player rantings v Glory

News..check your phone.

on the pitch ?

Replied.

saucy pics ????

I thought Pav was very good coming off the bench and also believe Ward should definitely start against Sydney.

Agree about the commentators. Aloisi is an embarrassment.

Nude pics of Siggy we love him that much.  Just passing them on to Frankie now.

Your post was pretty good except for this. Have you forgotten about Manny Muscat? Or the fact that Durante can and has played at right back?

Right back is not a pressing need. Where goals are going to come from and whom is setting them up is.

.....................................................................................wait

With the exception of aitkenmike, everyone else has given him 4 plus so STFU.

Point taken, i guess my reasoning is

Seems fair

Siggie is our goal scorer. He saw Brown start from deep and score 8 last year so now he is taking the plan a little further.

Also a brilliant winger's run against Bahrain to win a corner. He's got better touch than Karl Dodd. He will return to being a genius, as will Dura, when Muscat is playing in front of him.

that is all. well not really. but done yappn for now. ehh.

Dura makes siggy look good. Its like when lescott left everton he was pants because he didnt have jag's guidince in the back line. Without Durante siggy would be a headless chicken.

The reality is, we are missing McKain big time - both his individual quality, and those intangibles which he seemed to have brought with him into the backline last season and which are missing now. The downside has been not only are we missing McKain and have for now replaced him with a player of inferior quality, but Durante has been looking more like the player from his first season here rather than the last one, which is not a good thing. The centre-back performance last night was not good - realistically, if it wasn't for Paston, Daniel's intervention on the line and some comedy from Perth forwards, we could easily have shipped in 6 last night, and this has been a trend for most of the season (perhaps CCM game excepted, but then it was the Mariners).

The problem, however, isn't just in the backline. The reason why the opposition looks so dangerous against us, especially on the counter, is that we're too slow in the middle of the park to shut down the main passing lanes (or at least the most dangerous one) and you combine this with a bit of inexperience at the back (Hearfield) and central defensive pairing not exactly inspiring a lot of confidence, you're always likely to be struggling. The reality is that the personnel we have is what we have, but we need to give them the best opportunity to be succesful. Three central midfielders was what worked for us last season, and we need to get back to that shape to start looking a better team. For me, Manny has to move into midfield to shield the back four, with Lia and one out of Brown and Ward (probably Brown for now, to give him the opportunity to do what he did last season without brutally exposing us in the middle of the park), and with one central forward (I'd go with Pav, hungry, quickest of the forwards, and brings more to the table in terms of skill set than either D-Mac or Greenacre), and a combination of Ifill, Bertos or Daniel in wide positions. Otherwise, if we continue with the shape we have right now, we'll continue to have to scrap to stay in games, and that's not really a position I want to see us in.el grapadura2010-09-06 12:45:25

I pretty much agree with you El G. Just the right back role is what holds that side back. Manny probably does need to be in the midfield. Wonder if North can play RB for us?

Also wonder if we can utilise two forwards in our starting line up? its starting to look like we mite be best playing the single one. And greenacre wont do well there, not sure about mac so yeah pav would be the one to start. But we need goals.

Alternatively, we could look to continue with Daniel down the center? Could be dangerous with Ifill/ Pav/ Greeny up in front of him.
Or we do have Toto to try in the number 10 role?

But yeah finding the right RB is the problem, if you want manny in the midfield. Lets hope north can help with this?

I could for the life of me not understand why we were effectively playing a three man midfield, with brown more or less playing at right midfiled and lia alone in the middle, with three up front. Last season when we were dominating it was on the back of flooding the midfield with essentially three central midfielders (Brown Lia and Muscat). We do not have anyone of sufficient class to play a lone central midfielders role and it was from the centre of the park where we were being over run time and time again. 

I'm not too worried yet I mean we arn't doing any worse than last season and had two tough away trips.I will be worried however if we play crap against sydney.

Fourfourtwo's player ratings:

Wellington Phoenix:
1. Mark PASTON (gk) - 7
3. Tony LOCHEAD - 6
6. Tim BROWN - 6
8. Paul IFILL - 6
9. Chris GREENACRE - 6
11. DANIEL - 6
13. Troy HEARFIELD - 5
17. Vince LIA - 4
18. Ben SIGMUND - 6
22. Andrew DURANTE - 6
23. Dylan MACALLISTER - 5
4. Nick WARD - 6
14. Mirjan PAVLOVIC - 6
7. Leo BERTOS - 5

Surprised by Lia's low rating. Thought he had a decent game, tidy in possession, did not turn over possession, looking for the ball and made some decent tackles. Nothing amazing but solid.

man, sometimes i wonder if ppl watch the same game

greenacre a 6?!?!?! 4 if he was lucky.

pavlova was good. at least he has a go. i'd give him 6.5

daniel was good.  crossing was good and he passed to feet. 6.5

lochhead - 4.5

ward - 5

ifill - 5

lochhead / hearfield ...........geezus..........not much

mcallister 5.5

the whole team was rubbish cept for pavlova/daniel and perhaps paston/siggy.. perhaps

i thoguht greenacre was terrible.  he never goes in hard for 50/50 ever. it pisses me off.
same thing every time, get it to the wings, send in a horrendous looping cross or one that just goes straight out.  how about playing to feet, pass and move, mix it up a bit!!!

Another hard to watch effort. Long ball football is painful especially when executed badly.

Paston 6 - real mix some good saves and some nervous moments - was left wondering if anyone in the back 5 was communicating at times
Lochead 5 - OK but should have done better with second goal
Dura 5 - Whilst Hearfield made life hard not sure where Dura and Sig were for goals
Siggy 6.5 - honest effort and goal gave a lifeline
Hearfield 3 - looked totally at sea
Lia 5 - battled hard without great deal of help from Brown
Brown 4 - added nothing to midfield
Daniel 5 - showed for ball and tried to play a passing game but too inconsistent
Ifill 5 - lost possession too easily too often, still posed a danger
Greenacre 5 - crap service and again doing a hell of a lot of Brown's work for him
Mac 5 - crap service and struggled to make impact

Subs
Ward 5 - at least showed for ball in midfield something Brown and Lia don't do but gave away lot of ball
Pav 5 - busy and put himself about
Leo 5 - no real impact

Ricki 4 - Midfield lacking against Brisbane and no great surprise ditto against Perth.

How can anyone be satisfied with what Lochhead has delivered this last 2 seasons. Continually out of position, has zero imagination in his distribution, execution on distribution is poor consistently and now he's added ruby tackles and waist grabbing to his armoury. Hopeless.... still.

Surely it's not Lochhead's responsibility to mark the opposition's striker in the central channel in our box? Like you said, where were Siggy and Durante?

Still defending the most consistently mediocre starter I see el.... you really do apply yourself in that respect.

It is his responsibility if the other two have pushed on....

 

It's his responsibilty if the other two have pushed on with a reason - then you need to cover. Not when they mindlessly leave dangerous space with an opposition player in it undefended.

Agreed - but that wasn't the case. Chasing the game and pushing on and being caught on a counter should be defendable. Especially when the full back is supposed to be covering.

If you see the replay, you'll see both Siggy and Dura press the ball to the edge of the box, leaving the central area of the box unmarked. It's not as if they were caught up the field from a quick counter.

The disappointing thing is we had enough numbers there to take care of the situation - and didn't.

replay? it sounds like he hasn't even seen the game

Totally satisfied with Lochy's effort on that occassion too eh Feverish...?

I agree Lochead is hardly the best left fullback in the league, but the fact of the matter remains he is the best we have got....by a long way. Think last season.... the two games he did not play against Perth and Melbourne away I think we got absolutely smoked, most noticeably down our left hand side. He has his shortcomings, but is generally fairly solid defensively.

I think it was more an issue that Mulligan was the replacement last season - but take your point. Best we have but we need an option.

Defensively Locky gets it right most of the time. He did not look out of place at the WC or in any of the AW warmup games.....he was excellently defensively when we played Mexico in LA(while we were shredded down the right) At the moment he is the best we have in his position. The problems defensively lie elsewhere. Expect impovement when North arrives.

covering Hearfields screw up.

Please watch the replay again - Hearfied did nothing wrong. The main problem in the whole move was Siggy ball watching and having no idea were his man was.

From memory there has been a couple of occassions in the last two weeks where Durante has sprinted out of the line to try and cover someone else, leaving his man (Costa / Fowler) free leading to goals.

Dura covering Lia in midfield, brown takes off up front losing the ball and leaving a huge gap for the counter, Lia is left on his own and needs Dura to help out, which in turn leaves Siggy in trouble.