Nix vs. Melbourne B Sat 10th 7:30pm

I think people give Smith too much credit.  He is incredibility lazy defensively.

A lazy Smith is better than an any Lia

Which Smith are you talking about?

Guy. He's f**king useless.

Hahahaha

you obviously were not watching the same game I was. I thought we were absolutely outstanding. One of our best away performances.

I thought our formation was excellent. Nice and tight, with good shape. I thought we looked excellent, sung fantastically, and the yellow fever flags and banner were superb. The who are yas with the coordinated arm movements at some of the second half corners down in front of the fever were superb. And the post final whistle singing was ALL us with the "Oh Wellington" the only song in the ground I thought.

Honestly Stevo, I think your assessment is overly negative in the face of a really stirring effort by our boys (and girls). I think you should be giving them some credit rather than picking holes in their performance.bwtcf2012-03-11 09:11:14

if smith is lazy? where do you rate Brown and Lia???

Are there any private investigators here? We seriously need to find out where Tim Brown is hiding those compromising photo's of Ricki and destroy them.

I'm not saying he is more or less lazy than those two.  I'm just not convinced he is the saviour of midfield.

We could barely string two passes together for most of the second half and we were getting completely overrun in midfield in the first.
2ndBest2012-03-11 09:42:29

You make a good point - we do tend to be overly negative/critical. We got another point on the road which is fantastic: we no longer think, play way=loss.

However, there are some maddenly frustrating things about the way we play: especially ball retention. When we do string more than three of four passes together, we look a different team. I seem to recall we had at least six or seven passes before Ifill scored. Coincidence? I think not.

And some players just don't cut the mustard any more(no names, we all know who they are), while others such as Durante, SigmUnd (my MoM), Muscat, Ifill are absolute legends.

I would like to see more 'yoof' in the squad with energy and pace, that others are, er, umm, lacking. Didn't see enough of Tsattalios to get a fully-formed opinion, but I did like the energy I saw.

So, let's celebrate the point, the team and the fans at last night's game. But there is work to do and let's be honest about that too.

There seems to be a consensus on this forum that we don't deserve to be third in the league.

I somewhat agree with doloras... a lot of us seem to act as if all the teams below us have 3-4 games in hand or something

(ignoring the fact that perth do have 1 in hand )

next game, start pav. what can possibly go wrong with that

Funny old game football..innit?

I must be a very misty one eyed fan becaused I thought we should have won in a trott

We need a stable midfield and not use greenie to chase back to fill in or pick the ball up from the defence.  Watch him and you will see a young footballer giving his all working hard off the ball. How he does it week after week for as long as he lasts before wearing out.

This. The clamour to resign him quickly for next season perplexes me. I don't want to see us use an import slot just on the basis that he is a slightly better passer than Brown and Lia.

Really. Is that when the owner had no money to buy players, or when the owners won't spend money to buy players?

He got Phoenix's MOM in Melbourne's Herald Sun.

One of our best away performances you have to be having a laugh.Our ability to return possesion to the opposition is outstanding,speed might be overrated but sh*t it would be nice to have some.

Thirteen passes before our goal

ok, that in 90 minutes of football...........

As I said upthread, the fact that we scored after stringing together a goodly number of passes, is no coincidence.

I think Smith makes a massive difference to our ability to retain and distribute the ball. Plus he can dribble and score the odd one or two, and he's good in the air.

It took him time to settle when he came on but made an impact, did his bit to defend the centre of the park as well.

Actually, no. That scenario would move Sydney above us, but no other teams (except maybe Perth), meaning that at worst we would finish 5th. Sydney still have to play Heart and Jets, so if Sydney win both of those games, the two other teams don't get any points from those games, and as they are currently 5 points behind us, they would be guaranteed to finish below us on the table. Mathematicians check all possible scenarios before coming to a conclusion.

patrick4782012-03-11 11:47:37

Sorry Bwtcf, seems like there's no place for humour here mate, this is serious business!
To all the YF Away crowd, you were magnificent!
The numbers seem to be steadily growing, and good to have such a visible and vocal presence.Well done!

Was another hard watch last night for me.  Despite sterling defence from our regular stars the lack of connecting passes and poor ball retention was frustrating. However on reflection the game was played at pace, and the pressure that Melbourne Heart put on the ball meant a lot of the Nix passing was hurried.

WPFC12012-03-11 13:50:04

We were outplayed for large parts of the game, however we defended well. By only conceding one goal, we kept ourselves in the game and it meant that we only had to score once to get a point out of the game. In past seasons, we would have gone down 1-0 and then given up and conceded more, essentially killing off the game.

The fact that we can take points out of games where we are not playing very well and have been dominated for large parts of the game is what has got us this far up the table.

Besides, if we can play like we did last night against the Tards we will thump them, they were awful last night against Sydney. A potential 4 points from 2 games away from home would have been considered Holy Grail at the start of the season!

That's a bizarre analysis and I think you don't you have very good memory.

If you look at our 09/10 record against this year's record, this year has been a much improved overall performance. Getting fourth in 09/10 was all about our form right at the end of the season, and it was exciting coming from nowhere, which is all you are remembering. Up until that late run though we were nowhere near as good as this year. Yes we have two tough games still to come but our recent form at the back end of this season is easily as good as it was in 09/10.

I must of missed it on the field...

But did Fred get subbed off/pulled straight after his failed Oscar performance? (diving)

He was pissed for being taken off - but if it was after that, then man up son...

Its becoming apparent that smith and sanchez our best ball players have very little chance under Ricki. Thats gonna hurt us come playoff time.

Look, I think this season has been a lot better than expected, lets be honest. However, has that much of it been truly 'exciting'? I'm not so sure (sadly I missed both the 5-2 and 4-2 games over xmas/new year so my outlook may be skewed slightly!). We have defended doggedly and Durante, SigmUnd and Muscat in particular really have been superb for most of the season. In my view, it is that defence that has got us into the position we are in.

For me, and for many others too it would seem, it is the midfield that just does not generate any excitement whatsoever most of the time. If we really want to go all the way and WIN the title, we must sign that elusive creative midfielder, we must sign a striker, and possibly another winger as well.

Although it won't happen I think we should be looking at potential replacements for the following players:

Lochhead
Brown
Lia
Bertos
Daniel
Pavlovich
Smith (if a better import can be found)

The base is already there, another creative Ifill type and a striker and I might've felt confident about winning the league this year. At this stage I'd say we can get to the minor final or semi final or whatever it's called (where we got to last time) at best.

Was a good big support there, you looked good and some good goal celebrations too.

Hence why I said most of the second half.  One swallow doesn't make a summer.

Now there's an insight...and an opportunity to offer a contrasting view.
Ricki has put his faith in his Nix squad, each individual has a role, with a shared responsibility for the right outcome. More often they have delivered this season, only a few times they haven't. Turning to the chequebook as a means of sorting out performance issues flys in the faith of that philosophy.Barring injury replacement,ain't going to happen.
The culture within the squad seems to be along the lines of
 "WE are the Wellington Phoenix, WE are good enough to go all the way, JUST AS WE ARE!"

I admit that, at times all I see are occasional flashes of brilliance, of scrambling, under pressure but ultimately effective defence,  amid a swathe of glaring mistakes, clattering, clumsy tackles, turning over of possession, slow,aging players being outrun by younger fitter opposition, etc etc. and it can be frustrating.
What I don't see ( and is what has got the Nix to where they are this season so far, IMO )is the unity of purpose and commitment, along with personal responsibility each and every Nix player seems to possess, that has engendered a strong team spirit so often talked about.

Will it be enough to take them all the way...or will they be found wanting?