Central Coast Mariners 2023/24: Return season review and a potential playoff run – scout report

 In 2010, the Central Coast Mariners were pulled from the A-League due to a lack of funding. However, fast forward to the 2023/24 season and Central Coast are back in the A-League and have just completed their return season.

Head coach Emily Husband has steered the side to a fifth-place finish in their first season back in the competition for the first time in over a decade. This sets up an elimination playoff against Melbourne Victory on the 14th of April.

In this tactical analysis, we outline some key tactics that have helped them succeed throughout the season and onto a potential playoff run. This scout report also looks at several essential aspects for Central Coast supporters to be positive moving on into the rest of this season and next.

Squad Overview

In this section we are going to outline how Central Coast have structured their squad and why it leaves them in an excellent position for the coming few seasons.

 The first area to look at is the average age of the squad compared to the other A-League sides. What you can see is that Central Coast has the third youngest squad at 23.5 years of age, only bested by Sydney FC and Wellington Phoenix. 

However, when you compare that to the league position of the four teams that made the playoffs (Melbourne City, Sydney FC, Western United, and Melbourne Victory) ahead of Central Coast, only Sydney FC had a younger average squad age, which means that Central Coast are only going to get better over the coming seasons.