R26 vs Melbourne Victory | Sat 2nd Apr | 7:15pm | RoF

Next season Gui and Kosta apparently, don't know if we have any this season.

Clearly he's coming here for the weather

If they are why don't we announce them accordingly

I don't get the clubs attitude around that

Must have missed it, will look

Edit, can't see it

Maybe it was in the victory press release or maybe just rumored. I'll try and dig it up tomorrow.

Just did a quick Google on my phone and every article except the nix say that Gui is a marquee, as far as Kosta goes it says rumored to be a big money marquee.

So yes the club hasn't advertised the fact, as they didn't advertise burns.

I knew someone would do that!

What would have been funny on Saturday night would have been the club announcing over the PA system or just before kickoff, or parading, our two new signings.

Or as in some exhibition games I've seen, make them change at half time from MVU to the Nix strip. 

Would be worth it just for the look on Kev Muscat's face.

The writing was on the wall on saturday, as our two marquees didn't show up!

Ernie Merrick Titles: = 2 plus a losing grand finalist medal

Every other Phoenix manager = 0

The guy knows how to win a title. I'm happy to have a winner in charge because things were looking a hell of a lot worse at the end of Rickis time. We have 2 excellent signings for next year (even if one is confusing) and the talk of more to come. 

Noooooo!!!!!

Coach Taylor from Friday Night Lights!

What if... What if Dura's great header hadn't been saved on Saturday? It's all a matter of centimetres.

Or even Wee macs free kick.two inches lower could have made a difference. His one shining moment in the whole game.

The guy KNEW how to win a title - he has clearly forgotten.

He was Coach of the year in 2010, & sacked in March 2011, we don't appear to have very high standards, as we keep settling for mediocrity.

Thankfully the metrics required by the FFA are all about the money & not about the quality of football, so it would appear we are safe for a few more mediocre years!

That is a dull narrative, a title winning coach remains the key to winning again.

Would you hire Wenger if you wanted to win the Premere League?

Irony is not lost with Wenger. Made me LOL!

How would we have felt if John Aloisi was appointed coach considering his record with Heart - what was it, 17 games without a win? Would you rather we have Arnold, given his more recent record in the HAL, and have a season like we and SFC are having now but with Arnold, the big sook; or what about if WSW sacked Popovic after WSW horrid run last season - would you think he would be a good manager considering he just got sacked (but look at how well they are going now)?

I'm pretty sure that I<3Nix would be more than happy!

So would Rembrandt 

This interested me vis a vis what it takes to win:

http://www.theguardian.com/football/blog/2016/apr/...

Hmm, for us though not so much.  Winning percentage of 35% and average points per game of 1.2.  Drops away even further if you exclude games where we had Nathan Burns in the team - I'd have to have another look at the numbers but we may even be down to less than a point per game without Burns in the team.

The concern for me is that it just seems to be business as usual when we have been absolutely woeful this season.  I really struggle to think of any real positives.

Like Balance I struggle to understand the easy ride he is getting

This discussion just goes around in circles. There were mitigating circumstances in his first and third seasons, but he showed enough last year that he gets a free pass this. If we were coming 9th without all the off field issues then sack him, but enough has gone wrong to give him the benefit of the doubt. 

However, he needs to be performing next season. If mid season the team isn't challenging for a home semi then we should look to replace him ASAP - my vote would be to hire Ramon as a caretaker to give him half a season audition for the big time..

VLADIMIR:

And comparing a tactical approach in tennis or UFC to one in football is a pretty stretched analogy.

I see Leicester had another cagey 1-0 win since that article was published too, and are now 7 points clear with 6 games to go. And I'm not even sure they've even got more defensive since the start of the season, if anything their opponents have got more defensive against them as they realised the threat they pose, hence scoring drying up.

Yeh, it's far from a perfect explanation, but it did kinda resonate, especially in the discussion of BMac v Williamson as captains here. Which could go in the cricket thread.

Also with the discussion of Wenger- though that's a multi-faceted issue too. 

The problem with the approach is if it works then it works. Which doesn't really help anyone. 

It's an article for this forum- plenty of holes to pick at, but one or two valid points...

I think he does need to finish top 5 next year or he is fair game to be sacked. I think a big sign towards that is recruitment. I like the Kosta signing and while Gay Fiddler is a quality player, we don't need yet another attacking midfielder when we have one already that cannot be shoe horned into that position so as much as he is a good footballer, I am just puzzled by it. The defence has massive holes as it stands and I do wonder if he knows a few things we do not around players willing to come and the making of Krishna/Reira as locals.

Still Xmas comes around to give us a gage of how we are going, I'm going to give the guy a chance to get it right because he could well nail recruitment and hit a home run this year. Until the recruitment is done, the benefit of the doubt is his.

Well as I said it would be a half season to see what Ramon can do sort of thing, I think he deserves the opportunity, but you have to wonder why he hasn't been given it.

Gui is a different sort of player to our other AM's though, I think he'll be able to provide better service to our strikers than either WeeMac or Roly. I think him and Roly will work well together, but like others on here I'm struggling to put WeeMac in the starting lineup as it stands.

The way we have been conceding goal we might try him in the back four. :)

Well, I will as usual renew my membership, but I have to say the football from the Phoenix on offer this year has been dire apart from a couple of games.

And its the casual punters who will need to fulfil the metrics , and crowds are going from bad to even worse at the moment. I actually felt bad looking around before the game on Saturday, cos there was some decent looking food on offer starting from the Wieners up to the Mezzanine and there were hardly any takers - this was one thing people used to moan about. So having food options aint gonna save us Im afraid, start putting the ball in the box near those white posty things.  Thats how we got our goal, McGlinchey shoots from distance and then Roly put the corner in where it counts, and lo and behold we score. You dont score by passing the bloody thing back to Durante and Moss all the time

There is a telling, I think, comment from Ernie about Finkler in one of his match comments.  "Every first touch takes him into space, he rarely gets tackled and his vision and quality of passing forward through accuracy and weighting on the ball is the best in the league."

http://www.fourfourtwo.com/au/news/merrick-praises...

imo Roly is exactly the opposite of those first two points.  I very much think we need Finkler. 

It is not a case of we have enough, with Finkler we gain someone whom is better than the others, an improvement on the team.

100% agree. Roly is not helping at all to get us faster forward. He does all the nice looking turns and twist and then draws fouls. But he is not opening enough space for him self and others. I can't remember any killer passes behind the defence, just have to watch Krishna and Powell, how many angled runs the try to make per game and there is no service, no creativity. It's all to slow, to many touches. McGlinchey does much more of this and get a lot of crap for it.