In Part 1 I looked at Perth Glory’s exit to Lions FC, and Perth’s deficiencies were all at the attacking end. They were a low-volume attack that struggled to create, sitting in the bottom third of the league for shots, dangerous attacks and key passes. By profile they were a direct side that did their best work moving the ball forward quickly, yet against a compact opponent they chose to hold possession and build patiently, which is not their strength. Lions FC compressed the middle, forced Perth wide, and stopped their attacks at the edge of a crowded box. Perth only scored when they abandoned the plan late and played directly into space.
The root of it was a missing player. Perth had no one who could operate between the lines and link the midfield to the striker, and their shape left a lone forward isolated at the top with no support. The fix I landed on was part recruitment and part structure. A genuine number ten or a second striker, and a shape that stopped stranding the man up front. Perth’s real problem was that they could not build a chance once the space was taken away.
The Jets went out the same match day, and on the surface they are the opposite kind of team, because where Perth could not create, the Jets create as well as any side in the league.
The interesting question is therefore a different one, since a side with an elite attack that loses a two-goal lead to a lower-division opponent has a problem somewhere other than chance creation. Preston Lions came from two goals down to win three to two, and the Jets, who led inside twenty-two minutes, lost the tie in the ninety-third. What follows is how that two-goal lead turned into a defeat.
What The Numbers Say
The Jets are an attacking side, and a good one. Across last season they sat at the top of the league for expected goals, goals per game and big chances created, and the quality of their chances was as high as the volume. When they get a shot away it tends to be a good one, taken from inside the box, and they finish at a rate above what the chances alone would predict.
On the ball they keep it well, they progress it through the middle, and they dribble past people as well as any team in the competition. If you gave them space to play, the numbers said they would score.
The Jets almost never cross, and they almost never go long. Both sit at the very bottom of the league. Their whole attacking game runs through short combinations and dribbling in central areas. That is fine when the pitch is open, but it leaves them with nothing to reach for when it is not, because a team that cannot cross, cannot go over the top and only wants to play through the middle has one way in and no other.
The defensive numbers carried a clear warning too. The Jets concede a lot of shots and a lot of chance quality, and they rank near the bottom of the league for both, as well as for interceptions. What kept their season alive was their goalkeeper, James Delianov.
Read the defensive table from the bottom up and the picture is clear. The Jets face a lot of shots and a lot of chance quality, and they do not step in to intercept, so the underlying defending is poor. Their goals conceded still lands mid-table, and the reason is the two rows at the top. Delianov ranks near the top of the league for saves and for goals prevented, which means the record at the back was built on shot-stopping rather than on their defenders stopping shots. That is a workable way to get through a league season, because the saves and the leaks average out across thirty-odd games. It is a fragile thing to carry into a single knockout tie, where one poor night has nothing to average against it.
Put those two tables together and the match almost writes itself in advance. The Jets would have the better of the ball, create the better chances, and probably score. They would also concede chances freely, and if their opponent stayed compact, denied the middle and broke quickly, the Jets had no obvious second method to fall back on. A three-two defeat is close to the model result for this profile. It is not a team that gets shut out, and it is not a team that keeps a clean sheet.
The Role of Nikos Vergos
The Jets signed Nikos Vergos from Melbourne Victory over the off-season, and on paper he addresses part of the problem:
He is a penalty-box striker, an elite generator of shots and a good one from close range, a player who lives on the last line and runs in behind. He gives the Jets a genuine focal point in the area and a body to aim at, which is something their build-up lacked.
What he doesn’t do is help them build. His passing involvement is among the lowest of any forward in the league, because he is an end-point rather than a link. He finishes moves, he does not make them.
So in theory, Vergos improves what happens at the end of a Jets attack: the arrival and the finish, without changing whether the attack can be constructed in the first place. Against an opponent who lets the Jets play, he is a real upgrade. Against one who takes the space away, he is a striker waiting for service that never comes.
The Jets Attack and the Twenty Minutes It Worked
For the opening stretch the Jets looked exactly like their numbers. In the 15th minute they moved the ball wide, found a gap between Preston’s defensive lines, and worked it to Will Dobson on the edge of the box to open the scoring. In the 22nd minute they created a better one, stringing four passes together that each asked a teammate to run onto the ball rather than meet it to feet, and releasing Vergos on the edge of the area to make it two nil.
Both goals came the same way, and it is worth being clear about how. Neither came from a cross, a set piece or a long ball. Both came from short combinations played into space, which is the one thing this side does better than almost anyone. Vergos scoring the second is his profile working as intended. The move was built in the space ahead of him, he arrived at the end of it, and he finished. It was also close to the last we saw of him, because the space that goal needed did not last.
Preston worked out where the game would be decided and took the middle away. They compressed the centre, kept their lines close together, and left the Jets to find another route. The Jets did not have one. In the 14th minute they built through the middle, were squeezed, shifted wide and went to a pull-back cross the moment they were pressed, and the shot went wide. In the 51st they did the same and missed. In the 57th they did it again and the cross came to nothing. Three times the game asked them to break down a compact block, and three times they produced the same wide-and-pull-back move.
The cost was not only missed chances. In the 12th minute the Jets won the ball high, were compressed in midfield, lost it, and Preston broke the length of the field to shoot at the other end. Losing the ball in a tight area did not just stall the Jets, it launched Preston the other way. That was the shape of the danger all night. The Jets would commit to their one central method, lose the ball when it was crowded out, and hand Preston the counter.
The Jets Defence, and the Habit That Undid Them
Reviewing the Jets defence shows one clear behaviour:
The Jets shepherd rather than tackle.
Watch the 20th and 21st minutes together and you see Jets players ushering Preston towards the touchline instead of going to win the ball, and two defenders left in two minds as Preston move the play across the pitch and back inside.
This is why they look comfortable in open midfield. Containing and directing is enough out there. Near their own box it is not enough, because ushering a player wide against a side with numbers in the area only gives that side a crossing position.
The other half of the problem is transition. The Jets were caught on the counter again and again. In the 20th minute Preston won the ball as the Jets pushed forward and forced a save. In the 38th the Jets lost the ball starting their own counter, Preston settled into the space between their midfield and defence, and forced another save. Both times it was Delianov who kept the score down, which is the season profile playing out exactly. The defence kept giving chances away and the goalkeeper kept covering, right until he could not.
When the goals came, they came from players left alone. The first, in the 54th minute, started with the Jets line fragmented and Preston already prepping the counter. As the move developed the defence drifted inward to compress the middle, which left two Preston players unmarked on the edge of the area, and the cross found them to make it 1-2.
The second, in the 60th minute, was the transition problem finished off. The Jets left a clear gap between midfield and defence as they lost the ball, Preston carried into it and worked in behind, and an unmarked runner scored from close range. This time Delianov could not reach it.
The winner, in the 93rd minute, brought the whole match together. The Jets were compressed in the Preston box and reached for the pull-back cross, the same move that had already failed three times. Ryan Scott, a former Jets goalkeeper, read it and intercepted, and started the counter that finished the game.
As Preston broke, the Jets shepherded the forwards towards the wing rather than confronting the ball, Preston crossed, and an unmarked man finished it. The Jets lost to a cross, which is the one delivery they could never produce themselves, played to a free player their own defending had invited into position.
The Season Ahead: Recruitment Meets Coaching
The Jets have also signed Joe Lolley, a wide creator who is close to the opposite of Vergos in the most useful way:
Where Vergos ends moves, Lolley builds them. He beats his man, he delivers, and he does it in tight areas, which is exactly the skill the Jets ran out of once Preston compressed the pitch.
In 2025/2026, Lolley was among the best in the league for chances created, for crossing and for playing long, and he wins his defensive duels cleanly rather than shepherding. Item for item, he addresses the two things the Jets could not do, and the one defensive habit that cost them.
The problem with the Jets pull-back cross move was never really its accuracy. The problem was that it was the only move, and a predictable one.
Ryan Scott intercepted the pull-back in the 93rd minute because he could see it coming, and he could see it coming because it is all the Jets do when they are crowded out. A former Jets goalkeeper read their one idea and ended the tie with it. A well-struck pull-back still fails if the opponent knows it is the only ball on.
What Lolley can bring is not a better cross, it is a second and third option, a player who can go wide or long or through, so the block cannot simply sit and wait for the ball it already expects.
Lolley is not a goalscorer, his shot selection is poor, and you sign him to unlock a defence rather than to finish, which is why pairing him with a box finisher like Vergos is a sensible idea. Set against Kota Mizunuma, who played this role for the Jets last season, Lolley is a like-for-like on creation with more accurate delivery, giving up some of Mizunuma’s wide goal threat in exchange. The role was productive before and the recruitment kept it productive. It just could not take the field.
That signing also settles the bigger question about where the Jets go from here. Is this a coaching problem or a recruitment problem?
The honest answer is that it is mostly coaching, and the recruitment of Vergos and Lolley is all the evidence you need.
The Jets diagnosed their squad gaps well, pairing a box striker to finish moves with a wide creator to build and deliver them, which are the right two profiles for a side that was one-dimensional going forward. If recruitment were the core failure, you would not expect the shopping list to be this accurate. The players who address the problem are at the club.
What beat the Jets were patterns, and patterns live on the training ground.
The attack has one method and no coached alternative when it is denied, so it becomes predictable enough for a former player in goal to read. The defence contains rather than engages, which is a principle rather than a personnel issue, and it leaves men unmarked whenever the shape has to shift. The whole back line leans on the goalkeeper to cover chances the structure keeps giving away.
None of that is solved by buying players. It is solved by varying the attacking patterns so the one idea is not the only idea, by defending the transitions and the spaces between the lines, and by choosing to win the ball in the areas where shepherding it wide just invites the cross.
Lolley will help, because he gives the coaching staff a tool the squad did not have. But adding a tool is not the same as fixing the patterns. If those patterns continue, a better player gets exposed by the same compact, counter-attacking approach that Preston used, and the result is the same.
The Jets did the recruitment part largely right. The season ahead is about whether Millsy & co can get the best out of it.
Video analysis and telestration in this post are my own work, created using Football Australia match footage for the purpose of criticism and review under the fair dealing provisions of the Copyright Act 1968 (Cth). Football Australia is acknowledged as the source of the original footage. Audio has been removed for copyright reasons.
