EOY Player Ratings

For this I thought I would start from our best to 'worst' with a rating out of 10. 

Krishna 9.5

Almost the perfect season from our main striker. Ended the season as Golden Boot and a player in hot demand. Works hard on defence and is always a threat. Missed out on a 10 due to his penalty taking and red card.

Kurto 9

Pun intended here, he keeped us in games at different times this year, proving to have great reflexes. Had a couple moments of error with positioning, or not dominating his space, but compared to every other keeper, you'd be pretty hard to find one with less errors. Ended the season with the most saves despite not playing every game.

Fenton 8.5

I bagged him all pre season, didn't think he had what it takes to coe back, let along be arguably the best rwb in the comp. Great engine, great intensity he scored some crucial goals for us this season and also started to find his mojo taking players on again. His worth was really shown by his loss.

Carcace 8.5

18 years old and played more minutes than anyone. Calm and confident going forward or on defence, it hard to find fault with him, other that he needs to work on his finishing and continue to improve his delivery. Was great some weeks going forward, but missing others.

Sail 8

Has he not been sitting behind Kurto in the pecking order, may have pushed himself into top spot. Did well whenever call upon, making numerous saves and showing a strong presence inside his box. Has a monster of a kick as well.

Williams 8

A great year from a player who started on the bench and worked himself into not only being a starter, but a certain one. Scored 11 goals and formed a great partnership with Krishna. Another player who showed a great engine and heart for the cause. Did run a little hot and cold this season, and sometimes fell out of games, thus not a higher grade.

Rufer 8

Scores a little higher, simply because he outperformed my expectations of him, hands down. Strong on the ball, he gave nothing short of everything every game becoming the first name on the team sheet from a midfield perspective.

Burgess 7.5

The boy can run. Great engine and some nice touches as well, with an eye for a pass. His only failings, a lack of goal scoring threat and his reluctance to use his right foot. Having had a couple goes at being a pro earlier in his career, it was great to see him take this opportunity. 

Taylor 7

Our best defender when fit. Calm on the ball and a threat in the air, we always looked better with him on the pitch. Hard to fault him, as not obvious errors come to mind. However, his injuries pull him down a point or two.

Singh 6.5

When on song, what a player, but when he's not, he gets carried. He's a player with all the potential in the world, he just needs to learn how to take control of a game on a regular basis. Famed for his long range shooting, that didn't happen for him this year which was disappointing. Needs to develop a little more mongrel as well.

Kopa 6.5

Did nothing as a DM, but as a CB, suddenly offered us something a little different, a player who could play out and control the tempo from the back. Able to play anywhere along the back three, his versaitlity was needed as injuries mounted. A couple little errors here and there, but overall a good shift.

Sheridan 6

One goal and 4 assists is not great. But he didn't see many minutes. Looks a god player in the right set up, which was not ours for him this year. Good in the air, quick along the ground and he makes good runs. Loads of potential not realised.

Mandi

A couple nice goals and near misses... he was a player who looked off the pace at the start of the season and by the end of it. Seemed to lack the drive to chase down players at different times and made a few needless errors. When on song, he had a good pass, read the game well, making vital challenges. Too inconsistant though.

Durante 6

A tale of thirds - average start, great middle, average end. Still a good player, but he has become increasingly error prone as the season has progressed. He still reads the game as well as anyone, and is able to bring the ball forward confidenty, however, his lack of pace is becoming increasingly noticeable.

Doyle, Golec, Lowry, Fox 5

The rest of the CBs all rate here. Did ok, but clearly not at the level of their peers. Sad to see Doyle fall out of favour so much, but his constant fouling in silly areas and inability to hit a pass other than a long one left his team mates scrambling too much.

Burns 5

Showed some nice touches in ink up play, but lost the ability to score and back himself. Injuries ruined any chance of a come back.

No one else played enough to warrant.

Good to see the youngsters coming through though.

I wouldn't have Sail that high off limited matches, did well earlier in the season but wasn't great in last match.

Order is pretty accurate,  but considering we finished 6th out of 10 teams I'd drop most by a point or two.

5 is quite generous for Burns.

I would have Taylor higher.

It's a pretty decent summing up I think. Roy/Kurto outstanding, terrific contributions from the young Kiwis, and although I have some misgivings about the consistency of the imports you'd have to say they've been the most effective set of imports we've had for a very long time, perhaps ever.

agreed my ratings are a little high, but they are based on my start of season expectations.

Good work - thanks for the effort - but as for the ratings, I would have Ben Waine rated higher than Burns. Neither of them has scored, and both played only limited amount of time, but Waine looked more confident, entertaining and promising better things to come.

Burns looked pretty good at the start of the season, I also think Mandi is being severely underrated, out of all the imports he's the one I hope we can convince to stay.

Krishna's rating is pretty generous IMO. I know that sounds ridiculous with what he accomplished, but there were a fair number of games where he was absolutely invisible, as well as two games where he costed us points with his penalties. He's a fantastic player, undoubtably a top 3 player in the club's history, but a 9.5 rating makes it sound as though he was our best player almost every game when that just wasn't the case. I'd give Krishna an 8.5 and I'd give Kurto a 9.5 as he single-handedly saved our arses in at least 4 games this year.

Burns gets a 3.5 from me at best. So much promise when he returned to the club late last season and by the end of this season became our 5th choice striker.

Unpopular opinion, but Cacace was good, just not thaaat good though to warrant an 8.5.

yeh I'd probably bump up Mandi and Kopa a little on the basis of where our engine room was. Probably.

Yeh I'd agree on Krishna- I think he's got another couple of gears he could go through and have an even greater season. 

It's hard to judge players who are consistent against players who can do things others can't. David Williams and Singh (and Kurto for that matter, but he was also fairly consistent!) did some things that were just unbelievable. 

Burgess was fairly consistent and got through a lot of kms, but Singh was capable of making something outa nothing. Burgess made a clutch goal for Krishna, but nothing like Williams scorchers.

I'd say compared to start of season expectations they are pretty on point except for Burns. Start of season I was expecting him to be a top 3 player for the club with his experience and wages, the result was more than disappointing thats a 3 from me.

Piney has one on the NZH, but it can only be accessed on line if you buy the premium package... which I refuse to do.

Would love a summary if someone can provide one.

Anything over 8 is quite ridiculous. 

Mandi was better than Rufer.

Even for the guy who scored more goals than anyone else in the league (200 or so players...)? It's probably not even debatable he gets at least an 8, let alone ridiculous.

...unless you missed the quote button and just meant Cacace in which case I tend to agree. 

Fenton maybe .85

Wow, that's harsh. I wouldn't even put Burns that low!!

Burns is a 0, or negative if possible. 2nd highest paid player in the squad and non-existent on the pitch.

Realistically, the only chance Burns has next year is an overseas stint in SE Asia or the minimum back in AU or here. Considering he has done nothing in nearly 18 months (and the time prior to that) there wont be a demand for him. Personally, I would resign him on reduced terms. Hes a bit like Sheridan. He can play, just forgotten how to score goals. There was one game where Burns hit the upright twice. They go in and he is away laughing.

He has not lived up to his salary, but he is still a Johnny Warren and confidence footballer. A reduced salary, if he accepted, I could happily live with.

Sometimes you see a good player struggle, and get the sense that he just needs a a couple of things to go right for him and he'll be back to his usual best. With others, you just get the feeling that they're done. 

Everything I've seen from Burns over the last 12 months (and probably longer than that judging by how he's gone since his first stint here) suggests the latter for me.

If he's carrying a long term injury which has affected his performances then it makes things tough. It makes signing him a gamble. I'd like to see him stay because of his history with the club and the fact that he's a good leader off the pitch but it would have to be on a whatever's-left-in-the-cap-and-we'll-help-you-rehab sort of deal.

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Its backed up statistically too. The guy is only 19, yet his stats don't look out of place among the league's best attacking midfielders - 5 goals, 8 assists, 35 key passes, 80.1% passing accuracy. For reference these are the comparative stats for some of the league's biggest stars from big market clubs:

Keisuke Honda - 7 goals (4 pens), 6 assists, 33 key passes, 84.5% passing acc.

James Troisi - 5 goals, 8 assists, 33 key passes, 75.1% passing acc.

Diego Castro - 7 goals, 5 assists, 38 key passes, 82.3% passing acc.

Milos Ninkovic - 2 goals, 6 assists, 27 key passes, 83.3% passing acc.

Riley McGree - 7 goals, 4 assists, 30 key passes, 80.2% passing acc.

Roly Bonevacia - 7 goals, 7 assists, 30 key passes, 81.4% passing acc.

Regardless of whether he was patchy at times, the kid had a massive season.

I guess this answers my question of how to judge Singh- on results! 

Rudan was probably a) making him keep up the effort to improve and b) hoping to have him come on fired up at 0-0 with 40 minutes to go, against a tired defence.

Has to be higher than Cacace and Fenton for me. His goals got us 13/40 points, just 3 fewer than the 16 pts that Krishna's 18 goals earned us. He scored his 11 from 6.7 expected goals, luck plays a part for 1 or 2 above xG, but more than that is a sign of class, which is believable in his case.

Absolutely spot on, I've previously noted here that the entire success of the season (and it was a successful season given where we've been the last three years) has been down to the outstanding performances from Krishna and Williams. We've won games this season we had no right to because one or the other had an absolute blinder.

Williams reminded me of Glen Hoddle. Only scored in front of the TV cameras and it always had to be something spectacular.  Any one of his 11 would be gladly claimed by most of us. I hope he and "Special K" stay.

My abiding memory this season of Burns was when during halftime at one of the games, he came out along with a few other non playing squad members in his suit and kicked balls into the crowd. I remember thinking that here was a Johnny Warren medal winning player who as he kicked another ball into the crowd must have been thinking to himself "Where did it all go wrong?"

Fixed

Piney's ratings are higher than mine!

He gave Durante an 8 - surely thats a nostalgia influence rating.

No argument from me that Kurto has been very good this season.

What I meant was that even with him in goal, we were still pretty bad defensively and gave up a lot of goals (in fact easily worst of all the teams that finished in the top 7). Without that level of production from Krishna and Williams, we wouldn't have seen the playoffs, Kurto's performances notwithstanding.

Taylor brought the best out of Dura. Probably his best season for 5 years.

Do you think if we had someone average and not Kurto in goal we would have seen the playoffs?

I personally think playing in a back three brought out the best in Dura.

With 46 goals scored, we still would have had a decent chance imo. Obviously helped by the fact that only 7 teams had a shot at top 6 this season.

In fact, just thinking back to some maths I did before the season started, 46 goals is usually enough for a top 4 spot. Guess that shows that it's been quite a strange season.

I think there is very little room for sentimentality here based on one good season a while ago. If you have some context to show that Burns is a good leader off the pitch then that would be helpful, but if he continues not playing then good leadership is simply not enough.  We will have Durante hopefully playing on, and easing into precisely that role now (unless he makes good on his statement that he might even play a year across the ditch).   And speaking of playing across the ditch, I would agree to see Burns as contributing in other ways to our development work with new / young // squad members, but ultimately he is likely to return home to Australia sooner or later while someone like Dura may well come back here after his playing days are over.