Lets take a look at Morgans latest rant
"The bigger picture is far, far more important than the short term," he said.
Generally true, perhaps he should have quit while he was ahead
"All some people do is look at the league tables and that's all there is to the game for them. Well, they're pathetic really.
"Before we said let's change the style a bit, I thought the fan base was probably 80-20 in favour of a style change because we were never going to win and be persistent winners of the A-League playing the way we played. That's all been forgotten now," Morgan said.
"People expect instant gratification or gain with no pain. It's just pathetic really. I can't think of any activity where you change like that and there's not a short-term cost as you go through the changes.
I don't agree with this. The majority of fans have stuck with the team since day 1. Where was the instant gratification in the first two seasons? I've also got a problem with him implying that the way we are currently playing is an important step to be winning the a-league but I will get to that.
"Fans are a cross section of the public, you know. A lot of them don't know much about the game anyway and certainly, in my view, think only of themselves, not about the future of the club. This club has got a whole lot of stuff to do in order to be sustainable, and that's what we're going to do."
Obviously a cross section of the public but they are a cross section that does happen to be more knowledgeable about the game than he implies. Many of us have played it for years and years or at least watched coverage from overseas teams. And even those who just started supporting the Phoenix because it is a Wellington team are fine as well, there is no need to attack them. Generally those people are not the ones making the noise.
"If you look at the last two games, for the first half of both of those games, the team actually played extremely well. I think the style of football the Phoenix have been playing, when they have been good in those games, has been very attractive. I can tell that by sitting in the crowd.
"We're on the road, people have just got to be a little more sophisticated in their interpretation."
We played extremely well in the first half against Sydney? I'm staggered. The best I can say about that is that it was not quite as bad as the score indicated which was completely abysmal. Against West Sydney it was far from extremely good either. Yes we had a bit more possession but there were only a couple of good chances created and none of them were finished.
"To me it is all about the bigger picture because we have to make this team sustainable and more successful than just making the playoffs."
Now this is well and good but the real question is whether the way we are going about it going to work. Morgan has mentioned "Total Football" several times but he doesn't know what that means. Does any team in the world play "total football"? Barcelona would be the closest, and most people wouldn't quibble with them being described that way, but even they have a bit more structure than the strict definition requires. And because he has described it this way many people are getting concerned he literally has no idea what he was talking about.
He should have sold it as a change from a direct approach to a possession based approach. He should have talked about getting a more mobile team when in possession prepared to transition it along the ground and a more pressing defence. I think that is actually what he means. To say a team with a direct approach will never win the a-league is wrong, Melbourne Victory, before this season, had a very direct approach. Central Coast, who are top of the the league, have a relatively direct approach.
But even when we have had a bit of possession, I'm not convinced we really have that many ideas how to create goals. That's my biggest concern at the moment. Defence can always be fixed, relatively it is easy. When we actually get into the final third we are looking directionless. If I thought we had a proper plan in how to actually score goals I would be an awful lot more patient with this new approach. You need to be more creative because when you do switch to a possession based approach you generally have to create goals against more defenders because the midfield has more time to get back. But I haven't seen any emphasis put on that at all.
Instead we get Morgan ranting at us, saying we are all impatient, telling us we don't understand football, all the while talking about a theoretical approach that no one in the world actually actually plays.