Nix vs Brisbane Roar, Sunday 7pm SS3

The Phoenix were much better; they only lost 2-0. That means in their last three away games they scored a grand total of 1 goal and leaked 14 for a negative GD of 13. While the young guys were full of energy there was a lack of structure and understanding throughout the team. The first goal highlighted the role confusion in defense  On attack there was a tendency to rely on individual effort rather than a coherent game plan. While individual players are responsible for their own actions, the tactical confusion points to a malaise emanating from the top.

yeah, he was lucky not to be carded for that "tackle" whilst it kinda looked like he was going for the ball some refs could have seen it differently.

 He was pretty quick to apologise and you can see from his body language he was trying to pull out but momentum is a harsh mistress.

agreed, and for mine the ref got it right - thankfully, some other ref might have shown him a yellow, or red.

I actually laughed out loud when I read that!

All these sarcastic "it's Ricki's fault blah blah" are pretty inane. I haven't read any post on here saying everything is Ricki's fault. I think, like many others, he is PART of the problem though.

What does the coach actually do, if he is not responsible for anything that happens on the pitch? Hell, I'd love his salary to just pick a starting 11 and recruit the odd player, then tell the team to go out there and give it your best shot at halftime, if that's all he's supposed to do.

I can't claim to know much about football but why can't we score from set piece? Ok granted we've had difficulties scoring at Mermaids at the moment but when was the last time we scored a goal directly from a corner or set piece? I can only recall Siggy's header in Christchurch in recent times, and perhaps one where there was pinball in the 18 yard box after another shite corner kick which someone managed to sneak into the goal.

Can someone explain set pieces to me and why we seem to struggle so badly at them? Are we disproportionately bad at them? Because other teams seem to be able to nail theirs into my heart.

Shsssssssssshh..dont tell us that after 2900 plus posts :>).

IMHO its about quality delivery to where you hope someone will be if they havent been cleaned out by someone who is better at making space than they are getting into space...that and vertically challenged strikers will never out jump centrebacks. 

I post a lot but like DNA most of it is rubbish. Speaking of rubbish are we disproportionately rubbish when it comes to set piece goals and what is the solution if that is so? Is this a tactical thing or player driven? Because I thought set piece was supposed to give you at least some opportunity to score.

All I know is that when we give away a FK in a "danger area" I get anxious. But when we are awarded a FK in the same general area (or win one of the thousands of corners we have a tendency to collect) I no longer hold out any hope of scoring.

totally.

To be fair, quality set piece delivery has never been a Phoenix strong point.

I was a bit perturbed to see the loch taking corners from both sides last night in Leo's absence. Looking forward to Hernandez whipping them in next year. Should hopefully lift our strike rate. We are a short team though.... makes it tough.

I didn't resalise so many people had a mistress

Tony Lochhead was on corners. Nuff said.

1) we have nobody that can consistently deliver a quality ball

2) nobody attacks the ball, they all stand like statues waiting on the ball landing on their head. Meanwhile, the other team's defenders have attacked the ball and cleared

Leo scored a pearler from a 35 yd free kick in the rain (took a slight deflection from the wall).

Often repeated thereafter, but never successful.

Just watching a replay. Nobody can ever say I am unwilling to take punishment.

Most disturbing part for me is how disorganised we are, nobody seems to have a clue what's going on. Whilst Ricki can take some or most of the blame, there's surely enough old heads on the field that should know - or have they simply lost interest as some mention? 

Durante can take some responsibility as captain as well. 

I'm not as analytical as many on here [in fact most] but there was a glaring example for me near the end of the game where [I think] Fenton was running down the left wing with the ball and going from the middle to the top third. Inside him were 3 players who didn't even look interested. You could have thrown a blanket over the 3 of them, there was no urgency to get into any position to either receive the ball or get in a position to score. At that moment it struck me, these people don't have that hunger any more, I've seen presidents grade players work harder to score than what these guys did. One of the players was Stein too, so we can't blame age and experience.

It was a generalisation. generally speaking, our set piece delivery is, and always has been, poor.

Even Marco wasn't that great - he takes em at MV and theyre pretty poor too.

Getting a bit desperate when we have to go back to 2009 for examples of a good free kick!

It's always the same, our players wait for the ball to come to them, they don't go to the ball. Schoolboy stuff really.

At least next year we'll have Hernandez on the set pieces!

I think part of the issue is that we actually don't have many good aerial players. Siggy and Dura of course, but who else? Smith is alright in the air but hasn't been playing. Sanchez seems to get a few headers in occasionally but is a midget. Brockie and Stein aren't small but don't seem to be that good at jumping and heading. We must be really easy to defend against on corners.

I don't even think you can claim Dura asa weapon at set pieces. Sigmund really is our only one, and once you only have one, it's pretty easy to defend.

That's not counting Dura's penalty in the play-offs.

Nope, just the lonely goal from our preliminary final against Sydney in 09/10.
Although I do remember him scoring a header in our fiesty friendly with Boca Juniors, as well as an own goal.

I've been at 2 games at RoF in which Dura scored an oggy :O

Discuss.

http://www.ultimatealeague.com/player_detail.php?player_id=168

He scored last season as well against Cold Ghost