Phoenix Ownership - Rob says FTFFA

A lot of similarity's to the Brisbane Roar 2009-2010 season (apart from the change of manager). Worst season for the Roar, change of ownership, mid-season change of style (that didn't work), very low attendance, eventual purge of older players and a focus on blooding youngsters, crazy angst from all the supporters. This of course led to a double championship winning team from the very next season.

Could it be that the other teams have got better as the season has developed and the Phoenix haven't?

I haven't seen much of Boxall nor Lindsay so my point is give them some decent game time to prove themselves. Likewise, Hogg, who will need serious game time to find his feet. Otherwise we won't know what they can really do. These are players for the future. We know what the current band of old pros can or can't do.

I will have my cake and eat it too.

Both statements are right IMO: Our style of play in the last few games has been a nadir for us (and there have been sporadic games of dross that we have put on in the past).

And our long-term squad members are getting slower.

The hope I hold is look at the rabble Victory looked at the beginning of the year, they now look reasonably slick and polished. Sure not yet Brisbane at their best but doing pretty well

Lyndsey would be starting if he was any chop - just like Fenton and Boyd are. His horror touches on the weekend didnt do much for his case.

 

 Interesting to hear Gareth on radio sport with Telfer this morning and hearing his explanation it really is nothing.What was interesting to hear was him say it was done for New Zealand which is way different from the line we have have been told in the past that it was done for Wellington.Just preparing us i guess for the move into being a travelling circus.

Yes it won't be long before the brand's changed to New Zealand Phoenix - and half the "home" games will be farmed out to venues that want them. So Wellington will be punished for not turning up to watch this drivel being provided by Herbert. Gareth told Live he loved the first half last week by the Nix without realising WSW were more than happy to get away from defending tornado corner alive, without conceding by halftime, and then hit the switch to bury us once they were attacking that end.
We also get punished by the owners foolishly getting Herbert to sign on for another 2 years, some time back. 

 

I don't want it to be the NZ Phoenix. If they make it a NZ wide club, they need to change the name. Even though I'm from Auckland, the Phoenix is Yellow and Black, the Ring of Fire and the bloody wind and rain like against Bocca Juniors. Don't take a passionate club and make it into a mediocre franchise.

I think like Piney, that it was almost coming right- I think against Brisbane and Melbourne we almost got the mix right. We were close to playing as good as this combination of players can without Ifill and right in those games, just unable to find the moment or the spark to get decisive goals and momentum. If we stuck with that 'settled' starting line up we might have started to get results. The problem this season is we haven't really had a settled starting eleven at any point- no players in front of the defence have established positions. Louis perhaps.

Brockie?

Brockie position in the team might not be so guranteed if Gareth dislikes the revelation on 4-4-2 this morning....http://au.fourfourtwo.com/news/261234,phoenix-stars-told-of-style-switch-by-media.aspx

if there si any truth to the calim that the team only found out through the media then there is something very wrong going on that we are just starting to see the surface of now.

I had the same thought reading the article...

Something does not add up.

seems a little odd right? Ricki didn't tell the players of the change in style till after Gareth talks to the press, seems very very suspect to me. So what is actually going on at trainings these days?

This is quite a telling revelation from Brockie. Looks like the change came suddenly right out of the blue. Wow!

Yeah, so much for the stories we heard about them working on this style in pre-season and just deciding to use it in a game halfway through the season.

Now that Leo and Brockie have both spoken out about the change in the past few days, it makes me think that the players are not too happy about it at all. While they haven't explicitly criticised the move, I don't think they would have spoken out about it if they thought it was the right thing to do.

Brockie's comments certainly add to the overall sense that the change of style was badly communicated both externally and internally, and that Ricki's position was undermined somewhat.

I was wondering this morning how much of this actually just comes back to Gareth shooting his mouth off early about what had been behind-the-scenes discussions and then everybody else scrambling around trying to clean up after him.

I still think Welnix just need to do a big mea culpa about that at some point.

Gareth's certainly on a learning curve as far as owning a football team goes. He's certainly finding it more difficult than he thought he would, which is perhaps why we don't see him in the Zone so much any more.

http://garethsworld.com/blog/wellington-phoenix/when-a-pitch-invasion-is-not-a-pitch-invasion/

Interesting Interview with Telfer.

Sorry, but this club is a shambles at the minute. Not a shambles in the Terry way - as in we don't know if we'll be here tomorrow - but a shambles in the sense that the club as a whole does not seem to have a focused vision for the future. Ideas are fractured and we've basically wasted quarter of a season with an experiment that was never going to work with these players and without a proper pre-season plan.

Well, it's good that the players aren't muzzled about speaking to the press. Pretty unusual these days. Let's hope the club is big enough to cope with it.

Gareth responding to comments:

http://garethsworld.com/blog/wellington-phoenix/when-a-pitch-invasion-is-not-a-pitch-invasion/#comment-770366455

He's hit the nail on the head. Get off the owners backs. We're using them as a scapegoat for our bad form. We'd be losing regardless of them IMO

What do we think about this contention that Sam Worthington and the DomPost are out to get the Nix? I know they were out to get Terry, and they succeeded, but is that really what's happening now?

His answers to my questions are very, very interesting. Some of them go completely against the understanding everyone has gained from the media. I suggest that everyone reads them.

My questions and Gareth's answers:

1) How much of the decision to adjust the playing style was down to Ricki, and how much of it was from Welnix? Who was the first to suggest that a new playing style was needed?

When doing a strategic overview of all issues around the future of the club, and ways to ensure its viability long term, the issue of on-field performance – which is at the core of the product offering came up. There is a wide range of issues that pertain to that – for example marquees, youth, coaches, player contract terms, playing style. Rather than deal with each of those in isolation we backed off and asked the question - where we are aiming for in terms of average finishing position – is 4th or 6th satisfactory? The consensus was no.

The next question in the stream of logic is what do we need to improve that? We ruled out buying marquee players very early in that discussion as it isn’t seen as a lasting solution and only a lasting solution can steer the club to robust financial health. If we get our fundamentals right then yes success begets success and marquees become a sensible activity. When the question of playing style arose there was a consensus that the A League in general is developing its styles as the standard of football improves and we need to stay abreast of that. So style development toward a more possession-oriented game was discussed and agreed.

The Football committee comprises some of the owners, Noah Hickey and Mark Chote from our Advisory Group, and Ricki. Decisions are reached by consensus. Your question of how much came from who is impossible to answer, the issues are discussed and the consensus reached, sometimes immediately sometimes after chewing it over for months. That’s the nature of business.

2) How was this decision communicated to the players? Were they involved in the process or was it forced on them after Ricki and Welnix had finished deciding that a new playing style is needed?

 I can’t answer this question as it is Ricki’s domain as coach. But given it’s been an evolutionary rather than revolutionary process and will continue to be I would doubt very much whether the coach suddenly pronounced that “from tomorrow morning we’re changing”. That isn’t and never has been what this is about.

3) Why was it decided to change the playing style in the middle of the season, when our previous playing style looked like it was going to get us into our fourth straight playoffs, from which we would just need to win three games in a row to win the Championship?

It wasn’t. That is a conclusion the press has managed to leap to all by itself. My words to Tony Veitch were – I don’t know if anyone has noticed by the style has been changing – I was referring to this year compared to previous. So your conclusion that we have been playing as per a previous style this year at all is erroneous.

4) In hindsight, do you think it would have been wiser to adjust the playing style in the coming off-season, when Ricki would have time to recruit players to suit this new style?

The adjustment is an evolutionary thing and will take a number of years, it hasn’t just been foisted on anyone. This is where the popular conclusion based on the somewhat fertile imaginations of a few gossip columnists trying to create news, has come from.

Let's be honest everyone is being used as a scapegoat here.  The owners, the players (some more than others), Ricki, Domey, Greenacre, the Wellington public, the Fever.

Everyone wants someone to point a finger at.

I don't think the owners are exempt.  I don't think messages in the media have been clear and it's pretty clear that the messages as understood by some of the players have been garbled.  I don't think the blame all lays with them but a number of concerns that were raised within the first couple of months of them coming on board do look like genuine concerns.

What were those concerns

So I read it: Gareth comes out with this Total Football statement. He had nothing to do with the decision behind it, nothing to do with communicating it to the players but it was not a decision made mid season and he is the first one to drop in (other than Rickis transition state at Rd 3)

I ask the question: What does he know because it seems he knows more than he is telling us.

Got to say was surprised about the fact te change of tactics was from the start of the season.  Didn't look like it too me

Patrick - you missed out the best bit from Gareth's answers:

"I can understand your despair. We have some great sports journos out there – Veitch, Telfer, Pine just to name a few. But then there’s the lesser lights – those so keen to please their bosses and desperate to get an edgy story that they make things up. Sam Worthington at the Dom Post is what I’d call a gossip columnist and I have little time for such lightweights. He turns up to training and unilaterally decides I’m running it. Hilarious really, I’d be flattered if his agenda wasn’t so poisonous – I have written about him before.

There were 2 owners there, I was standing between two separate training sessions watching each one in turn. I had been embedded in the football side of things for about a week trying to get a better understanding of the needs of that department, in particular on that particular day video facilities at training. And then, believing his colleagues invented theory about what I was doing, some other tosser the Dom Post employs goes on about what “bad form” it is for owners to be on the training field. Really you’d think we were still in the days of the British class system where owners stick to lounges and look down on their property as if still Lords of the Manor. Ghastly, arrogant values like that have no place in my repertoire. But anything for some more column inches I giuess".

It didn't answer actually any of my questions, hence why I left it out. But you are right, it's fantastic.

no you actually missed out the really best bit:

"Peter"

Plucking brilliant. Gareth has just answered some more questions, including Ernie the Chicken's:

http://garethsworld.com/blog/wellington-phoenix/when-a-pitch-invasion-is-not-a-pitch-invasion/

 Doesn't really explain what Brockie was saying though.

I do love how open he is. 

One small thing that irks me is whenever he refers to our club as "the business".

Glad the DomPost is asking hard questions. Some-one's got to. The others Gareth mentioned aren't allowed to say anything but positive stuff anyway because their companies are stakeholders - so they end up talking fan club drivel - and that gets us no where.