Nick Ward

Kosta chose to go to the Roar, he was offered a contract here. Can we all just please drop it? Pav > Kosta for the Nix stye of play IMO. And since when was he an attacking midfielder?

Ifill can get away with it somewhat because of what else he brings to the team.

I still think Ward is a better option than Lia or Brown but he still isn't the answer we've been waiting for over the last 2 seasons. (an attacking mid)

Too bad Fred never came permanently.valeo2010-11-07 14:01:25

Really I just think Ward is lazy and arrogant. When he comes on as a sub it's not like he pours his heart into the game and runs around trying to involve himself (though atm that can be said for a lot of the team), he seems to think he's much better than he is - I usually hate it when he makes runs with the ball because he doesn't f**king pass to anyone at the right time, and he gets tackled easily as he tries to take on too many players.
I can't name one moment (apart from his goal) where he's actually done anything useful. He's just a waste of space on the field and appears to me to have the wrong attitude off it (such as talking about how he wanted to smash his old team even though he wasn't good enough to even warm the bench for them; that just comes across as stupid and arrogant to me).
You can dispute any of these points and probably find Phoenix players to match all of them but maybe in the end I just haven't warmed up to having a Melbourne Victory reject that all their fans agree is useless.
I will give him as many chances as it takes for him to prove he's a worthy part of the team, but until he does that, I will remain critical.

I've been critical of Ricki and his selctions all week and although it was far from an impressive performance due to our inability to hold the ball and a few players who seem a little lazy i'll eat my humble pie and say well done.  We all want the Phoenix to win, they won so i'm happy.  They won without Nick Ward so i'll take that on board too! Well done ricki, Well done Siggy and well done Tim Brown.

I still think Ward would've been a good option off the bench coming on for Lia, Brown or Elliott who were obviously tired.

Ward has definitely done something in training for mine and it will be interesting to see how long he stays with us.

And they were all on yellow cards

Yeah there is not much point putting Rojas on the bench if he is too scared to use him until the 92nd minute.  He looked like he could have made a difference in the last 15mins with our counter attacking.

It wasn't a good time to introduce a small, young, inexperienced player so I agree with not putting Rojas on, tbh

Having two forwards on the bench was

I guess my point is....when is a good time to bring Rojas on....when you are 3-0 up or 3-0 down I suppose...in other words he doesn't trust him in a tight situation.  I'm just saying if he picks him for the bench play him...i'm sure he produced the same result as big mac did tonight.