Ernie Merrick - former Phoenix manager

Brett Angel is nothing if not entertaining

Thanks Ernie for the humerous press conferences and when we were top of the league for a few weeks in the 2014/2015 season.

Who are we missing out on? Which players in the Stirling Sports Premiership should given 'nix contracts? Zero names leap out at me. If you have a core squad of 15 then one injury can mean you will be fielding an 18 year old in a crucial position. You keep those guys around because when you lose 5-6 players in an international window, you want someone with experience. 

The problem with always looking for the next gem is they are few and far between. When you get a gem like Rojas, Smeltz or Burns they don't tend to stick around for long. 

Our problem is that we aren't in the market for Aussie talent. Decent Australians don't seem to come here (Burns, Durante exceptions). Would any of our current Australians get A-league deals elsewhere? We also hardly ever bring New Zealanders back from Europe. Our options are 5 foreigners, state league Aussies and the best local players we can get. You seem to be wanting us to get rid of Ridenton/Rufer for players of Rogerson's quality when Rogerson isn't getting a look in himself.

Your last paragraph sums up the problem that my suggestion was trying to address. You are 100% correct. We aren't in the market for Aussie talent, we don't have great Aussies, there's not enough NZ talent to bring back from Europe and our options are limited. Given the lack of options and the fact we seem to be perennially stuck in the bottom half of the table maybe the team needs to be more ruthless with the talent pool they have available outside of the core squad. Between nine Aussie teams they seem to find enough gems (or at the very least A-League starting quality) from within Australia, but for the last few years we've found none in the whole of NZ? 

And basically yes, I'm suggesting giving Ridenton/Rufer a go, but if they aren't up to it, moving them on for players like Rogerson. And if he's not up to it, moving him on as well. There may not be many gems, but they are out there. It's like the old strikers adage, you're not going to score unless you have a shot. With a small bench you need players who might be able to change a game, and while Ridenton and Rufer may be solid squad players they aren't game changes. Watson maybe, but he should be starting. Boyd had the ability, surely there are more like him out there.

COME ON Brett Angel 

I don't think the Aussie teams do find that much quality, they seem to just recycle the same old journeymen. In fact I know Australians are really worried about the lack of quality coming through and put that down to a change in the way the youth system and academy systems were setup a few years ago.

If you recall we signed more NPL players this season than the rest of the teams combined so they aren't actively hunting for talent they seem to be holding on to their promising  fringe players as we do.

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I don't think the Aussie teams do find that much quality, they seem to just recycle the same old journeymen. In fact I know Australians are really worried about the lack of quality coming through and put that down to a change in the way the youth system and academy systems were setup a few years ago.

If you recall we signed more NPL players this season than the rest of the teams combined so they aren't actively hunting for talent they seem to be holding on to their promising  fringe players as we do.

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I think I somewhat agree with this.

I think most fans wouldn't expect us to be able to compete with Victory, City and Sydney on recruitment, and possibly not the wanderers either. We have been pretty much on par or better than Newcastle and Mariners the last few seasons (obv the mariners used to be far ahead of us) so I guess it comes down to what do Perth, Brisbane and Adelaide do with their recruitment and their star players to produce better results than us?

I think oz is on a real upswing. Bruce Kamau, the guy who went to Roma, Mauk, Luongo. They're in a good place.

Yeah, think Oz are getting a lot better - Rogic at Celtic going pretty well too.

Aussie youth teams have had a series of poor results missing out on tournaments

That is true but not always an indication of the talent within those squads. The Aussie u17 team that reached the WC final in '99 here in NZ had no real stars come out of it, Jade North being the most capped for Australia from that lot and only a 3 or so got capped for Australia.

You can just look at CCM - they signed Faty, Tavares, Necevski, Pain, Powell, Appiah and Galloway. They were all basically rejects from other clubs. Other clubs have done similar.

The big clubs (like Victory) can sign Mitch Austin who certainly isn't a reject. However, they are not exactly developing their own players in that sense.

Not sure that matters if those players still go on to do as well as a Rogic.

Perhaps less focus on results and more focus on the way that they are playing?

Darren Bazeley being linked to the job now:

http://m.nzherald.co.nz/sport/news/article.cfm?c_i...

This is the type of person I expect to become the new manager. Cheap.

Why do you think they would hire someone simply because they are cheap? 

I doubt Ernie was cheap and they won't want to throw away the investment that they've made in this squad and the rest of the Phoenix franchise by hiring someone cheap. 

I think the main factor is going to be timing not price.

Not point having marquee players and then signing a cheap coach. Coaching is the one place you should be willing to spend.

Agree with Ryan.... er both of them.

You can't assemble what is considered by some to be a good horse and then put an average jockey on top. We may end up with an average jockey but not solely based on price. 

I would say if anything, price would probably not be a consideration unless a particular person requests something completely out of whack.

What would Ernie have been earning? $300k? I have no idea but just guessing.

Wonder if Big Sam has applied?

Something has been bugging me a bit about the Merrick resignation and I only put my finger on it last night. 

He wanted to resign after the Melbourne game and he has now gone.  In all that time he really has not tried anything radically different in terms of selections or strategy other than dropping Bonevacia for 1 game.  He's basically signed a bunch of players in the summer, set the team up and then said nope this isn't working, time to go.  I just can't quite get my head around that, why not try playing with Hamish Watson from the start, or dropping Krishna.  It just seems a bit weird to walk away from what may well be his last role at this level without at least trying to roll the dice.

He said there was a lot of things he wasn't happy about before the Victory match. Doesn't come across as someone giving it there all. Perhaps time for retirement?

A good point and I can't really answer it. After the Victory game, we did get 6 points from a possible 12 as well. It's a bit strange that someone who gets the squad they want, could leave after 8 games. Merrick wanting to leave after 4 games when we had invested in the tea over the off season seems strange indeed.

Merrick has always been someone who trusts his squad and will stick with it until it works (or in this case, doesn't)

Was a common criticism during his Victory time.

Podcast on Ernie Merrick

https://audioboom.com/posts/5361150-radio-sport-nz...

 

Maybe he quit not because of things he could control (squad, tactics, etc) but because of things he couldn't (board, staff, FFA, referees, general lack of continuing enthusiasm, ...).

He said in an interview that he knew he could turn the team around but just not quickly enough and this was the best way to motivate them. So my take is that he has confidence in the squad, the tactics, etc. but he knows that they have to start performing now or the season is a right off and that only gives them three years to get to meet those metrics rather than four.

By quitting he's hoping to spark some life in the team and start that rebuilding process.

Sir Ricki.
Saint Ernie.

I thought he said at some point - was it after the Victory debacle? - that he couldn't get the younger players to play the way he wanted. Parkhouse? Fenton? Tratt? Ridenton? Watson? ... that's getting on for half the first team, not including Fox, Rufer, etc.

It's like he was saying not that they lack technique but that they can't "see" the game - or see it the way he sees it. 

Wonder why? Ernie seemed a good communicator.

If the reason is because they're kids, and their brains simply get scrambled in the heat of battle, then the new coach might have similar problems.

Well that's coaching 

Sure, but maybe that's not an especially good reason to quit

I guess one could ask if all the players were behind him 100%. I don't think so.

Maybe he felt if he goes early enough it gives a new coach a glimmer of hope of stamping their name and turning the squad around.

I'm a few days late to this party, but I'll type up what I know about the attitudes inside the camp in the build up to the resignation.

Ernie lost the dressing room mid last year. The players were frustrated with him, his rigidity, his refusal to do anything new. They were annoyed he didn't turn up for the first 3 weeks of preseason (seriously that's fudgeed up) and senior players had had words with Rob Morrison about Ernie's continuing tenure as early as preseason.

Morrison was ready to appoint somebody this week, and it was *not* Mark Rudan, despite some of the rumours. That's been put on hold for a bit, and Greenacre and Buckingham are taking over for the meantime, with large amounts of input from the senior players.

People in the team were annoyed about a few things: Roly's performances and attitude as well as Ernie's refusal to play players who had earned their spot - there is a feel in the team that guys like Lowry have earned more minutes (why is Parkhouse at LB ahead of him?), but with Ernie at the helm the XI was predictable week in, week out and that causes a lot of disruption amongst the fringe players.

Overall it seems like frustration had been building for a while and this is how it has boiled over, I'm really hoping that we see things changing, but I don't know how drastic it will be given its still Greeny and Des at the helm, and todays XI looks like mostly the same players, but with Watson starting we may be about to see an actual, real life striker on the pitch!

100% a case of jumping before he was pushed, but we knew that.

2 Wags have already left the country due to the earthquakes (Finkler and Bonevacia) with Mrs Rossi soon to follow, and the chances of Marco being back next year are slim to none unless we offer him marquee money somehow (I do think he's worth more to us than Kosta or Gui) so I'm sure stuff like that is a distraction to the players as well.

"We don't know what we're doing!"

So people have been talking shark to the press?

I heard a rumor that Merrick had been spending a lot of time in Melbourne but didn't know how true it was.

Rossi signed a two year deal I thought? I don't know if Italy is any safer from Earthquakes than here :(

I'm assuming not Italy?

No disrespect intended to you or your sources, but this is the first time I personally am hearing any of this, which seems odd that this player revolt against Ernie has been covered up for almost a year. I have become skeptical of anonymous internal sources since one told me that Stephen Joyce was going to be the next Prime Minister and Bill English was a distraction.

I don't know nelfoos but he's previously disclosed his source on here (assuming it's the same), and they're someone close to the team.

The truth is likely somewhere in between, Durante wasn't acting (or if he was he's improved since Shortland st) at the press conference and there was real regret there. 

People like to gossip and, as Ernie said, everyone is upset when you lose. The truth probably isn't that he lost the dressing room fully, although it might have seemed that way sometimes when players gossiped. And the truth probably wasn't that people still bought wholesale into his philosophy, because it obviously wasn't getting results. Like most things in life the real truth lies somewhere in the middle and would change depending on who you spoke to and how they felt on the day.

it's also always easier for players to blame the system, coaching or anything but themselves for under-performing - even at professional level.

that said I personally don't believe I have seen any player give less than 100% during Ernies reign although some have looked less than inspired.

I get what you mean entirely, and as my info is coming from a biased source I'm only getting parts of the information.

They did say that the players were upset to see Ernie go as a person, and the regret in the presser was very real on that front from Dura, but they were more than happy to see him go as a coach.

I am also remembering this through a wee bit of an alcohol fog so there could be inaccuracies too!