Official Signings(Re or otherwise).

In bold are all the imports I would allege that are a cut above, certainly better than what I have seen of Smith and Sanchez. In italics are all those whom I think you could make a case that they are better than S & S. (I'll make no comment on Totori as he's a bit of an unknown quantity.)

Furthermore I would claim that clubs in Australia have an easier time of recruiting the best Aussies, they can get import quality Aussies and the better of their players in general. We have a much harder time doing this, how many established Aussies have come over here of their own volition? There's Dura, Muscat doesn't really count although we did manage to keep him in the face of competition.

For this reason I make the claim our imports need to be especially strong, because we have difficulty in attracting local players of higher quality.

I'm not really as pessimistic as the tone of this might make me sound but I do think our imports are very important to us, more so than other clubs and the light of that makes our collection of imports look a little shabbier then they would be otherwise.

Yep,so one per team really except Brisbane. To which I counter with ifill. So this import business is not an indicator that we are doomed. 

Also,we may have a SLIGHTLY harder time of recruiting Australians,but we also have the huge advantage of being able to counter that by recruiting kiwis. 

Not doomed. 

Ha... Diego, Toto, George, Chen....

If he was going to light up the league, I suspect the other 9 teams may well have taken a look. The fact that he has remained up signed for this long.....

I really dislike people writing off players before they have even played a game.

Some players thrive in one team and then fail in another. (Kwasnik?)

Others dont get signed then shine when given a chance to step up. (Muscat/Siggy)

It can come down to tactics, formations, personal life or team environment, and I think we wont know where Totori will go until we see a bit of him in action

Hah, I wondered how long it would be before we saw Trope 1 of Negative Fandom: "All our signings are crap, because if they weren't crap they wouldn't have signed with us".

I can see the point you are making. The difference with Sigmund was that he was far and away the best player in the Premiership when he made the step up. He just had problems lasting 90 mins with cramping. Was Totori far and away the best player in the Premiership? Nope. He was in his early days when he was young and fit at Manawatu. Now he has put on a little bit of beef that he will need to lose. In context against recent form, Henry Fa'arodo was far better than him in that Solomon team and how did Henry fair in the Premiership? Henry was an probably in the top quarter of players whom did well.

I would have preferred the signing of Fa'arodo if it was head to head between the two of them to be honest (although I recognise he is not a goal scorer as such)

I'll add to that as well that I was firmly in the camp that thought Clapham would not make the step up either but I was quite impressed with him in Honiara and think he is definitely worthy of a look so its not all as you think.

Yawn. Especially comparing to Toto and Chen... they were two import signings basically signed for the sake of signing imports - the recruitment behind those two was questionable from the beginning, at best.

And this is a dumb arguement anyway, you may as well have said the same for Kosta and Rojas... how many A-League offers were they given before we signed them, huh? Exactly.

Sack Ricki

but but but...this is an internet forum! That is way too much common sense!

I think by that token, Bertrand Kai would be a better signing.

As many kiwis as we want,as well as many Australians as we want obviously. 

Chris James playing in Finland at the moment.

Lost your credibility right there ^^

Totori plans to run simply run around the A-League cloggers...

http://www.sportal.co.nz/football-news-display/totori-pace-will-outdo-physicality-185186

It is interesting to see comments about the physicality of the A-League. Watching the NZ games at the OFC nations cup, I would suggest that those teams would be more physical than most of the A-League clubs. If Totori can handle being hammered by them, I am sure he can cope in a league where he will get more protection from the refs than we saw in Honiara.

Yeah its just a generalisation. The general consensus seems to be 'The A-league lacks technical skill when compared to other top leagues around the world, so therefore players rely more on physicality'. The only problem is that a competition is only as physical as the refereering allows it to be, and we all know what A-League refs are like. Just look at Broich, hes found a way around this so called 'physicality'.

If we get Boxall how bout this line-up (asside from the fact that it's with 3 at the back):

Boxall  -  Siggy  -  Dura

   Muscat    -   Smith

Bertos -  Sanchez -  Ifill

       Totori - New Striker

I've certainly found watching the A-League from afar that a certain number of let's say "meaty" challenges are made that just wouldn't be allowed in europe.  It is a generalisation but there are far less small, tricky players in the league.  The general size and physical profile of aussie sportsmen though means that's not going to change quickly - look at the socceroos

On Totori - no doubt his pace is a real asset.  I find it a bit odd that he's been around NZ for a number of years, it's only once he scores against the all whites that suddenly he's good enough.  Has he changed as a player by scoring those goals?  We do seem to lack imagination in our recruitment - this season especially has been pretty flat considering that we had 2 senior guys leaving and you'd assume freeing up quite a bit of cap space.

Ben Sigmund has signed with ?#wgtnphoenix? until the end of 2014/15 season ?#aleague?

Theres our rightback problem solved

Good news.

Good to hear.  Think I heard a few stories that other clubs are/were interested in him.

Good to have him back but a 3 year deal at 31 is kind of generous...

he's in the best form of his career so why would you not want to keep him for another three years.

because at 31 years old the only surprises he has left in his career is the pace of his decline [can't remember which famous quote I am plagiarising]

This. He's probably our most reliable player, and after sorting out his discipline last season he's gone from being an asset to the team to being absolutely crucial to the team. Also, I would guess that he's not on superstar wages (i.e. well paid but nothing like marquee wages), which means that almost every A-league team would sign him up if given the chance. Three years is a bloody good result for the nix imo.

CBs can have pretty long shelf-life. ...and how old is Ryan Nelson again? still going hard, still in the premiership.

Siggys kinda like Ryan, fully committed 200% all game every game. I don't see him getting fat and lazy in the next few years.

Not sure Nelsen is the happiest example here, he hardly played last season and is onto his third club this year already. Will be interesting to see what this next season holds for him.

Kevin Muscat?