Pretty much concur with what JD has said.
When Hudson came in he claimed “Our team will have a real emphasis on being positive going
forward and makes the most of the qualities of the players available for
selection”. But playing Wood as a target man really blunted up attacking wise.
Almost all of his goals at club level are him poaching 6-9 yards from goals
with balls coming in from wingers. Yet we played mostly with two up front with
Rojas running off his shoulder. You could argue we were more defensive than
Herbert was, and he was publicly panned for that at times. At least under
Herbert’s team we create one or two shots a game. Arguably our attacking stocks
his cycle are better than the 2010 cycle. Yet we look far worse.
Even looking back at Hudson’s record pre-All Whites, there is a pretty
similar pattern. Defensively strongly, but poor attacking.
Real Maryland 2008 – 24 goals in 23 games
Real Maryland 2009 – 19 goals in 22 games
Newport 2010/11 – 18 goals in 6 games
Newport 2011/12 – 13 goals in 12 games
Bahrain U23s – 14 goals in 10 games
Bahrain – 6 goals in 12 games
NZ U23s – 8 goals in 4 games
NZ – 32 goals in 27 games
And off those 32 goals, 20 of them were scored against OFC
nations either at home or at a neutral ground. We only scored 4 goals against
OFC at their home ground (and only one once in those 4 games).
We never scored more than one goal against a non-OFC nation, and
while sure we played some good sides, we should have been doing better against
teams like Uzbekistan, China, Thailand, Myanmar, Oman and Belarus. We probably
should have lost our only away win against a non-OFC.
So while on the face of it, he got us within 90 minutes from the
WC, that really should be a par mark. 2-0 loss looks ok on the books (and wiki), but once
you look at the entire circle, it’s all be pretty average. My real question is
did he get more than you’d expect from the players at hand with the resources
at hand. I don’t think he did.
Pretty decent analysis imo