Phoenix Vs Jets - Match thread

Replay on now on SS1.

red cards and penalty=clear cut, but ref should've flashed yellow first to control it.



Salmon072008-11-23 22:37:27

Hmmm tempting but I think exams tomorow mean no. Goals here

good luck with exams- hope your head has come right from my 11am 1000th post party
CN

haha cheers. Interesting to see that for the second goal it was Dodd that provided the switch of play with a great long ball across the field.

two very good finishes

Smeltz was a let down for me through the whole match, wasn't making the runs that Fred could look for. However its damned hard to sub him caue we've just got noone else who can do his job. Thought Fred was really quite good and I'm suprised to see some of the negative comments on the board. He's provided that person to pass too that I think the teams been looking for, someone who can really link the team together and make things happen. Leo had a excellent game tonight and he was my MOTM without a doubt. We did take the ball wide way too much considering the low standard of our crossing and Covic caught more balls tonight that I could count. This game reall highlighted for me the fact that we need 2 strikers that are going to consistently score, sometimes you just can't do much with one man up front.

Dodd was pretty lucky not to get at least a yellow for his involvment

Kicking Griff and not getting a Yellow ?  He should have got a medal.

yep - Dodd looked solid again, but I agree he could easily have gone off for retaliation v JG

I hate Youtube. I followed that link above... first I saw the goals then I followed a "related" link ...then went off at a tangent and ended up with Chic's "Everybody Dance"....    Is that supposed to happen?

Paston's penalty save was another good moment from eariler... 

Hear hear!


Well first consecutive wins in the A-League AND first time since Perth last season that we've won by more than one goal.  Good to see lots of crosses and shots, sure most of them came to nothing but that showing of intent combined with players hopefully coming into form and we'll show Melbourne and everyone how its done.  Scrappy win perhaps, but those ones pick up morale, confidence and hopefully crowd numbers for Melbourne on Friday.  Not to mention points on the table.

Still want to see Daniel and Fred playing together, but not entirely sure who to drop out of midfield.  Durante should be back next game with Dodd suspended (5x yellow) unless McKain drops back to give Daniel a start.

The most disappointing thing for me was the crowd numbers. If we keep getting lower crowds we wont have a team to support. It seems like the further we go up the table the less people come to our home games - can anyone shed some light on why this is? Obviously Fred had to affect in that regard.

^The 6.00 news + RL World Cup triumph = sh*thouse timing. 

Awesome win, lets get that out there first......not happy about how we won it though. We could/should have been 1 down at half time. That would have made it way hard! could have been a 2 - 2 result......vs 9! which would have sucked. Thought that Fred made a huge impact, he certainly did a lot more than Gao ever did, looking forward to the next 5 games with him involced.

two goals, clean sheet = happy

Really happy to get the win!
Atleast next week Dura will have a chance top prove himself with Dodd out - otherwise i dont mind if he's benchwarming again

Bring on a Victory against the Victory!

Religion is THE reason I can't really do Sunday games.

I don't know why everyone is crying for Daniel to start, he's way too on/off for my liking, lacks the physicality and pace as well. Great vision and distribution but he's a long way off his best at the moment. Aside from that him and Fred play a similar game, we don't need two of them on the field and I'd pick Fred over Daniel from what I've seen, great composure on the ball in the middle of the park. He just needs to be a tad more selfish ( Never thought I'd be writing this about a Brazilian ).

Smeltz wasn't at his best tonight but to be fair to him the service to him wasn't spectacular, I think in the next couple of weeks when he knows that Fred is going to pass him the ball in those tight little spaces that he will improve significantly.

Thought our back four were impressive apart from Lochhead who had an off game, but not everyones gonna be on their best for every single game. Thought it was odd starting Manny to be honest, didn't see what would of been wrong with pushing Siggy right and Durante in the middle.

I think Fred is really going to play a pivotal role in the next 5 weeks he is here and it's just going to take the players around him getting used to his style, once we are used to it we are going to be very dangerous I feel.

Re crowd size: it's also a perception problem.

Very true

does anyone have a link to the cards?

Lets be honest here as well, Wellington is the smallest city in comparison to the other teams in the A-League. So it's not necessarily our fault that we don't get as many people to our games, we just have less people.

Actually Central Coast and Newcastle as regional centres are about the same or marginally smaller.

Lets face it, we're in a nation of fair weather supporters.  Wellington is not so bad on this front but the best thing for the crowd size is winning games.  I'm not convinced that the game vs Melbourne will have a large attendance though the Friday night timeslot should help - but should we beat Melbourne and come into some real winning form, the crowds will start to return in numbers.

Yes we're a small city, we have 400k people compared to Sydney's 4 million - but we have had good numbers showing up to our games before and will again so long as we win and start playing attractive football.

I really don't understand all the complaining, it's as I saw a different game to many people on here.
Yes, we are a bit toothless in the attacking third, but that's what happens when you have only one good forward and is nothing new. But we knocked the ball around well, showed patience when playing against 9 men packed in defence, and got good goals for a 2-0 win. I mean, what exactly are people expecting?

Paston is still a concern for me though, good penalty save, but his rushing out early on when he didn't collect the ball and a Necastle player missed an open goal could have been very, very costly. That happened while Newcastle still had 11 players on the field, and if that had gone in the game could have been different. Still think Paston has had a good deal of luck so far, but that will run out one of these days...

Completely agree EG.

Only real problem I had was with the crossing. Covic is so strong against high balls we needed to mix up some of the crosses and drive a few in low. We did that twice and scored 2 goals. We still tried to walk the ball in too much but getting better and good to see more shots from outside the box.

It was always going to be tough against 9 men when they packed the defense and it was no surprise to score the second so quickly as the Jets had no reason to sit back anymore and had to push forward so more gaps appeared.

Bertos had his best game of the season and showed he is already developing an understanding with Fred. Muscat keeps getting better every game and it's a close call between him and Siggy for biggest improvement.

All-in-all we got drama, tension, suspense and ultimately joy. What more could you ask for? A thoroughly enjoyable night, so much so that I sat down and watched the replay when I got home. Right, time for a sleep.

hearfield made the difference wen coming on...fred was ordinary in second half..first game though, ill give him a break..

Yup you are right on the tv camera thing. I was wondering this as I had watch Chelsea in the morning then watched this in the afternoon and I found it harder to name which players were which then in the Chelsea game.

[QUOTE=el grapadura]I really don't understand all the complaining, it's as I saw a different game to many people on here.
Yes, we are a bit toothless in the attacking third, but that's what happens when you have only one good forward and is nothing new. But we knocked the ball around well, showed patience when playing against 9 men packed in defence, and got good goals for a 2-0 win. I mean, what exactly are people expecting?

Well said.

Crowd was a real worry, although you sounded great! Couldn't believe the crowd figure when they put it up, sounded like at least 10k easy.

Lets be honest though of course you're going to say Hearfield made the difference.

Sunday 6pm is a factor in the crowd size, also there's not much spare money floating around out there at the moment

Absolutely!