shit? For me, it's undeniably a coaching issue, and to a lesser extent a fitness department issue, and has been for the past 3 years. Our forward line gets a lot of stick, and deservedly so, but honestly our midfield must be one of the most under-performing groups in the league. Sort the ******* midfield out.