R6 vs Adelaide United | Saturday 15th Nov | 7:00pm | SS4

This Sebre refereed the game between the All Whites and New Caledonia and did nothing when Shane Smeltz had his head dealt to and the idoit of a ref did bugger all.

When he made that last decision I wondered if he was going to take his ref shirt off and expose a red shirt!!

pretty sure the scorer of the winning goal was offside from the free kick - he gets back onside for the header to him but surely he has gained an advantage from being offside on the first ball forward.. 

Ref may aswell pull on a Adelaide shirt and go sit in the crowd, "Hmmmm Adelaide lost the ball? better give them a freekick"

Strebre. Zelic. FFA. 0 fucks given. Thats how they roll.

brave battling, unlucky to come unstuck in the final minute. 

Regardless of the ref, and he was poor...

We should have defended better than that in the final quarter, but we had Ridenton, Rufer, Shermy, Krishna and Cunningham on, the first three are inexperienced, and the other two cant defend 

We got exactly what we deserved out of that game - nothing.

We looked disorganised, gave away stupid unnecessary fouls, had appalling ball skills and couldn't string more than a couple of passes together.

Outclassed by Adelaide - the only way we can foot it with teams that are obviously better is to play as a unit. We didn't.

I think you are correct. The ref. was not great, but to be fair Roly was lucky to stay on the pitch. The fact is we were not good enough and you can make all the excuses you like. Check the stats, that gives one a clue. 

It was very disappointing as we were very close to getting a point, but poor defending cost us.

sorry but se were cheated out of a result. Fatal incorrect decisions by the official. Of course we didn't handle the set piece but should of been put in that position in the first place. We deserved the draw.

we deserved nothing from that, second half was awful. We gave it away so much. Nothing stuck at all up front and Rodriguez was absolutely anonymous

Get out Normo...

The worst thing is that Strebe is a good ref. He's one of the best in the league. He's a better ref than Williams. We've all seen reffing of the highest quality from him.

But then there's this:

And you have to wonder about his blind spots. The frequency of poor decisions increased as the end of the game came closer.

Hardly. He had a poor game, but Roly was lucky to stay on the park. He is usually one of the better refs but tonight he was poor all round.

Truthfully we did not deserve to win.

Ah the grumpy old men squad are here. 

I see a young team who defended with all their bloody heart and when they made interceptions like Shermy did, got calls against them.

How about Malik- all that BS about Roly (who by the way had two cheap shots on his knee) two late tackles in professional foul position?

Sure we made some bad challenges, but we also tracked, ran and shut them down time and time again. How many really good chances did they have? Not many. We have had some appalling displays in Hindmarsh and I remember every bloody one of them and this was not one of them.

Did Adelaide deserve to win? No they did not. 

We definitely deserved a draw .

But the referee saw otherwise, how on Earth was Krishna repeatedly getting fouled ? He was still on the floor from the previous foul !

I'm sure all their fans are busy saying- great win, sure Malik was lucky to stay on the park. Honestly I think some of you've spent too much time watching football in the past when NZ teams were happy to lose pluckily. I've grown up watching the Phoenix and the AWs who expect to win and aren't apologetic for playing. 

We had our chances in that second half too. Maaan. 5-1 or 2-1 at the end of the 93 minutes they all hurt.

Problem is if you give the ball away like we did, offer basically no attacking threat and rely only on defending you give up chances and good teams will take them.

We got away with it against Central Coast, we didn't here.  The referee didn't help with the goal but if they'd scored with one of the other three or four good chances we'd have had no complaints.  

Shermy looked scared of the ball.  Lia is Lia, Rodriguez is the new Lia.  And our best attacker, the only guy who looks a threat on the break, got subbed, leaving Cunningham and Krishna, neither of whom have any sense of how to keep the ball up front. Very strange decisions from Ernie.

dble post

sure. So could we have scored on the counter 2 or 3 times. Those are the tactics and the risks. Worked against WSW, didn't work against Victory and almost and should've worked here. 

Shermy was absolutely exhausted. Cos he'd slogged his guts out all game. and made a good challenge in the dying minutes.

Ernie played the hand he had. It almost worked. And At 92 minutes deserved to.

Was very impressed with Shermy. Sure he isnt the greatest going forward and some of his passing needs work, but he defended pretty well and gave everything he had. 

Only your opinion.

I actually think there's a case to suggest Strebe has a bias against NZ, but even if not, every week in the A League the refereeing is dreadful with horrendous decisions in most games. They just don't seem to have a grasp of what is a foul, and their other standard seems to be that if an import, especially a South American one, rolls around on the floor he must have been fouled.

Anyone with half a brain knows that genuine injury equals player lying still on the ground, and faking it equals rolling around only to recover as soon as the free kick is given.

ditto. I'm sure you are rushing to hand back that game that Solskjaer scored after 13 minutes of stoppage time too while you're abasing yourself on behalf of the clubs you support. 

Ned Zelic is an annoying prick.

I'd like to see him on the right.  He gave the ball away all the time because he's not comfortable on his left foot

True, but I try not to have the rose coloured glasses on.

We gave the ball away far too much to get anything out of that game. That and being offside when we did have a chance.

Shame.

Durante , Brindell South, Krishna  did really well.

What the fuck has that got to do with anything you dip stick.

We had about 30% possession in that half. That's not tactics, it's rolling the dice

We had no hope if they kept running through the midfield.

With Kenny and Krishna still on we had a chance of catching them on the break, and they also had the pace to track, and with Burns sacrificed to get Rufer, Ridenton, Riera and a deeper sitting Lia all in the mid we nearly burgled a point and there were a couple of moments when we might have burgled the lot.

Agree re Rodriguez.  He has some silky touches but defensively goes missing and cannot boss the midfield.  That's why we have Lia on as well.  And while he is a mature and experienced head in there Lia has never had the pace to foot it with the quick sides and can reasonably be relied upon to play the killer ball against us.

We are still a better team than last year and I thought we came back to fight hard for a point despite the referee and a diving Adelaide.

No result and Adelaide are the better side but we were burgling a point but for several poor refereeing decisions.  As well as things to be concerned about, there was some good work to hold a very good side for much of the second half.  Carrusca going off may have helped, but I think Ernie's changes did the business and the younger kids did pretty well. 

and at 92 minutes Ernie's had a good dice game

To take a positive from the game Rufers passing in around the box looked the business, putting Cunningham through once and playing the pass to set up Ridenton for a one on one

I've never been in the 'lets all hate on Lia camp' but he was lucky to not get sent off in the first half.

Doesn't mean you have to audition to be a commentator for the Adelaide tv coverage. 

Though to be fair when we were shutting their midfield down it was like Adelaide were playing golf and hadn't got their swing working- the guy said Adelaide hadn't got their attack going, but no mention of Phoenix pressing. 

Did you really think what Roly got carded for was a foul? Sure he had a couple of late fouls earlier and deserved the card, but that was shoulder to shoulder and Elrich was simply weak and knew the ref was likely to call for him if he dropped to the deck.

Also, no desrespect Mr Legg. I'm just awfully anxious for the Phoenix to get a bit of Ernie time.

You can't create pressure if you don't keep the ball.  The ball over the top is a pretty basic tactic that rarely works at this level because it's far too easy for defenders.  We need to be able to get the ball down and play even when we're under pressure, you can beat a press in different ways but one thing you need is your guys up front to keep hold of the ball to get you up the pitch.  And there wasn't much of that once we were left with Cunningham and Krishna out there.

Hahaha, your answer to a high press is "lump it over the top"????? That's why teams often do a high press, hoping the opposition does that.

Would have loved Kenny to hold the ball up after he had gone past the keeper. We had 3 guys in the box IIRC waiting for the ball. Was almost a Benji-ish moment.