Anthony Hudson (FAT Technical Director | Thailand)

pep and others were waxing lyrical about bielsa at the time

#bandwagonalignment

While acknowledging that Hudson's AWs teams have been a long way from Bielsa-like, if you can't see evidence of the influence in the AWs games v non-OFC opposition then you're blind. Why there is a distinction between OFC and non-OFC is a good ?

Are we playing better football under Hudson than Herbert - I'd argue yes...

Are our international players happier - yes

Is there more planning and action behind the scenes - yes

I'm not happy with the way we have played against the Island teams, but I think we have moved, forward, not as much as was promised, but forward. Things cant be too bad in an environment when a player (Moss) pays for himself to fly up and plead to be brought back into the system, or when a guy like Smith has to suck it up and admit to been an idiot.

Hudson's selections are no worse than Ricki's (I give you Christie and Butler).

A good question to ask, is who had the better team, and would RH be doing better with our current crop, NO! 

RH had Elliott, McG and Vicelich in the Middle with Nelsen and Smith at the back and Smeltz in his prime. Comparatively, our back line is similar, our attack perhaps a little better, but our midfield significantly less.

I would say that Hudson's selections are possibly worse. You give Christie and Butler as examples of Ricki's selections but Christie was a professional for many years and Butler was one of the better and experienced performers at local level and only used when others were not available. Hudson on the other hand has picked players yet to cement themselves at the local level when there are seasoned professionals that could be picked (assuming availability).

Christie was picked against Mexico in the qualifiers, despite not playing for 18 months due to injuries and lack of a club... As bad as Hudson is with selections, he was never that bad.

Also, picking Butler was never a long term option, at least with Hudson he's gone with you and players who still have the potential to make it in pro football as opposed to a guy who has reached his peak at NZFC level.

Hudson is still picking Fallon and it is bit rough on players that are overlooked as Hudson uses the All Whites as a developmental team. (who is to say that some of the current youngsters even reach the "heights" of Butler?)

Fallon is picked more for the professionalism he brings to the environment as a mentor as anything else. A lot of clubs employ similar models.

And you right, we don't know if these young players will reach Butlers ability, they may not, but they may also surpass it. Butler was never going to get better.

The Olympic team under Emblen played much better football than either Ricki or Hudson's AWs sides

Christie was noticeably a favourite. However, most of Ricki's squads had the best players and while he was AW coach we unearthed a lot of players such as McG, Winton Reid, Tommy Smith, Rory Fallon and others which really strengthened the squad. His fall back players were Ben Sigmund, Andy Barron and Ivan Vicelich. 

Ricki's selection is miles ahead. Hudson has admitted using selection to try and get youngsters- probably Lewis, Dyer and Brotherton I'd say- overseas gigs.

So never played a game that mattered a million then? Also Emblen was part of the tactical team for the horror in Honiara..

And yet we didn't give him the job. Nice going NZF.

Not sure but didn't he "withdraw" from the selection process? Something strange seemed to happen at the time.

Didn't apply at all and was quoted in the media as saying 'they know where I am if they want me'.

The Moss and definitely the Smith sudden show of force does not wash with me.

Smith is injured and prior to that was not making his English team. He thought fudge, it's not looking rosy, I had better look after number one. Hey my old team have qualified for this tournament where I will be in the shop window for three games, better have a piece of that.

I like Moss and would be prepared to give him the benefit of the doubt but everyone making a big deal of him flying up to Auckland needs their head read. Maybe he was coming to Auckland anyway for a party and while I'm up here why not have a coffee with Hudson? Once again we have a nice tournament coming up and if he is ever going to pick up a contract again in Europe this is probably his last opportunity.

Agree with you on Smith, think you are being rather harsh on Moss though. It's obvious that he isn't high up in Hudson's plans and had Gleeson not had his incident I doubt Moss would have been called up

Fair enough.

I do wonder if Ricki splitting his time between the Nix and the AWs caused a lot of disorganisation and unpreparedness; also NZF has a lot more money to play with now thanks to our achievements on the international stage across all levels, male and female, then we did in 06/07/08/early 09.

A large part of that team are the current AW side.  Look how much poorer they are as a team even with the addition of great older players then they were in London 2012.

I agree, I do think there is more with going on with Glen and maybe even Andrew then we know in public.  Others such as Rory and Winston may have asked them back.

For me with Jake in the bad books right now, Glen is definitely NZ's No1 keeper, his performance on Sunday showed that, just as two average displays for NZ by Marinovic confirmed for me that he's still our 3rd best keeper.

It took all of one day for Hudson's best mate, Tony Vietch, to name drop him as a replacement for Merrick

Hudson doesn't have enough pro club coaching experience for an A league gig. Meanwhile Ernie could stay in nz to take over from NZF technical director rob Sherman who has quit. 

Hudson would be interesting. Risky for the 'Nix, probably good for NZF.

I hope it's not Rudan. Never shown much interest in NZ. I can't see his connect with the 'Nix, except for an open job. 

We've had good coaches in Ricki and Ernie who've been popular with the fans. I hope we'd keep it that way. Trani would have the edge in that dept, having already done some good work here. Aloisi in a similar mould. 

Did it seem like Ernie had lost interest in this group of players?

Sounds like Ernie is going back to Australia to be with family.

[/quote

I hope Hudson is much too smart, to touch a club job. 

His biggest strength is the ability to spin himself. 

This is a great quality managing a team that plays rarely but doesn't work for a team that plays weekly.

In that environment his spin on a regular basis would quickly become tiresome and he would be found out football wise.

Or from an NZF point of view he would get more hands on experience and he would get to work with some of his players all of the time. As long as we never play in the Islands- great! And we get lots of free publicity from Tony Veitch

So true. International managers can get away with a lot more because there are barely ever any meaningful games.

NZF actually allowed Geordie an interview

http://www.newshub.co.nz/home/sport/2016/12/video-high-hopes-big-challenges-for-all-whites-and-anthony-hudson-in-2017.html

Saw the interview. Hudson was trying to reintroduce himself to players he hadn't seen for awhile. Complete spin for Antony to remind media he is alive.

Best of luck to the all whites but it will take every European based player to be available,  injury free and be in form = unlikely and a plane crash. Their team not us. 

But we can dream can't we in 2017 we can dream.

If it wasn't a dream it would be fudgeed up.

You guys probably need the song "imagine" explained to you too.

Thanks for missing the point of the post.

No, it's a fudgeed up thing to say considering what happened recently.

That's plainly obvious. 

Apart from the fact there was no dream of anyone dying. That was never ever said. Read the post. Osucka just ran two completely separate paragraphs together.

The dream was for a great all whites campaign and the plane crash was a metaphor for the scale of thier task.

Then - as Vader implied. Many people jumped on the pc bandwagon without checking their facts. 

Hope none of you are lawyers as you can't read.

Yes. Completely. My metaphor was in poor taste and I knew it at the time but went there anyway. I think I might be related to Jimmy Carr.

Nah, Jimmy Carr is funny :)