R11 v Adelaide United | Sat 5th Jan 2019 | 7:35pm | Hindmarsh Stadium

Exactly right! 

I'm ok with the red card for Mandi. Even though the player on the deck was shielding the ball, it was a dangerous challenge. 

Two things bothered me about the VAR though. 

1. They didn't look retrospectively at the conduct of the Adelaide players on two occassions in the match (which at minimum they should be fined for for failing to control their players)

2. Lia's challenge earlier (which essentially was the catalyst for everyone losing their heads) was studs up and should have been red.

From the Fifa Website:

If this is the definition of the rules, then the VAR in this match has cherry picked when they are to intervene based on controversy.

VAR is one thing but this is where the match review panel (MRP) may have a look at it? Or do they only review ref's actual decisions?

Because he was yellow carded, they can't take retrospective action as the punishment has already been awarded. 

It was not death by slow-motion, it was clear and obvious for all players around, that’s why they freaked out. Cacace had it under control and you could see Mandi charging in, he was loaded the whole game.

What Mandi did was silly, but jeez the rest of the team did well after that. People are acting like this was a negative result, but I don't really see how. We were a man down for half an hour, away to good team coming off the back of a good win. I feel like we've all forgotten what we used to be like already, but as Rudz said in the presser, any other year we would have lost this. We withstood a bombardment of attack for those last 15 minutes, to come away with anything out of a match with those circumstances is hugely positive in the greater scheme of things. We are always going have games where we don't play as well, every team does. But to get points from those games is something that we don't normally do. We certainly didn't last year. This wasn't good to watch, but shark they put in a shift

Adelaide are pretty limp up front huh? If they had a good striker they’d be a good tram

The only real negative is that draws are stacking to stack up a bit. There is now a clear top four with the two Melbourne's, Perth and Sydney, with us and Adelaide striving to hang on.

On the positive side though, there is also a bit of distance now back to seventh

that's what the referee did thinking he got the ball in the first place - if you look at the replay there is no way the referee saw the kick live as he is on the other side of the bundle of players on the ground.

When he watches the replay and the ball was not played it's a CLEAR red.

happy to take the away point despite our optimism on previous games that we were capable of having a win.

Poor finishing by Adelaide along with resolute defending and some great goal keeping were key to the point being deserved. We certainly didnt gel as we have in the past with many passes going astray and as stated by others, our creators in mid field werent able to find the passes they have previously. Probably a credit to Adelaide but it is these times that Singh and co need to learn from on how to make their presence felt.

Like Mandi skills when he brings them to the games but seemed out of sorts and frustrated last night. Got turned several times and several passes didnt find our players. Tiring of his theatrics though.

Hope we can quickly put this behind us to play to our capabilty and take the points on Tues from wsw then come back to westpac for a 10k crowd v the mariners.

yeah I don't think it was full force - for me it's a jab - little backlift and wasn't trying to follow through.  However I have no doubt he saw it was Lia who was on the ground who he had "words" with just prior to this incident and he saw and opportunity to get a sneaky dirty kick in.

So what went wrong? Has the Rudan bubble burst? Were the lads just tired, or have we been found out? Any reason to suspect we'll bounce back against the Wandertards?

Referee didn't see that Mandi misses the ball - was on the wrong side.  so your wrong there.

You're sounding pretty railed lad.

Well, Kurto really earned his wages last night.     Match not a great advert for the Beautiful Game, but a good result for the Nix.     If you stop the opposing team from scoring  I reckon you deserve a point.   Rudan has certainly instilled some fighting spirit into the team.     The FFA may bleat on about Metrics and promote the signings of Marquee players but when are they going to do something to improve the standard of the match officials?        Am looking forward to see how defenders will cope against a 6ft 5 in. Irishman after having spent so long clattering the likes of Krishna and Singh.       Roll on next Saturday.

Even the best teams have bad games.  The better teams scrape draws or messy wins during a bad game. 

Hopefully it's just that.  Tuesday will be interesting but if its a shocker I won't read too much into that either because of the dumb turn around time. 

Maybe we didn't intend to gas ourselves be ause of Tuesday and we took our foot off the pedal by too much. Who knows. 

Seemed like they came out with a plan to kick Cacace based on the little I saw? 0-0 is a good result at Hindmarsh.

Also feel like this is the kind of game Sheridan may give us an edge 

agree with this......Adelaide showed up with a clear plan to disrupt our play, they hacked Libby out of th game and thanks to the ref got away with it - he allowed them to hack libby all first half with only a few calls. They also harassed singh and krishna out of the game. Nix of years gone by would have lost the plot seen a red card and lost by 3. 6 games unbeaten, 5th equal and looking strong. We should be happy.

Yes, better than other years, but finishing 7th would also be better than other years and that wouldn't be good enough.

Good result from where we were at and a man down, but we need to be playing better than we did the first 60 minutes. The odd slip in performance does happen with every team, but do need to improve vs WSW & CCM or it's not going to be pretty.

In previous years, comments like the above would have been called "accepting mediocrity"

In previous years, the gap between our expectations about the team performance and the reality would have been called "huge".

If it wasn't for the fears about FFA scheming how to get rid of us quietly I would say this is the most enjoyable season for any Nix fan since, like, ever. This is the best I've seen Phoenix play in years, and Rudan is showing signs of real charisma as a coach.

Right, just watched a replay of the Mandi incident complete with Mark Bosnich's commentary. And since I cant stand the coke sniffing nazi cod I am going to change my opinion of the whole thing. Definite red card for me, but more for the deliberate handling of the ball by the Adelaide player.  Disgraceful stuff by Adelaide!!!

You can praise all good goal keeping and the great defence in the last 25 minutes to change the narrative in a  success. All I saw was low passing accuracy, 4 shots, 2 on target and no idea how to move the ball through the midfield.

It's not doomsday, but I do not agree that I saw a wining mentality, it was more a not loosing mentality. I'll take the point and be happy to move on.

Adelaide knew how to play to stifle our game - especially in the second half where they've targeted Fenton and Cacace.  I saw a disconnect between these two and the midfield, and instead of blaming the team, I think this was the correct tactics by Adelaide coach (Marco Kurz) against the Nix.  I am sure WSW will learn from this, so it would not be a surprise if Rudan plays Sheridan (if he is available) which may cause a different team setup.

our players are allowed bad days... the main thing is, we still picked up a point!

We are a long, long way from the heady heights of 2009/2010.

True. Quality of the opposition has gone up. Quality of FFA has gone down.

Can we talk about how disgustingly biased the commentary was? I realise the best Aussies are over covering the Asian Cup, but last night's commentary performance from Dom and Ned was worse than the commentator vs Brisbane saying he had a bet on the Roar to win. Not a word of criticism for Adelaide yet taking every opportunity to belittle the Nix's efforts by picking apart every negative detail. Yeah, Piney's biased, but not at the expense of another team - Piney's a fan of the Nix, these guys are genuine enemies. Really emphasises that we're up against it as a Kiwi club

It was Cacace's leg, not Lia's hand.

Lies! I wont have you agreeing with Boscod in here!!!

Mandi was always getting the red. There are other players like Singh or Fenton who may have gotten away with just the yellow but Mandi has a reputation for unsporting behaviour and was never going to get a positive result. It looked very intentional as well. Mandi is good but the way he dives constantly has got to annoy the officials. 

it was a definite coincidence Mandi absolutely smashed one of their players accidentally while definitely going for the ball just minutes after a bad foul was committed on him... 

and went un-punished.

I think Mandi's our most underrated player this season so it will be interesting to see how we go without him on Tue. The new striker will be a big help as it means we can play with an alternative attacking structure, Adelaide really had our number I thought. 

Suck it up.

A. That's not relevant and B. didn't Lia get a yellow? Either way we were flying into a few tackles and Mandi clearly tried to do the guy on the ground. As a former semi dirty player myself I am pretty sure that was deliberate because it's exactly what I would have done. If all you're trying to do is clear it you don't take an absolute full swing at a ball in that situation, you try and scuff it clear of the player first.