Elimination Final v Melbourne City | Sunday 3rd May | 7:00pm

You cant compare Ifill to Burns,  Ifill was a far better player than Burns will ever be

You're about as objective and informative as Morrissey in an abattoir. 

Yeah, of course only you are disappointed and everyone else isn't bothered.

We need, in my view: at least 1 new centre half, a left back, a true centre forward, and possibly a good combative midfielder.

Easy enough! 

Felt a bit like that in the zone when those seagull chants were going at 87 minutes. A bit embarrassing if truth be told.

An objective football fan?? Not many of those around.

Embarrassing?  How so?

I take that back - you're more like Russell Brand - pretentious and adds nothing to society.

#bringbackrichy

We're getting pumped out of a finals game and fans are chanting about a fudgeing seagull? How is it not embarrassing?

It was funny the first couple of times, years later, it isn't.

Pretentious?! 

I might get hammered with "scapegoat" reply's but.........Lia was absolutely s.h.i.t.e tonight. I would say at fault for their first goal.

He took a dive for the second too!

What to say, what to say.......

Doloras, says a lot of things that are straight up and sincere and blunt. We might not always agree but I respect her input, some of her observations are spot on. Stick around "D".

This season......It started with so much hope and positiveness. We played well, scored heaps and then that Stupid Asia cup break. The wheels fell off but we got things going again and then that even more stupid international break that the FFA had us all playing through and that was it game over.

Out of it all came some awesome firsts. Our away record has been brilliant by our usual standards. To see the number of Nix fans at away games has been great and they have been seen in increased numbers. Our home form was woeful to be honest. These last few months have been an absolute mare. I don't blame the Hutt Wreck. To me that was a positive. Pub, parking and a lot closer to the pitch.

The club brought in some good players but like any progression, you have to continually invest and reinvest. Players come and go for various reasons. I think we have the basis of a great squad but it needs tweeking. IMHO we need a LB, a RB, and a solid Center forward in the size of that number 16 City had tonight. But I may well be wrong of course. Ernie has been a great aquisition for the Nix. They must know they have a real diamond in him. He might get it wrong from time to time but some of our football this season has been breath taking.

I've met new fans this year and formed various degrees of friendships and for that I have to thank the Nix. Jeff, Brandon, Fortean (& Partner), Don, & Will. For me, getting to know fellows fans like these has been a huge positive. Getting more familiar with regulars on here and in the zone has been good for me too.

That's my two cents worth....oh and catching up with C-Diddy was also a highlight.

This is some absolute yarns spoken on here, but this takes the cake.

very disappointing tonight, but it was same old same old stuff coughing up another gift away win.Melbourne were clearl better  , we couldnt seem to hold the ball nearly as well as they did. We waited for 80 Mins before showing the attacking pressure i would expect a home side to show. good season overall,but we let ourselves down in the last 2 Months.there are things i dont like about our formation, and about where and how a few of our players are performing. not going to over it now as its in the past. Lets hope for some balanced recruitment over the winter.

We so need a laughing icon on here. Touche Dale.

Steve-O...do you sit on the aisle at row L in aisle 22 by any chance...? 

Stuff major headline -

Phoenix eliminated from A-League playoffs after 2-0 home defeat to Melbourne City

HAMISH BIDWELL                            Last updated 21:39, May 3 2015

And then they have a film clip of the Rugby League. Why do they employ editors at Stuff?

Looking forward to the off season now. In depth analysis, recruiting etc. Hugely disappointed in our final few weeks but enjoyed what I saw in the main. Next year will be great to take that step further.

We were poor and have been since we lost our Mojo.. 

Not sure but teams seem to have worked out a defence and sit quite deep which was stopping our ability to get behind.

No

Because of our not-a-strikers we had no plan B:

We played well this season when there was space for Burns and Krishna to run into, and time and space in the midfield for Roly and WeeMac to play a killer ball. We could do that at the start of the year when teams hadn't realised how to counter it, and it also meant that our away record was our best ever because teams playing at home were more likely to try and attack us more.

But...

When it didn't work because teams played deep and narrow and Burns and Krishna had no space to run into and Roly and WeeMac had no time or space to look for a pass we had nothing else. And apart from the brief Griffiths era we didn't have a striker who could play in a different approach - either a goal box poacher, or someone who could win the ball in the air, or who could play with his back to goal and hold up the ball for runners coming through.

I'm guessing the decision to put Fenton up the park was Ernie's attempt at a plan B at the end of the season but it failed miserably.

Next year can we have a striker please? Then we can have a plan B too

were never going to win in a month of Sundays.

JV can't stand me because I "always blame Ernie", but everyone EXCEPT ME is blaming Ernie and I still get it in the neck.

That said, the guy who said "we've been outcoached" has an interesting point and I'd like to hear more of it. I'd just been convinced that Ernie knew what he was doing but maybe, as usually, I'm full of fudge.

My post wasn't blaming Ernie - he did sign a different type of striker right around the time it was looking like teams had worked us out. It's just that that striker then proceeded to snap his ACL.

It's not the offseason, right?

Im guessing plenty of debate forthcoming....its going to be a long off season

The 10K fans who showed up, did not showed up. I thought it was pretty bad fan performance. Easy to think players did not fight back and at the same time, total silence, I heard some kids yelling. I thought we let them down.

Pretty disappointing end to a season that promised so much. Those last 10 minutes or so last night were pretty miserable sitting there. Got a friend in Melbourne who supports City too so there were Facebook comments etc coming through.

Shame how things fell away towards the end of the season but still a great season compared to the last couple finishing at the bottom. Step in the right direction and hopefully things keep going up from here. We really enjoyed our first season with season tickets and being able to go to most of the games after only being able to make the odd game over the last 2 or 3 seasons with usually being busy on Sunday evenings. Definitely renewing for next season. Was good that it happened to coincide with the club's best season for a while so there was a lot to enjoy. We even went up for the Auckland game for the first time which was cool.

I didn't think the croud was that bad and I think you are being a bit OTT. I mean it's fairly understandable when you think of the performances of late. Most people I spoke to had no idea what the result would be before the match - nobody was particularly optimistic.

Some of us have been chant starters for years. I don't do it as much as I'm sick to death of having a sore throat and losing my voice for 3 days afterwards. 

When you have an end of the season like we've had, the season just seems to damn long.

Probably some hilarious in-joke but why does CroWd always turn to croud when we post?

A really enjoyable season tinged with disappointment.  We really crumbled at the end of the season after getting ourselves into a great position particularly when all we needed to do to finish in the top 2 was to win one more game at home.

I do think we'll look back on this season as a missed opportunity as it's not often that we'll have the best player in the league playing for us, and win that many games away from home. 

And if you're going to emphasise "making the finals" as your team goal, it has to be classed as a failure if you lose to a lower placed team.

I think we got our mid season recruitment badly wrong.  After letting Brockie and Boyd (effectively) go mid-season Appiah- Kwubi did nothing and meant we had to go back to Cunningham who wasn't much good.  No-one really emerged later on to power us over the line (although we go unlucky with Griffiths)

It's a little bit worrying that we've finished both seasons under Ernie pretty much playing our worst football of the year.  But when it's good it's oh so good under him!

positives

- Goals.  It's not stated often enough but watching your team score goals is the best part of football and we did that a lot.

- beating the big teams.  Nothing more enjoyable than knocking off Melbourne this year. 

- Hutt Wreck.  Results weren't great but that was a really clever way to keep games in Wellington.

- Crouds were up by quite a chunk, give us decent time slots and we will get 10k crouds easily.

- Stability.  That was the first year I felt everything was stable and the club is here for the long haul.  The Welnix plan is starting to take effect.

- Moss.  I thought he looked a bit dodgy last year but he was one of our best in 14/15

disappointment

- imports.  Overall our imports weren't great.  Roly was a big plus but he did fade, A - Rod was just a pass given he finished the season on the bench.  Kenny, we're not re-signing so enough said.  Krishna was good but maybe got figured out

- home form.  Obvious, but in a great season there weren't that many great performances at home. 

- crumbled under pressure.  I do think the pressure got to us, yes we lost to good teams but we just fell apart really when it really counted.  We reverse peaked.

- defence.  there was an improvement from last year but in the big games we still conceded too cheaply. 

- kiwis.  Didn't feel like any of our Kiwis apart from Moss had a top season.  And what happened to McGlinchey??

Probably some hilarious in-joke but why does CroWd always turn to croud when we post?

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Looking at the season as a whole, this is the season that probably saved the nix. If we'd gone into license extension negotiations sitting on 9th or 10th we would have been toast. Instead the team can point to the season and say "we were first in the league, we played good footy". 

Shark end. Just ran out of ideas a bit. We need one tall attacking midfielder to give us a long-ball option. I'm not saying that we should kill the "keep it on the ground" philisophy, after all, it's given us our best season ever.

It's just that when you telegraph that you're keeping it on the ground and concentrating on possession just outside the penalty box, and that's your only possible style of play, you provide a very clear signal about how to defend. 

Maybe one in ten balls could be old-style Phoenix lobs into the box to a tall guy. At least then you create a bit of uncertainty and the opposition has to try to defend against two different styles of play at the same time.

Overall I'm keeping it in perspective and I think the boys should be proud that they've probably saved the team from the FFA.

As far as Kiwi's go Fenton and Sigmund had good seasons I thought.

Siggie I thought did well but it started to look a little ragged in the last few weeks

I did too but then he got bumped from fullback for Boxall who I don't rate and then ended up looking lost and ineffective in midfield.  I think he's been treated really shoddily

I course. Thanks for that I'd forgotten it.