Ernie Merrick - former Phoenix manager

Star jumps. I wanna see more star jumps.

See what you've started? :-)

Good luck herding these feral cats!

After being in a group of people some years ago with Miron having  a general chat about football, I don't think  much of him.(football wise)

Miron?  He is a bit of a maverick, and while football is his passion he has other things he can do for a living. Heck, he was even a fully fledged colonel (or equivalent) in Israeli Navy, which is not a bad thing when it comes to enforcing discipline among the unruly players:-)   My main concern with him would be that he is what you would call "mercurial". Ricki may have his faults, but being fickle and temperamental ain't it. Miron may stick around for a season but would be itching to do something else soon after that.

My own preference would be Ernie Merrick. He has just finished his stint as the national coach of Hong Kong (late October last year) and I am not aware of him signing anywhere else at the moment. Superb tactician, and similar in temperament to Ricki Herbert - reserved, quiet, not flashy, and always respected by the players. May not agree to work with Ricki as Director of Football and him as a coach, but you never know. If Rickipromised not to meddle in tactics, we may be on to a winner. And Wellington is closer to Melbourne than Honkers.

 Merrick wouldn't get us playing sexy football.

i don't mind the thought of merrick either

miron is actually quite creative tactically - likes to put players between the lines.  some of our might struggle with this concept

interesting what leggy said about not being impressed with miron

throwing in a dark horse - ross aloisi

 Ross Aloisi may be familiar with the 'Nix but would be too inexperienced even as a young (?) coach.

I'd rather consider Paul Okon or someone of his profile. If money was no object, Rini Coolen is available!

Seeing that Ricki seems destined to stay on as a DoF or similar, I doubt we'll have much budget for a new coach. Any significantly experienced or high profile (for the HAL) coach will probably cost too much and I doubt many would be too happy about working under Ricki.

So as I see it our options are young or inexperienced coaches who are hungry and keen to make their mark. What do people actually think of Neil Emblen as an option? The only team of his I've seen play was the Olympic side last year but I thought they looked really well organised and played a good brand of football. Plus he has worked with Ricki before.

Is there some reason why he seems to get dismissed out of hand around here? 

I think the reason why Emblen gets dismissed in some quarters is because while he has run a couple of men's teams for a couple of seasons, he tended to focus more on the youth and development of them.

At the moment he is NRFL (1 or 2) so that's a hell of a jump to HAL

I would support Emblen as coach.  Good career as a pro, has some experience playing in the A-League, knows NZ players well and I assume knows the A-League pretty well too as an observer.  He has about the same level of experience as RH did when he took over (successful domestic NZ coach, some international experience as a number 2 and some as a number 1 - although with Olympic team).  I liked the football he played at the Olympics - I went to 2 of the three matches and was really impressed.  It's by no means a slam dunk, he may not be the right guy for the next 6 years but I would be cautiously optimistic if he was appointed.

But I think he'd be very isolated if the only support he had at the club was Chris Greenacre, Gould and Dome.  That's a very inexperienced team.  My preference would be an experienced GM to deal with contracts, etc.  Some will suggest Herbert for that.  I personally wouldn't support that structure because I think we need a clean break and RH should be focussing on the AWs but if that did happen maybe it could work.

John Herdman??

possession based yes fine .Under rikki not working .Back to plan A for the remainder of season then mabye straight into plan B come season's end .

sadly i think RH will be out of the coaching role by then .

would love to win the league but it aint happening this year

Has Nick Mulvey re-signed with the Raw?
I think he is a young, up and coming coach who may be worth a shot.

Never mind the Raw this year - they were doomed to under achieve after losing Ange, but look at what he did with GCU when he took over..

Yes has a 2 year contract.

The River City Crew really are quite silly.

Good tekkers on the banner though.

 My initial thoughts as well Fale.

What would the jump from womens to mens be like? And anyone see him at work when he was in NZ?

 I think we need to sign the A-Leagues first Marquee coach. Arsene Wenger is about to walk out, bring him here

Really? You would sack Ricki and appoint Emblen?

You are right about the Phoenix back-room looking very light on experience if he was just a straight swap for Ricki. The only real advantage I can see with Emblen is that he might be prepared to work under Ricki if Ricki was in a DoF/GM role. But you don't want that, and it seems Welnix can't afford it anyway.

It's interesting that the level of back-room support is already being highlighted as a potential problem for a new coach but doesn't really feature as a mitigation in the Sack Ricki debate (you called it an "excuse" the other day). I'm sure Ricki would love to work under an experienced GM also.

Maybe we should start a "GM angst" thread. And then a "GM options" thread.

Nah, just jokes.

John Herdman? Is that a pisstake? Not enough skirt in the team for him.

General Manager=GM=Gareth Morgan?

Don't forget that any new coach needs a Pro Licence by the start of the 2015/16 season (18 months away)

http://www.footballfedtas.com.au/uploads/media/Minimum_Coaching_Requirements.pdf

Don't think Emblen (or any other of the NZ possibles) has one yet?

Like a, special coach?

Maybe that's why Miron's teams were as tactically inept as we are. Only with them it may have been because the players didn't know what was going on. Oh wait.....

To J Vader, Herdman was brought out by Southland Football and one of his tasks was to coach the Southern League team. His trainings and coaching were very very good, players probably were not up to the quality. He found that he could progress through the ranks of NZ Football by coaching womens teams. Because he had a perceived success he was offered an opportunity that may have been bigger than what was on offer in NZ. Not sure whether your comment was because he coached womens teams or he was a skirt chaser..

Would a combination of Trani and Emblen work? They would seem to me to offer some complimentary skills possibly.

E.g. Trani has a knowledge of the Phoenix culture, and importantly the current players group (one of the keys things for the new coach would be to get the senior players onside e.g. Dura, Ifill, Bertos, and Trani has a headstart there). He also has links to Aussie sides for recruitment (e.g. wasn't he behind Muscat coming). Whereas Emblen has a knowledge of the NZ scene, and NZ youth scene and I think this will be important to Welnix, given their longterm plan to bring NZ youngsters through the club.

Some cons of course would be their lack of experience, but you have to get that somewhere, and this might be a reality if we don't want to pay for a marquee coach (very likely). Also whether they could implement the new style that the owners are looking for. There's also whether Trani has been tarnished by his involvement with the away games this year, but it's pretty vague as to what that really entails.

Term x - take your point about coaching licenses as well. That would obviously be a pretty important factor, but I have no idea where to find out where prospectives are at on that.

Are you saying that women footballers don't think for themselves? I'm no feminist but that seems slightly sexist...