2023 Australia Cup Rnd of 32 vs Peninsula Power FC | Friday 4th August | 9:30pm | Football Australia YouTube

Nice to see we're still stuck on the "never press" setting. 

Credit to Power, they've played out of their skins and are obviously much more comfortable with that horrible paddock they are playing on.

Quite like the look of this Nguyen kid. Seems a heads up player who looks to move the game forward. 

wow look at the change in expected goals

PP 0.05 vs 1.17 WP at the halftime break
PP 0.63 vs 1.31 WP at first half of extra time

not looking good

Does anyone in the club know how to take a set piece well? Far out

Rudland on that right hand side as well - Tidy, and with some genuine speed too by the look.

Kids been well involved. Now if we could string a good period of passing together that'd be bloody great.

Hell, I hope we don't fart around trying to play out of our own 6 yard box like that when the A League rolls around.

happy that paulsen is playing so well - genuinely impressed with how good he is on the ball and how commanding he is in the box - plus had a couple crucial saves

but also worried that we're relying on paulsen bailing us out against a semi-pro team...

phew :)

I know it's only pre season in a Mickey mouse cup and all that, but Payne and Wootton are giving me seriously bad vibes. 

A lot of wasted 'deliveries' and poor turnovers tonight. My expectation is that in a young side, those two experienced individuals as they are would be a more calming and precise presence. They have been far from it.

Brilliant seeing the two juniors win it for us. Well done!

Good assist from Nguyen he’s looked really good. should be higher in the pecking order than OVH

Never in doubt!

Yessss. 

YoungHeartHM

I know it's only pre season in a Mickey mouse cup and all that, but Payne and Wootton are giving me seriously bad vibes. 

A lot of wasted 'deliveries' and poor turnovers tonight. My expectation is that in a young side, those two experienced individuals as they are would be a more calming and precise presence. They have been far from it.

 Payne is okay for me. Nothing amazing but he doesn't really do anything wrong. He's just kind of 'okay' at everything. His deliveries tonight haven't been great. But to be fair 90% of the time he's swinging in a cross from deep because there's no other options and he's trying to get the ball forward. And any time you go for those huge cross-field passes/crosses you have to accept there's a good chance it doesn't land.

Wooton has been bad though, in my opinion. Made a couple mistakes and just looks less convincing. It's telling that we looked so much worse when the starting four were changed I think.

I think when we play at any sort of pace we look a cut above, as we should.  Albeit not everything connects.  

Just we've not done enough of it.  We're not fit and have walked half the game. Which I don't think is professional, at least not to the half baked extent we look to be at. And, if you do look to lift the pace you probably don't connect because, odds are, your pass receiver hasn't lifted and is flat footed.

And Power have been up for it.

Still, we've scrabbled the win and got some in the legs. The young fellas have looked useful. And Paulson's looked solid. 

Really impressed with all academy grads today. Really disappointed with every single first teamer, bar Pennington-ish. 

aww alex and finn looked so pumped to have won that
really wholesome
they must have been massively fired up
trying to get a win in their first game playing together
proving they can play
good stuff

Job done I guess. A lot to improve on and some concerning signs, but fitness definitely played a part in how we fell off. 

manny_delgato

YoungHeartHM

I know it's only pre season in a Mickey mouse cup and all that, but Payne and Wootton are giving me seriously bad vibes. 

A lot of wasted 'deliveries' and poor turnovers tonight. My expectation is that in a young side, those two experienced individuals as they are would be a more calming and precise presence. They have been far from it.

 Payne is okay for me. Nothing amazing but he doesn't really do anything wrong. He's just kind of 'okay' at everything. His deliveries tonight haven't been great. But to be fair 90% of the time he's swinging in a cross from deep because there's no other options and he's trying to get the ball forward. And any time you go for those huge cross-field passes/crosses you have to accept there's a good chance it doesn't land.

Wooton has been bad though, in my opinion. Made a couple mistakes and just looks less convincing. It's telling that we looked so much worse when the starting four were changed I think.

 
Payne? Thought he’d been good. Done so much running and made a lot of tackles. Didn’t do anything memorably silly.

Have to wait and see on Paulsen after he’s been cleaned out by the thugs in the A league, but he was one of the best on the park.

You could argue that's about the perfect pre-season hit out for us. Very hard fought contest, plenty of game time for the youngsters, another highly competitive game to come. 

Clearly the defence is going to be an issue for us again though unless we can get an import CB in.

kwlap

Really impressed with all academy grads today. Really disappointed with every single first teamer, bar Pennington-ish. 

Coasting

 

martinb

Have to wait and see on Paulsen after he’s been cleaned out by the thugs in the A league, but he was one of the best on the park.

 yeah paulsen absolutely MOTM for me. excited to see him start this season

Good to see that celebration too. Jaushy’s run of form came after gaining confidence bullying the cup. Hope to get that from a few others too. 

Agree with the sentiment in a number of comments above, it’s a good hit out and chance to get minutes in the legs. We fell off as we got tired, but we were putting some solid stuff together in the first half. 

- fitness building 
- great to see some academy players 
- good to see Paulson/ Pennington do well. 
- win = more competitive games ahead to build fitness and learn how Chiefy wants us to play. 

Job done. Preseason continues. (Chiefy is now on 3 games and 3 wins too 😉)

I thought we had a good first half, moved the ball well. Good to see Kelly- Heald contributing strongly. Surman and Paulsen good. Pennington nice linking play. The home team's match fitness brought them back well in second half. Poor header from Payne led to their goal, but they deserved it. Kraev ran out of steam. Zawada faded, but had looked good earlier. Great for the young guys to get them over the line.

kungfu panda

• kwlap

  Really impressed with all academy grads today. Really disappointed with every single first teamer, bar Pennington-ish. 

• Well pretty clearly Pennington/Paulsen were the difference between the 2 teams.

Yeah I agree. Thought Pennington looked good out there, with more match fitness I can see him being a very important player for us this season.

Missed this match, but was pleased to wake up and see the result. Well done lads, on to the next one.

"I’m really pleased for the playing group because we were nowhere near conditioned to play 60 minutes let alone 120." - Chiefy

Yes, that's precisely what I felt - we looked a class above in the first half, crisp passing, lots of confidence, then ran out of steam in the second. If we can play like we did in the first half for 90 minutes, we will rule this season

Really cool article on Nix debutant Kaelin Nguyen. Answers the question re: why he missed out on the NZ U20 squad (I was surprised he wasn't involved), along with some other cool slices of info:

mrsmiis

Really cool article on Nix debutant Kaelin Nguyen. Answers the question re: why he missed out on the NZ U20 squad (I was surprised he wasn't involved), along with some other cool slices of info:

• his father is a Vietnamese ex-pro volleyball player and self-made CEO
• he's been contacted by Vietnam regarding representing them internationally at U23 level
• he's got a bit of a following in Vietnam
• missed out on U20 selection apparently due to poor form stemming from a thigh injury
• his father was the one who actually organised the Football Ferns vs. Vietnam friendly last month - he also arranged a friendly between the Phoenix and an unnamed Vietnamese club in Vietnam, which was scuppered by COVID

Viet Kieu striker Kaelin Nguyen 1m86: Dotted by coach Troussier, valued at 3 billion and father is a famous CEO (danviet.vn)

Superb stuff that. Great find!
Sounds like he will have no shortage of options for his career, whether in football or in another field.

Also sounds like he'd be the type of person you'd possibly broach the subject of bankrolling/facilitating deals to bring another professional team to say, somewhere like Auckland... 👀

YoungHeartHM

mrsmiis

Really cool article on Nix debutant Kaelin Nguyen. Answers the question re: why he missed out on the NZ U20 squad (I was surprised he wasn't involved), along with some other cool slices of info:

• his father is a Vietnamese ex-pro volleyball player and self-made CEO
• he's been contacted by Vietnam regarding representing them internationally at U23 level
• he's got a bit of a following in Vietnam
• missed out on U20 selection apparently due to poor form stemming from a thigh injury
• his father was the one who actually organised the Football Ferns vs. Vietnam friendly last month - he also arranged a friendly between the Phoenix and an unnamed Vietnamese club in Vietnam, which was scuppered by COVID

Viet Kieu striker Kaelin Nguyen 1m86: Dotted by coach Troussier, valued at 3 billion and father is a famous CEO (danviet.vn)

Superb stuff that. Great find!
Sounds like he will have no shortage of options for his career, whether in football or in another field.

Also sounds like he'd be the type of person you'd possibly broach the subject of bankrolling/facilitating deals to bring another professional team to say, somewhere like Auckland... 👀

Or help bringing in marquee players into Wellington to help ensure Wellington dominance in the Ikka a Maui derby…

I haven't watched the game yet, but a lot of people are saying we played poorly.

???

Scratchy first hit out with Ball and Old out and one import still to come. We dominated and passed very crisply at first, but weren’t as incisive as we might have been. We didn’t really get good delivery into Zawada. Kelly Heald did a lot of playmaking down the left, which he did fairly well and had an absolute thumper of a shot. 

We got the goal from a classy interchange between Van Hattum and Kraev. Van Hattum got a good shot off which troubled the keeper and Kosta and Pennington both showed awareness following in, with Pennington showing composure to take a touch round the keeper and tuck it away. 

After that we fell away in the second half, probably due to conditioning. We made a few chances. Sutton, with a heavily strapped knee, looked good driving to the byline, almost resulting in a goal to a sweet Kosta volley. The next player to go around his man at left back laid in the winner in the last gasp of injury time. Very nice move and finish. Other than that our attack was a bit one dimensional considering we were the professionals.

The academy kids were lively and look like they’ll make it a competitive couple of months pushing for contracts. 

And we get at least another competitive cup game in preseason!

I think that the current level of conditioning is deliberate. In my opinion, we have very good import players in Kraev, Wooton and Zawada but the reason that they couldn't succeed in Europe was probably fitness. Last season, Talay went hard on fitness during the preseason and had the team at a crescendo early in the season. Shortly after the new year they were burned out.

I think that Italiano wants to play this much more carefully, no quick crescendo, good fitness for the start of the A-League but not maxing it out. Then try to keep a high level through the season.

I am sold on Ball now, more from his leadership than anything else.

I still think that nobody see's the important role that Pennington plays. Nothing to do with the link play that he does do. All to do with the pressure and cunning ball winning, usually a little toe poke that goes unnoticed or he drives the opponent into a tackle or he forces the opponent into making a backward pass. He does these things better than any other DM that I've seen in the league.

NZPhoenixFan

I haven't watched the game yet, but a lot of people are saying we played poorly.

???

In the second half after we ran out of steam. In the first half we were excellent and crisp and were unlucky not to get a couple more. Fair result in the end.

Good solid win in a banana skin fixture. Well done team. 

When is the next draw out?