Time Ricki Herbert loosened the Phoenix's shackles

Time Ricki Herbert loosened the Phoenix's shackles

http://www.stuff.co.nz/sport/opinion/2891898/Time-Ricki-Herbert-loosened-the-Phoenixs-shackles

OPINION: It is not the players, the travel, the referees or even the opposition.

The reason the Wellington Phoenix are struggling this year is simple. Coach Ricki Herbert is so frightened of losing that he is strangling the life from his talented team.

Herbert is to football what Don Brash was to politics: an arch-conservative.

He coaches both the Phoenix and the All Whites and has enormous influence on the top-flight game in New Zealand.

He is a competent coach who has within his grasp the glory of getting the Phoenix into the playoffs for the first time, and leading New Zealand to its first World Cup in 28 years.

But his caution and over-riding defensive instincts are blunting his chances.

This much is evident when you look at the tactics and personnel of the Phoenix. They are overloaded with adequate, one-paced, defensive-minded central midfielders who toil away to the coach's instructions but struggle to unlock defences.

Out wide, the superb Paul Ifill is probably the in-form player in the A-League and was an excellent signing. The Phoenix rightly look to him for inspiration, and he consistently provides it, but he is often drawn too deep and cannot do it all by himself.

Leo Bertos, the team's other creative player, is talented but drifts in and out of matches. Daniel is not as good a player as Bertos and is even less consistent.

You have to feel sorry for striker Chris Greenacre, the personification of the team's dour approach wrapped in a No9 shirt. He is neither accomplished in the air nor especially skilful and lacks pace and physicality.

Yet Herbert plays him as a sole striker. He is expected to chase long balls and take players on all by himself as a huge gap opens up between the hyper-cautious midfield and attack.

It is an assignment he is not equipped to handle. The hard-working Greenacre has his strengths. They are as a poacher in the six-yard box and as someone who can feed off the crumbs created by a more robust and mobile striking partner. Such a player has yet to be spotted this season.

It all comes down to tactics. Last Sunday against North Queensland Fury the Phoenix fell into a trap of their own making.

They believed the early goal from Bertos was enough for the win and, after halftime, they became increasingly aimless and tentative. They wanted to limp to victory with a clean sheet and deep defensive pattern and were undone by a late goal.

Yes, they had chances to go further ahead and should have taken them, and new-signing Adrian Caceres looked sharpish. But the tone of their performance spoke of timidity and just doing enough. In the end, they didn't.

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Herbert's affection for sole strikers and defensive formations may pay dividends against Bahrain in the away leg of their World Cup qualifier (though that could backfire if the All Whites lose and are forced to play attacking football in the return match in Wellington).

But the Phoenix, particularly at home, have to play with adventure and dash and back themselves to kill off inferior teams.

We don't deserve to be second bottom of the league. But that's where we will end up unless Herbert loosens the shackles.

* Paul Thompson is Fairfax Media's group executive editor and a former national league football player.

Sack Ricki?

You have to admit he has a point. The Phoenix more often than not will lose or end up conceding an easy goal, because they push back into deep defensive mode, and forget how to attack.

Ricki needs to work on a 4-4-2 combination, if we're to have any chance of scoring more than 1 goal per game.

That article is absolutly spot on in my opinion. And I'm not the only one to think so. My old man, who has worked with Ricki at various levels, has always feard this would happen. NZ has created a good set of solid footballers over the years with its development programmes but has failed to create the ones we need with real fair and creativity. The x-factor is too often surpressed in young players with the mantra of play the easy ball. Although normally the better option, it needs to be balanced with "take a bit of a risk" attitude. The more often you take that risk the less risky it becomes and the better you get at it.

Yeah, I think it would be good if we got a proper tall Target Man that Greenacre can feed off.

Greenacre by himself has shown he isn't going to win any ball in the air up front by himself, and he stated at the start of the season he was more of the type to feed of scraps in the 6 yard area in front of goal.

We need a tall person like a Reinaldo, someone with speed and stature to bring a ball down, and hand it off to create goals.

the guy looks like a bit of a geek to me. Mentioning Don Brash in a football opinion. I think he needs to put his calculator away and enjoy himself.

Hi Boss, I can't make it in today because my head just exploded, cheers Wilso

That's pretty damn close to a bannable offense.

Articulates  better what I have been on about specifically for the last week and obliquely before that....give that man a DB.

I went on the Nix site last nite and noted again the abundance of midfielders.  Was going to try and bracket players into positions against various lineups..but hey we do that each week to little avail.  Chen isnt on there and the 3 strikers are Barbarousos ifill and Greenacre.

Target man doesn't need to be a lumbering oaf. Crouch springs to mind as does Big Dunc (not you Matt, I mean the real one). Great in the air, good vision to hold up or flick on and an eye for goal. Rojas to me is a quick winger with huge potential but is very green still.

i agree with Mr Thomson's general sentiment. need 442, need to be more ambitious (especially away from home). 8 goals in 7 games is not good enough.

No, what we need is people to finish simple f**king chances.  Hopefully Ricki has spent the week - rather than angsting about formations and two up front - having shooting practice so that when we dominate possession and attacking balls (as we have have done in our last three games) we put it in the back of the f**king net.

At least once we do that I won't have to read five threads at once angsting about hyptheticals and claptrap and ignoring the actual basic problem.  We're sh*t in front of goal.

Whitby boy2009-09-23 11:59:19

Well most on the comments on Stuff agree with the article, and not one of them is me.

I had some time at work and looked at the stats of all games played for the top 2 and the bottom 2 teams in the league. All the stats are from the A-League website.

We were only really poor against Sydney, otherwise we have shown a good account of ourselves in all games, even have had more attempts than table topping CCM and less opponent attempts than CCM even though they have the best "defence" in the league. Another interesting Stat is that NQF have averaged more possession, more attempts and have had less opponent attempts than GCU yet sit at the opposite and wrong end of the table compared to GCU.

Wellington Phoenix Round Possession Attempts Opponent attempts 1 54 10 14 2 53 17 16 3 56 10 9 4 47 6 13 5 49 15 10 6 52 15 10 7 53 7 11   52 11.4 11.9



North Queensland Fury Round Possession Attempts Opponent attempts 1 56 11 9 2 46 11 14 3 50 19 10 4 48 19 9 5 39 10 13 6 63 13 7 7 47 11
7
  49.9 13.4
9.9




Gold Coast United Round Possession Attempts Opponent attempts 1 49 7 13 2 54 14 11 3 48 15 16 4 52 15 7 5 44 13 7 6 50 11 11 7 49 11 12   49.4 12.3 11.0



Central Coast Mariners Round Possession Attempts Opponent attempts 1 45 9 10 2 48 16 8 3 45 9 15 4 62 9 20 5 49 8 18 6 55 9 13 7 51 12 11   50.7 10.3 13.6
Bullion2009-09-23 13:16:49

Seems to me that says what Stevo and is band of grumpy dwarves have been saying for a couple of weeks, my problem is that how do all these people know what Ricki is saying to the team at halftime?

What defensive tactics? You seem to just use that term as you please and when it suits you,yet even the stats show we're creating among the most chances and shots as the best in the competition.

Totally agree with that and would also help if Greenacre could be the one who the chances fall to.Love the way he plays and appreciate his off the ball work but just wish that it was he was the one on the receiving end of some of the chances created in the last 3 games.

In the last 31 rounds of A League football, in only one match has the Phoenix scored more than 2 goals (3 v newcaste, round 18 last year, 10 matches ago)

In your opinion, Marius, is that because we've been too restrained in attack, or because we lack players capable of finishing?  Or something else?

A combination of explanations in my view.

1.) we have over the course of our  existence played too conservatively away from home. the notion that you need to play any differently away from home in this league is a myth. if you dont set out and expect to win you wont, and our away record reflects that.

i also meant to say its great that football has friends in important places that care or are sufficiently frustrated to write about it

also, this kind of debate is what football professional football is all about, performance and results. we are not winning enough games, we are not scoring enough goals, this is year three now, Herbert should expect to get heavily scrutinised and he should expect people to be critical. There is more than one way to manage a football team - and as yet, his method can hardly be argued to have delivered. 8th of 8, 6th of 8, and now 9th of 10. As a fanbase I think we are pretty generous tbh.

I truly find it worrying that Ricki Herbert thinks we are currently playing 3 up front.

Um, Steve-O do you want to read that again.... seriously.

So from the stands you know more about the tactic that Ricki Herbert - the man defining the tactics and asking his players to play to the tactics - is playing and telling ihis players to play ?

Please, everyone (not just you Steve-O), sit down, have a think and pop back in an hour before I go postal at all you f**kers and shut this place down.

Steve-O2009-09-23 21:05:10

I'll leave it for someone better quialified than I to explain the intricacies of 4-3-3.  The one thing it does not mean in any sense of the word is that Daniel and Ifill are expected to be permanently beside Greenacre.

he might express some people's sentiments but it doesn't exactly carry a lot of weight when the guy has never even played or coached beyond NZ amateur level does it?  Or that he doesn't have any coaching qualifications, or is even involved in the game now...

But Steveo-O who plays this genuine 4-3-3 with 3 strikers that you're alluding to?  That's not how you play 4-3-3