R4 vs Melbourne City | Fri 9th Nov | 9:50pm | SS1 | Four Kings

fudge the ref!! First timeI have had a real go at a ref but fudge me... what a joke!

It must be incredibly demoralizing playing in a team that can’t fudgeing score

What a load of old tosh to watch on a Friday night.

too angry to type properly. We were sharke to night, but deserved to be in the game at 2-1. The ref ruined this game

4 games no goals from open play is my biggest concern.

This is tough to watch. There are no genuine chances let alone goals. 

Deserved is a strong word.

Welcome to Wellington Mark.

Don't Look Back In Anger

Are they playing that for us?

because three of the centre backs are marking one player... 

Great keeper, great CB - and lots of exciting signings to come. Just how GA did it at SFC.

A couple of great strikes by them.

We did look slightly better with 4 at the back, although still no clear chances. We simply have to start with 4 next time and actually try play some football instead of parking the fudging bus, since that's clearly not working.

Also, Kopa looked decent which was good to see. Would be good to see him get a start over Mandi. Mandi is seriously just way off the pace, he would be better off coming off the bench. 

who Tony... signings? A marquee maybe, but two

The whole idea of sitting deep, keeping it tight and hitting them on the counter doesn’t work if you a) can’t keep it tight and b) are incapable of hitting them on the counter. Spoon more likely than sixth sadly.

5 at the back not working for us. Leaving far to much space in midfield for opp teams to dominate and not enough support for our strikers. Wingbacks not effective enough. Time to take more risks and load up midfield more, we have the players to operate there. Time to take more risks. Can't win games without scoring goals.

OK, having seen it for 4 weeks now, I really, really hate our 5-2-3 formation.  Our wingbacks are exposed and caught out wide on defense, yet are often ineffective going forward, our 2 DM's drop so deep it leaves massive holes in our midfield, especially in the pockets in front of the defense.  Because we are so deep in numbers our transition is seemingly ineffective, yet a fast counter seems to be our only plan to score goals if not from set pieces, but Krishna/Williams are so isolated that even with a quick long ball it's easy for the other side to get just two back and goal side and the whole thing just falls apart.  Something needs to change.

I'm not against changing to 4 at the back at all, but I don't think you can necessarily read too much into the last 10-15 minutes as proof it will work better for us. They were sitting back more, and I think we were wound up over handballgate. 

I don't think we could've tried much harder for a marquee than we have.

Unless we pull finger, season might be over by the time we get one anyway...

We weren't even a challenge tonight. The only thing the Nix managed to test was my patience

So far Rudan product and Rudan rhetoric have been far apart.

But I mean- at the end de Laet and Burgess. One recently in the EPL v. a guy out of the state leagues.

That's a tough gap for us right now. 

Was no handball, we actually have to thank the VAR to fire the up the team at least a bit. I think Rudan has no clue, we gradually get worse. Shark tactics, lackluster performance and hard to see the so muched talked winning mentality.

They will play it down, similar talking points like last week, try to stay calm but a few more games like this and doubt will creep in and they spiral into disaster.

I wish we still been in pre-season, I had so much hope, all gone,

They don't know what they are doing. 

But if it's not a penalty, and the incident was clearly inside the box, then they would look stupid giving the free kick outside the box. O lordy, what a farce this game has become. 

if Durant was a pen this was... if not more so as he was facing the ball. Can't blame VAR as the told ref you have made a mistake guving a free kick.... expecting a penalty and the ref has just fudge ed yp royally

Did rather resemble a charge down attempt. 

The difference is that Durante extended his arm beyond his body, and in the incident tonight the arm was in front of the chest, so a stronger argument exists for the arm in natural position test.

Positive is I think Mandi might be a good pick up. Few more minutes under his belt and he will be tidy. 

Also the arm in question was in the penalty area attached to a Melbourne City player. A moment or two before outside the area it was a clear foul to the referee.

Need some changes for next round I feel. Either bring the first week's team back, or start making harsh calls during the match by substituting players before half time.

I feel that if we are draw teams into a scrappy tight game, then that suit us and our style. And from those games, e.i. the Newcastle game, we have the players to get something out of them. Butt if we cant and allow them to play their own game. Then they will do exactly that and we won't be able to stay with them. Which is what we saw tonight. Most of the match looked like a practice drill of defence vs attack. We never imposed our selves on the game. 

Unfortunately for Rudan, his defensive system set up isn't working, and that mass rushing of the ball player when they are near the 18yrd box is suicidal when playing so deep and against quality opposition. I will be interested to see how he responds. 

Positives thought, Kurto looked good again. Mandi is a DM sure, but also a deep lying play maker who plays positive balls and once he gets on the same wave length as the people around him, he will look even better - but i think he is as fast and as fit as he is going to get. Singh looks still looks bright and promising - he just needs options to pass to, Williams was industrious, and Taylor is a class above. 

Also, was it just me or were a lot of our players slipping over tonight? I saw Doyle, Fenton, Butters, Krishna all have a slip at some point. 

We can't hold out hope for new players any time soon so we need to work on making our current crop work better. For starters I think we should ditch the back 5/3 and go back to a 4-3-3. We should try to have a higher backline so we don't have so much space in the middle of the park for our mids to cover. We have to play long balls so often because our guys just aren't close enough to each other. That might mean Dura having to be dropped so at least one of our CBs has pace to cover if we are playing higher

I didn’t see anything that gave me hope last night. We simply aren’t giving ourselves scoring chances, no one looks like scoring currently. 

Player of the day...seagull number 433.

The LOTG state that "the position of the hand does not necessarily mean that there is an offence", so I don't understand the whole "natural position" argument. 

To me the difference is, in last nights incident, Jamieson moved his hand towards the ball, therefore the first consideration for a handball from the LOTG has been satisfied (the movement of the hand towards the ball (not the ball towards the hand)). While the next consideration doesn't seem to have been satisfied (the distance between the opponent and the ball (unexpected ball)) as it's been hit at him from a couple of metres away, we saw last week (and in week 1) that this can still be a penalty/handball. In short, if Singh was deemed, by two FIFA qualified officials, to have handballed in the above, I do not know how last night's one was not a handball. VAR brings in the opportunity to have some consistency with the laws that are so subjective and open to interpretation. I would like to see that happen, so we lose the lottery of handball depending on who the ref is.

Interesting pressconference Marcelo Bielsa had re his Leeds team pre West Brom game comming up, where a few minutes in, hes asked about different styles of football- Beautiful football and results are whats important. Without beautiful football if the results turn bad for you the fans dont turn up. Quite enjoy his press conferences

Where is the beautiful football of the phoenix at present or attempt at playing football. 

Even after some good hours sleep, I’m still pissed.

Remember the Bentley game? We got told that the team didn’t worked much on the attacking part ofthe game, when do they start training this? Did they start training defense?

well that was pretty abysmal.

Again with 5 at the back and we are the ones being crowded of the ball? We were robbed of a penalty and as Rudan says the game changes at that point. But we shouldn't have been 2 down. Their first goal was all on the midfielders not doing their job, Mandi or Nicholls should have been charging at De Laet but noone was within 2 yards of him. Second goal was class - trust us to b the team to help Fornaroli break his drought. The penalty was a hand ball! The are was not close to the players body - as the commentators suggested after the ref had reversed the decision. Oddly enough they were 100% certain it was a penalty pre VAR involvement. Sure;y the VAR has no reason to get involved at that point, Ref blew free kick therefore VAR has no right to even look at it. Yes ref got the position wrong but the nix would have taken the free kick over the reversal, and even then surely the VAR was just telling the ref he'd got the position wrong not the handball call - which if you follow the LOTG then there player moved his arm towards the ball = handball.

Defensively we are not playing together, too many gaps infront of a back 5, DM's with little to no pace are struggling. We can't control possession when we have the ball so how we expect to build an attack is beyond me and then we have to very similar strikers leading the line, one who has no idea about the offside rule and the other who is struggling to get ball to feet and shoot.

Rudan has some work to do! both on his tactics and the players execution of the plan - its still a long way to go, and thankfully we are not the worst team in the league at the moment - I think Jets and Mariners are worse than us.

Well, natural position is a test, but not the only one, hence the instruction that it's not the only thing to be considered. 

Look, the thing is, the player's arms have to be somewhere. So when the ball strikes the player's arm, you have to consider - is it to be expected for the arm to be in that position given the physical action the player is taking? And the thing is, with both Singh and Durante, their arms were outside of their body making contact with the ball, when the movement they were making did not entail that their arms needed to be in that position. The incident last night, the situation is a lot murkier, because the arm is in front of the chest and face, and can be seen as a natural defensive movement. 

The way VAR arrived at that decision was farcical, but that's a VAR issue.

Disappointing but hardly surprising.

This is a new team, new coach. I believe that we have a solid  squad with some good players who have yet to really gel.

We coughed up too much ball last night and against a team that has a few quality players and paid the price.

For 75% of the game we were never in it but there was some good football played by us. We have some good players but unfortunately they are not game changers. I think Rudan has a good understanding of the game but is short of 2/3 quality players that would make the difference.

I think Rufer would have charged at De Laet to block his shot. That's exactly the sort of thing he had been doing well in the midfield.