Pre-Season 2018/19 - vs Victory

Not sure if you can base anything on a game when it's literally still months out from the season, there are only 14 first team players and five of those are centre backs and on the field. Bentleigh Greens are 20 something games into their season already.

A lot of work required !

If you want to be a serious football club these are games which the Nix should dominate. .There's always excuses and this has been absolutely dire. Haven't even looked like scoring against 10 men for an hour

absolutely disgusting.  Losing to a team down to 10 men so early and not even looking like scoring.  how on earth the club ha only singed 14 players up to this point including no proper out and out striker is rediculious and how on earth did lowry start ahead of doyle.  disgracefull.

Dire, but really we’re miles away from the finished article. I’d hoped we’d be further on but basically we conceded a shark goal and have been fairly solid defensively without creating much

Oh well!

The FFA Cup sucks anyway

Night night. See you all tomorrow for some pre-season angst

There is no way that ever should have happened. Rudan can talk a good game, maybe he should have stuck to commentating.

That should sell some season tickets

They have not got a clue. Continually playing short corners which are crap then they get a free kick with 10 to go in an attacking position and some clown takes its quickly and it  goes nowhere. They were happy just to pass he ball around rather than looking to create chances.

It's not much of an achievement to be fairly solid defensively against a 10 man NPL side for an hour...

When you don't win, all you've got are excuses really - ideally the team looks at those excuses and tries to fix them. But there are also the realities of being a professional club that that up to a few weeks ago, didn't even have enough players to field a team. You can be serious, and you can be realistic.

I was going to also point out it's not the end of the world, we are far from the first team to get beaten by non-Aleague opposition. However every other A-League team beaten by a non A-League team in the FFA has historically either finished the regular season in last, or second to last. Apart from Perth, who finished 8th. So there's that.

Beer didn't help me as much as I'd hoped

Seemed as though they were trying to pass it into the net when having a dig might have been a better option. Very forced attempts to slide the miracle ball, turn inside the area etc, sometimes it’s just better to lash it and see what happens

Oh man its gonna be a looooooooooong season!.

They couldn’t pass, dribble through or cross in the box. This team needs a lot more than a target man. Disappointing.

True, but that's at least another 90 minutes of meaningful, competitive pre-season football we aren't going to get now. Way too early for major concern but an early reminder to Rudan that things do seem to have a habit of going pear shaped for this club.

I love the Phoenix, but being kicked in the face would sometimes be less painful than watching us bumble along.

Striker and more midfield presence please. Be interesting to see how Rudan reacts in the presser - I'll be guessing, philosophical, but disappointed/angry at not being able to put away a 10 man semi-pro outfit

Only just noticed too but no David Williams? 

22 people turned up which was pretty good considering we only confirmed the pub and they would stay open late for us the day before. Hopefully after tonights result, they come back again when season kicks off.

BURNSY continuously riverdancing on top of the ball and when he looks up for a passing option it's been whipped from underneath his feet and Bentleigh are on the counter again. How many sharking times.

I really hope his bingo season with us wasn't some sort of weird miracle year where it all came together. We all really want him to do well and have the rose tinted glasses on for him but he looks 1/3rd of the player he was. 

The problem with this debacle is that the opening day home crowd just shrunk from 10,000+ to about 2,000 unless more exciting news is unveiled. Kopy was very underwhelming and Doyle subbed on far too late. Someone needs to DM Rudan that the Fox ain’t a DM. But now more than ever we need a tall Number 9 - thought Taylor might play there for a bit - best player on the pitch by a country mile. Where are the pre-season games against good opposition- no disrespect to Wairarapa United but shouldn’t we be playing against J League or something like that NOW so we aren’t playing ‘catch up?’ If we don’t get a Number 9 we will end up at Number 9. Again.

I wouldn't say dire, but otherwise that's pretty much it.  Looked like a side that's had one training camp and half a squad.  

Bentleighs worked hard, were pretty accurate and tidy, defended deep and we didn't have enough to break them down.  Apart from a few corners Bentleighs didn't really do much.  

We were a bit slow paced for a fair bit of that, just looking to find cohesion.  Got a bit more interesting as the clock ran down but another one of those games where our two front players and fullbacks pushing up were pretty impotent versus a deep double wall.  No real crossing and no real target getting into the box in any case (and the only realistic option to do that in open play would have been Nichols I guess).  

We're going to need to be better in midfield.  Fox isn't going to be it and Nichols and Singh were both playing pretty high and getting flat with Krishna and Burns.  Then Nichols dropping back when he needed to.  He did a fair bit of work.  Kopcynzski didn't stand out but from deep there were 18 or 19 guys in front of him and he wasn't the issue for us not scoring goals. Kurto had nothing to do.

Towards the end we picked up the pace and looked more like the A League side versus a state side, but couldn't score.

Lowry needs to be upgraded by a real starting FB.  Serviceable, but that's all.  Fox did a job for this game but we need a real midfielder in that role.  Nichols and Singh will need to find better combination and we're going to need to find a way when there is no space for Krishna and Burns to play into.  Still think we're going to need a nuggety strong striker for these sort of games against a wall.

Early days. We knew what we were missing and it showed.  Think they'll get better, but they need to. 

Just how I saw it.  I know nuthin.

Exactly as predicted. Stuff don't fu*k around. 

https://www.stuff.co.nz/sport/football/a-league/106090205/wellington-phoenix-fall-to-10man-npl-team-bentleigh-greens-in-ffa-cup

Was at the game and It was atrocious. Kopy could barely kick a ball for fudges sake, and was getting muscled off it by amateurs. Embarrassing. 

We need two more imports - DM and Striker - and we've used one on a fudgeing keeper.

And yes, we were dire - we were against 10 men for 60 mins ,facing a semi-pro/mostly amateur team, and we barely created any chances. If that isn't dire, I do not know what is. Did we even get behind their defence once?

They scythed through our midfield on countless occassions too, so this 'defensively solid' bullshark is just that; bullshark. 

Rufer coming on ,immediately falling over the ball and then staring at it right in front of me sums up why we don't give chances to young kiwis.

I hope you guys put money on the Greens!

I remember Sean Lovemore looking like he was going to have a much better season than Kosta pre season. Early doors. 

Everything in this is spot on.

Was at the game too and completely agree, if we’re relying on Kopy this season we are going to have some major problems in the midfield. His passing game and ball speed is slow on what was a decent pitch, completely outmuscled off ball 95% of the time, to be brutually honest I thought he was embarrassing as an import player. Coming up against a Brilliante or someone similar he will go hiding and shy away from the game so he doesn’t get a challenge put on him!

Wasn’t overly impressed with out backline, Taylor and Dura looked slow and a step behind all night. Bentleigh’s ball movement made us look like an amateur team tonight. Not sure how it looked on TV but we’re lacking in key areas. I feel like we’ve completely wasted a spot and rushed the signing of Rufer, he’s not up to it unfortunately. Need Tratt at RB for Lowry, another waste of a spot having him in the squad.

That was the first thing I noticed when I saw the team sheet. Anyone know why he wasn't present?

Hip injury, back in two weeks.

Ok, to be fair I did not see the game. I've been through this entire thread and yes, I read the article on Stuff.So in a neutral kind of way, here's my take.

Rudan may well know the weaknesses and wanted to prove it to himself and the team. I do believe it was treated as more of a training run than a serious attempt to progress in the Mickey Mouse Cup. Remember too, that these non A League teams are  not preseason trainers, they are currently playing week in and week out in their various leagues. 

I just find it hard to believe that the FFA run this comp like a preseason warm up, rather than through the season like every other country does with their respective cup competitions. Typical of the FFA. Perhaps instead of running the A League from October, they should start it in August. 27 games over 27 weeks, plus Cup rounds intermixed. With expansion it would give more games. 

Back to the Nix. The players might not yet be up to speed and hopefully this result will give them a clear indication of what they need to start doing. Having possession is one thing, but you have to do something positive with it. Short corners, who falls for them these days anyway?Just get the bloody ball in there. With our attack, the potential is there, it just needs tolive up to it.

I guess it is early preseason, but the lack of strength in our midfield and the lack of cohesion up front were glaring.

We let Paracki go, but his replacement struggled.

Bentleigh Greens are 3/4 the way through their season together as a SEMI proffesional team.

Nix 1st competitive game of preseason and it showed - Work to be done

10 weeks out from the regular season playing against a side which is solidly into its local domestic season. Amateurs of course but I would love to see the Phoenix 10 weeks out from the start of the season play a local regional premier league side half way through its season and look good doing it.

Some of the comments in this thread are a bit silly. Context matters.

thoughts on Cacace? 

Good to see people aren't overreacting about a preseason game, played before the squad is finialised, and where the reward is being made to spend more money travelling to Australia because the rules of the competition are that stupid. 

Mixed bag I thought. Had good moments which showed his potential, but also turned the ball over a fair bit with aimless passes. At this level I would expect to see far less of that. But in balancing it out, the whole team seemed to struggle with this last night. Would like to have seen Doyle on there longer 

Very average but got better in the second half. But he's 17 with 7 A-League matches under his belt so we can't expect him to set the world alight every match, especially in pre-season. I personally would have liked to have seen Doyle introduced 20 minutes earlier.

yeah he def didn't start well