When are people going to lay off Gleeson? He did a pretty good job in Townsville for several years which everybody seems to forget. All everybody seems to want to focus on is the ONE bad season he had with Melbourne. Seamus McPeake went off the rails with his antics but everybody seems to forget that and just blame Gleeson. Sure, he didn't have a good year and made his own share of mistake but come on people, let it go. Perth are sitting atop the NBL ladder, undefeated. To not give Gleeson a shred of credit is just petty, teams don't just magically coach themselves.

I'm not suggesting he's a bad coach, all I'm asking about is how much can be attributed to him? If you were to put Ennis and Beal (to a lesser but still worthwhile degree) in any other team I think they would also be top by this stage!

He has an unbelievably talented starting group (even without Knight..With Knight, it is plain scary).

Their roster covers a lot of bases - defence, outside shooter, rebounding, scoring

He is a good coach. You can't not say that to a guy who is 6-0.

But, the real challenges lie ahead. Look back on their season thus far:

-2 wins over the Kings and 1 over the Hawks (2 teams who just aren't legitimate contenders)
- Beat a 36er team that was under-strength (without Frye and Gibson)
- Beat a Breakers team that still had Lazare and were pretty average on their night.
- Only beat the Tigers by 4 points, with the game close all the way through

Still give Gleeson a lot of credit though. He helped Beal get into a scoring rhythm (after starting the season with scores of 11,10 and 2).

Also, I think the style of play that Gleeson has implemented (Fast, uptempo) is getting the maximum potential out of Ennis. He is still a bit raw and unrefined, but the way the Wildcats play makes him look a bit more polished.

It's title or bust for these guys. Don't judge Trevor until the season is over.

Start well every year? We've never started this well in the history of the club. Last year by this stage we'd already been on the receiving end of a 30+ pt thrashing.

Quirkily enough, at the hands of the side we just handed a 40pt one to, but anyway.

^ "Dollar" Beal.

Part of being a good coach is good recruiting. Clearly he's done well with that. He made playoffs 5 consecutive seasons in Townsville with undermanned teams. He bettered the previous season in his stint at Melbourne and was side swiped by Anstey and the Dodos for his job and handled that situation with class. Anyone that suggests he's not a good coach is a nut. On top of that, he's a nice guy.

Dear Anonymous. A GMs role is to do the contract negotiating after the coach determines the player. Gleeson found out about Ennis from a mate that coaches In the NBA.

I watched every Cats game under rob beveridge and the main difference with Gleeson I see is the structure on offence. Players move with purpose with and without the ball, a lot more open shots are being created and they very rarely take a shot late in the shot clock.

Gleeson has take the culture & defence from the last four years and given the team a coherent offence. That is the difference. It was what we in Perth expected him to do and he has done it.

To a degree most coaches would get alot out of this wildcats roster there are some exceptions think Marty Clarke for example. I'm very happy with our 6-0 start though cautiously optimistic we still have to play a full strength 36ers team and are yet to play Cairns.

Correct Marvin signed most players before Gleeson was signed.
Having said that Gleeson is still doing well as the Perth bench is horrible bar Wagstaff
Burdon is an NBL castaway, Hire is average, U'u has not done much of anything,

I wonder of the same guys claiming Gleeson is over-rated and only appears good because of the talent he currently has, have the same opinion of Joey Wright?

Greg Hire is awesome and anyone who says otherwise can jump off whatever the most iconic bridge in their city is.

No, I'm not Greg Hire in disguise.

When Knight comes back the only weak links in the bench will be Burden and U'u, and I still have hopes for those of those two.

I think Gleeson's been judged more harshly than he deserves, but I think the biggest factor in Perth's success outside of the Ennis signing is keeping the core together. Even with Lisch gone and Knight out, Martin, Redhage, Wagstaff and Hire know what they're doing together.

^ They also seem to be doing a good job in terms of indoctrination of the newcomers ;)

NZB @ Vector, Cairns, Wollongong in that period between 6 Dec and 10 Jan, so it will be an important stretch. NZB are strong at home but doubly so at Vector, Cairns still want to assert a claim to title contention. Wollongong, well, if we knock them off in 10 days time, we'll be confident of knocking them off this time around.

I'd expect a minimum of one win through that patch, but all three is not out of the question. My guess would be that, barring injury concerns here or elsewhere, we'd pick up Cairns and Hawks, but lose to the Breakers for a 2-1 result.

Thankfully playing a clump of road games early and the two week break between Rnds 10 and 11 help reduce the impact of Perth Arena's availability.

They've already got two doubles out of the way, they have two more in the weekends following the bye, then they have one in 2014, week 16.

Thankfully we don't have the completely skewiff schedule we had last year with the Perth Arena construction delays.

I cannot believe all the wildcats basking, but MACDUB made me laugh, according to him, the cats have beaten 5 of the 7 other teams but made an excuse for each and every team we played against and then the reason he gave for Melbourne was we only won by 4 points haha. Did he fail to mention that the cats played Friday night, flew over Saturday and played sunday afternoon 11am Perth time so less than 2 day turn around while the tigers were fresh. Maybe if the other NBL team get their act together, work more harder to get people at their games, maybe they can pay near the salary cap.