Phoenix vs Adelaide

Anyone know Andrew Norris ? Tell him he's banned for being a cock.

"Gobble gobble" - Shane smeltz

Please please please please please please please please please please please please please please please please please please please please please please please please please please please please please please...

Im hoping that dales sources are correct and he isnt pulling a feverish.

Think me and the people around me must have watced a different game,because the general feeling was that Costa added plenty to the attack and gave us some much needed pace.Certainly dont think" the one who spits" had it all over him.Yes he made some mistakes but so did some others and along with Daniel and Leo we certainly seemed to be moving forward with more purpose than they have done in many games this season.

As for your other points i couldnt agree more we seem to give away some really dumb cards at times.But just how "the one who spits" only got a yellow for his charge on Mcain has gort me beat.

that young lad with the Greek name that we've just signed is a bit good

Who was that kid? lol.
And who the hell were those randoms tagging along with the nix at the kings tonight?!

Highlights are up

Wellington Phoenix Adelaide United Goals

that jayfcak47 guys is onto it. i love him

That was a very good goal from laid

Costa dun good.
Daniel dun gooder.
Timmy Brown dun bad.

Was a good game! 

Me still not a daniel fan but he went down a notch in my loathe ladder after tonight.

That was easily our best performance of the season (maybe Melbourne at home) but we were just brilliant. Costa was all over Ogger all day which was brilliant, especially considering Ogger being one of the leagues better defenders and an absolute meat axe.
The ref wasn't just bad, he was incompetent. An absolute disgrace to his profession, before he gave Browny the second yellow he had missed Costa flick the ball between two guys and then get tripped on the edge of the box. He was just incompetent, I'm thinking about writing to the FFA about it to get a response.
Manny was magic, finding space. Leo great as well, Lochy brilliant until he had to deliver into the box. Daniel was back near his best, the combination with Lochy was great as it was last season. Kwasi looked alreet when he came on, McKain magic. Overall I am just so proud of those boys tonight, they ran all night and put in the effort.
Also one of the best performances by the Zone of late, apart from some average timing we were great! You could sense the nervous energy!
Oh and im with News, please........

No you're not.  You are not alone. 

Definately our best performance. Possibly our best performance ever even though we didn't win. The commitment we showed when we went 1 man down was absolutely terrific. We dominated with 11 and we continued to dominate with 10. C

Replay show that costa wasn't fouled.

Ogg the big aussie defender was given the run around by our front line. To see the big guy kicking the ball out for a corner after costa got in front of him was fantastic. Costa hassled him all night.Though his first touch went walk about a few times.

Then they had the wrong TV angle, happened maybe twenty meters in front of my seat and they got a fair chunk of him.

Yes bopman I first thought he was fouled as shortly after that Brown was sent off.

If it was Travis Dodd, it would have been a penalty...

That guy gets all of the 50/50 calls

Cnut, Cnut..... that name sounds familiar... you used to be one of us didn't you? Now you just donut in with all the big wigs correct?

That would have to rank as the best goal Wellington has scored this season. The movement, weight and quality of passes and cross in the build-up, and the final execution itself - top drawer.

I feel sorry for the ref. 

He missed a good game.

Agree comments by many on refs ... the crowd of just over 8, 000 any reason for such a smallish crowd in such a big game against the league leaders and Asian Cup finalist. 

anniversary weekend so people maybe away and the face that it was pretty windy would put a lot of the wellington fair weather crowd off besides that dunno why no one showed up

Siggie should be man of the match for his cut inside and shot. a 6-yard box to 6-yard box defender.

great to see the whole team getting in behind Costa, and how great that he can make his (sorta) debut in an attack featuring Daniel, Smeltz and Bertos. Those three had great games too.

Great send off for Mossy and Smeltz. Tears and joy.

It was great to see that the attack was still onwards with the ten men on the field. Everyone who had a chance to move from the back to move forward and add to the attack in the final third did so without a thought.

Great instructions were given to the backs. i.e. whoever is the back who started the movement follows the ball through the midfield and carry on as a temporary supporting 4th midfielder with the other backs covering his back. So that 4-3-2 formation worked well considering. Long sweeping runs by each of the backs and they took turns so each of them can recover. It was a great performance. Full marks to each of the back in coordinating this attack.

Doing the attacks along the wings and the odd push to the centre gaps and keeping the formation fluent was all hard work and the three midfielders keep their centre competitive and closed passing channels or make the other team attack stalling. The centre was very tight for Adelaide to attack and so it forced them wingside attack which is easier to defend.

The forwards were brave and not scared to try anything. The goal was straight out of Tony Carr's Youth Academy program.

Smeltz was constantly looking and was heavily marked but was at the end of great passes. I felt that maybe he need to just touch contact his finishing but as it, he was committed for to nab the space and little time to adjust for the final ball contact. One time I felt that he should have take his gut instincts and try to chip the keeper from the right edge of the box and into the top left corner because enough gap with the keeper committed out of his six yards slightly forward out of position. This is were he was sent free on the right with on defender pressure. It was certainly not out of range for him. Instead he slowed down, twisted and turned and spilled the ball against a recovering defender. There was only one other teammate in the box with another two defenders getting back then. So he should have took his gut instinct instead when it was at least 4 seconds to discover the one on one chip against the keeper. Most certainly, he worked his pant off because he was everywhere make as much of the space and attack. He was almost back on our 18 yard box at one stage because he was that busy in the midfield.

Costas, Daniels, Bertos all combined well. I have to say they were our new holy trinity with Costa replacing the departed Gao. Costa did much more in that game than Gao did in three games. He did what we wanted Gao to do all season.

Even Kwasnik had a a good sub in. Looks like Ferrante may be to be in for Brownie next week. Kwasnik may get a bit more go next week, but it hard to say at the moment.

The only shame was that Reid goal. The midfielders were not coordinating their midfield marking as to the central defenders Siggy and Dodd. Siggy should have known that Manny had his man and should have shift left and pushed on to the free midfielder and not Dodds to leave a free attacker (and forward moving mid) to push up on to the ball carrier.

Anyway, since we didn't have any of the midfielders picking the three midfielders and two attackers, it was a defacto 6 v 3 with the double marking of manny and siggy on the one player and Dodds marking both an attacker and moving midfielder but was forced to take the midfielder with the ball, it was always diifficult even if we had Siggy and Dodds co-ordinated better. The numbers was still against them. Reid had a low pressured two seconds to whip that goal up. So it was a stink formation shape by the team that allowed their goal.

It really shouldn't happen at this level but, that's football that can happen at any level.

On a positive note, there was heaps of accurate passes that keep our pressure on. There was a few missed passes by the Adelaide team that helped give ball to our midfield.

I was given an impression that Adelaide was desperate and trying too hard to save face that they made unforced passing errors in the middle third. The midfield pressure them into mistakes and rode rough that paid dividends as well as collecting yellow cards. Plenty of professional fouls in this type of fast game.AllWhitebelievr2009-01-19 03:17:43

Pretty good game yesterday.  We really should have won it though.  Tim Brown had to have received two of the softest yellow cards I've ever seen.  Pity they can only be appealed in the case of mistaken identity (I think), because that was woeful officiating.  Usually I can see the ref makes mistakes that go against us but they tend to even out by the end of the game, this time though, the ref was poor - below poor.  Costa played really, really well and I have to say that we played an entertaining game of football today.  Smeltz should have shot earlier with some of his opportunities but oh well.  Kwasnik also did well while Ferrante was invisible bar when he tripped over the ball in a breakaway attack.

I don't remember the attendance being shown for the game, does anybody know what it was?  It looked larger than usual.

Was the best performance at home and pretty much what I expected we'd see all season but didn't. Poor discipline probably cost us the win and blaming the referee doesn't change the fact that we gave the referee the opportunity to bring out the red card. I suspect chanting "trhe referee is a w**ker" doesn't entirely help us get the most out of the ref though.

It's really disappointing when we go down to ten but as I've noted here before, every referee and linesman in every match I've ever played in or watched, has been biased towards the other team. 

Great performance yesterday - pace, passion, width, creativity - all those things we don't usually associate with our team.  They looked like they wanted it which makes last week's result all the more disappointing to me given the CCM result this week.  Definitely a missed opportunity. 

Superb effort from everyone out there. Costa was lively and put their solid defence under pressure and scored the goal (what a move!). Our defence was solid and we were really attacking, even after the red card (the first one a booking?!). Agree with most about the refs. Cant really see us getting a win away at Melbourne, but anything is possible! Just gotta hope that we do, and that Adelaide do us a favour.

Loads of people showed up - We must still have the biggest crowds in the league when you go by percentage of population.
8000+ from 350,000 is 2.3%
compared to Melbourne's 20,000 on Friday from 4 million population - 0.5%

For some reason, some seem to think that we'll get the same amount of people will going to the match as they do in Aussie. If we had Melbourne's population and 2.3% still turned up we'd need a stadium to hold 92,000 each week


Royal2009-01-19 08:37:46

jamesnz2009-01-19 08:42:59

Agreed, but we (and Terry now) can't expect 2-3 times more people to show up when we are already getting more people to a game than across the tasman (per capita). We live in a small city, whereas Adelaide, Melbourne, Sydney, Brisbane, Perth are all 1 million+
Newcastle has a similar population to Wellington and they had 6,500 yesterday

When you look at the figures, we get 4-5 times more people than Melbourne did, despite them being equal top on the table and with the their cultural diversity - people that are supposedly passionate about football. Crowds are bad - it's an FFA problem, not the Nixs'. 
Royal2009-01-19 08:56:19

How so?

Crowds will fix themselves if they start next season at home by playing the same way as they did yesterday.Our early season poor form would not have helped in any way in attracting new fans.More of what they gave us yesterday and they will come.