R3 vs Jets Sunday 5pm McLean Park SS2

Poor result, poor effort.  I was confident of a win today after the way we had played in previous games.

frustrating more than worst....we had higher expectations than the team could deliver today

I'm not sure if Ernie knows what his best starting 11 is yet.

u win..give that man a DB.

That was a waste of bandwidth.

I guess that's 2 points we're not going to get anywhere else outside of wellington. If you can't beat teams like jests away from their own home you're basically fucked. You can guarantee the likes of Roar, CCM and WSW are never going to let this happen. We're going to be lucky to make 9th this season playing like this.

can't play Huysegems, Ifill, Brockie and Hernandez at the same time- too many old legs and not enough defense and movement in there...

poor performance..no real cohesion

good to see the team revert to its roots with plenty of quality longball and aimless passing. ernie said in the paper he wanted goals, did he forget to mention it at practise?

Out numbered and out played in midfeild. Too slow transitioning the ball. No width or punch down the flanks. van Egmont won the coaching battle.....set his side up better to combat us. If they had anyone decent up froni they would have won. Shame for HB to see such a crap game.Ernie has some work to do.

I gather from the DIS CUSTARD tone of comments that my prediction of 0-0 was accurate? Damn. :-\

Guess some on here can't see that Jets were actually playing some good football--- to say if we can't beat them we won't beat the top sides, shows they know zip about the game.

Totally agree...Phoenix need a creative midfielder badly, Hernandez doesn't seem to be up to the job, not with a piss poor performance like that...Huysegems looks like he needs to be spoon fed the ball to do anything, but to his and Brockie's defence they didn't get much quality service at all...I know people will disagree but I think Brockie plays well as an attacking right winger but they need an attacking left winger to compliment the attack, Cunningham doesn't look good to me at all...they really need a signing to boost the offensive output.

No point moaning with our duds in midfield. Bring on 2014/15

amen to that..our much vaunted strike force preseason aint looking that flash.

Last week we were singing Carlos Hernandez's praises, so it's stupid to right him off after one average performance. I agree that our attack doesn't quite work, and I think one of the strikers should be pulled for an extra midfielder. 

We're in a transition

not from defence to attack we weren't

I miss dani sanchez

maybe Fenton has to come back into mid and Bertos stays at right back.  Its lopsided towrads Hernandez when Ifill plays in "midfield"..which he didnt so there was a big gap today between defence and attack.

And just for nufc_nz. Lia can't even pass water. lol

This was the worst A League game I have seen live, 2 poor sides playing poor football.

Moss played well with some good stops.

Ciara - went ok, think he will be fine in the long run.

Siggy and Durante were solid - would pick Siggy as Nix MOM.

Bertos, went well too and, to me, looks like he should stay there.

Lia was pretty average with 1 or 2 customary howlers.

Brockie worked hard

Ifill, terrible, spent all of his time [except for that shot] falling over, limping, pfaffing about. How long has he been injured? I think his time has passed as an A League footballer, retirement time me thinks.

Stein, shocking first touch I thought, totally ineffective.

Carlos when involved is magnificent. Drifted out of the game for a long period today. Maybe playing a bit too high up in the 2nd half as the ball as not being pushed through to the front runners in any kind of threatening way.

Manny, solid game.

Hicks - still a bit slow on the ball and taking too long to control it. Hoping its just an adjustment thing to the increased pace of the game.

Riera went well and was relatively mistake free, did nothing special but not outclassed either.

Cunningham only had a short time on and was very busy, showed a good attitude. I hope he kicks on for us because we need a bit of spark up front.

So let's get this straight?

Ifill - A fantastic cameo off the bench last week and set up our only goal. This week he needs to go into retirement. Seriously? What he needs is to be used better. He is only a bench player and not a starter. The problem is that we lack the depth to have many specialist bench players.

Hernandez - MoTM last week and now he is shit? Okay.

In round 1 people were calling Sigmund deadweight. He was our 2nd best last week and probably our best tonight. People on here are being too reactionary. Yes, it was a poor performance and we need to win these ones. I think some people saw a good 45 minutes of football and thought we would waltz into the top 6. Guess what? It's going to be a tough season. At the end of last seasons we lost quite a few players and our only major signings have been Hernandez, Merrick and Cunningham. Cunningham looks like a dud (still got time) so then we are only left with Hernandez and Merrick. That isn't enough to turn 10th position into contenders over night.

The game was what it was because I was there.

We came out with no intensity at all - looked like we thought we just had to turn up and the 3 points were a given. Once you start in that head space it is very difficult to turn it around - you end up chasing in twos or threes and not pressing as a team. Legs get tired, heads drop and confidence goes.

As commented already you can't play Ifill, Brockie, Hernandez and Stein at the same time - aside from Stein the others aren't going to do the hard yards. We lost the mid-field and never got it back. We were just lucky Newcastle couldn't score in a brothel with a wad of $100s in their pockets.

I understand the spread the game / share the love objective for these away home games but wonder if giving away home advantage cost us two points today - of course we'll never know.