R7 vs Sydney Sat 23rd 7:30pm

Are there any NZ ratings in there at all? I didn't see any over two pages I read.

Yes there are some NZ ratings in there ... but very few ... if you can find them please post ... the suggestion is by some on YF that if you don't rate in the top 20 you are not shown... this appears to be correct so you will need to look at media twitter feeds or something local...

However the screaming story is the rating of the Nix in NZ are under the top 20 almost every time ... I am not trying to either stir or Trol ... but the NZ ratings appear less than the fall off when you play Australian based teams... SFC on a Saturday night against most teams 90K + against MV or WSW 110 + ...  

BTW read all 10 pages and you will find some NZ ratings the highest I think was around 24K tho I could be wrong...  we have not even talked about how say AU V PG may rate ... just Nix's ratings... 

In closing the thread has over 11.5 K reads so its not that folks have not been out looking for NZ ratings ... they are hard to find...

Midfielder, I'm not quite sure what you are trying to say here to be honest..

Having a football team in New Zealand expands the A-league market to an audience of over 4 million people. There is absolutely no doubt in my mind that having a NZ team in the A-league has helped grow the league and produce more revenue from tv deals and sponsorship. The Phoenix have the third highest facebook following in the A-league with 60,000 fans. (I see you're a Mariners fan?? CCM have the lowest fan base of all A-league teams.) This is a big audience by Australian standards and the league would be crazy to get rid of the Phoenix and lose this audience. When the Nix start playing good football and win games again, hopefully we will be drawing crowds of 10,000+ to our home games (if we actually start playing our games at home which is another issue in its own entity) and this can only be good for the game over here and in Australia. 

Seb

I am not trying to say anything ... OK I am I suppose ... it's no secret their some folk in Australia who would prefer an all Australian league... it's a stated aim of FFA to get a 100 million dollar media deal next time around... also no secret a large part [not the only] is increasing technical ability ie more play out from the back ... less long ball game... is seen as the way forward... 

Numbers would indicate four sides are capable of rating regularly over 100 K... MV, WSW, SFC & the Roar... these same teams will draw crowds over 15K most days...

Newcastle is also capable of averaging about 14 K and in good years in the high teens ... but as a regional side rates away from the top sides above 50 to 80 K...

The Mariners and AU crowds around 10 K with ratings around 50 to 80 away from the top sides ... The Mariners have also built or building and will be completed in under 12 months a Centre of Excellence valued somewhere between 50 & 90 million depending on who you speak too ... maybe its worth only 5 million who knows these things but it is very impressive even now ... 

PG are rebuilding after FFA stuffed them up in Hals 1 to 3 ... are showing signs of recovering... crowds 8 to 9 K

Heart HHHHMMMMMM arguably the biggest worry in the league away from there MV match  6 to 8 K crowds with TV rating 50 to 80...

Nix with a whole country ... 4 million ... rating ?????? ... crowds 8 to 9 K ....

What does it mean .... HHHMmmmm not sure ... however Frank Lowy is leaving and while he has been there the NZ position was / is never in question... when he goes if someone runs a hard line over the numbers ... will anything change TBH I have no idea but given we have a fight with the AFC over your entry [as we will] and if your figures have kinda stayed the same .... HHHHMMmmm no idea ... all I am doing is stating the facts without saying what will or won't happen ... but to pendent numbers don't matter may be foolish... the potential needs to be converted into actuals..

On the Coast ... without doubt if we had not often won and built the COE we would be out ... today there is no way the CC would get a spot if none existed...  

whilst I agree to a point, in that the FFA and parts of aussie would prefer not to have NZ in the league, at the end of the day any TV has got to look better with an additional 4 million potential viewers. Sure not all of those will watch the telly or attend matches but I'd guess that most of the a-league wathers in NZ would watch more than just the nix games

Bollocks to this "playing well" & loosing. I just want a win at this stage I dont care how ugly it is. I am tired of seeing the positives in a galant loss / draw.

Even the prettiest of team grinds out an ugly win from time to time. I am not saying stop doing what we are trying to do. We just need a win for morale of squad and fans

The argument posted by Midfielder has been done to death before by many of local (Aust) fans who can't count. The argument is based on the fact that FFA allows a NZ based team while styming the local growth.

This is of course nonsense. FFA did not agree for the NSW South Coast team, and more significantly, the Canberra team, to join the league recently, and this was on the business model - basically they were unlikely to thrive long term without financial support of the federation.

Wellington Phoenix does not take a "space" away from these franchises. It lives and dies on its own income or lack of it, so it only helps the league by providing additional team to play in the comp, while requiring no funding from the FFA. All other jingoistic reasons aside, it is a win-win for both countries. The moment Australia has a league big enough to provide long meaningful season, this topic could be revisited. At the moment, it is a non-issue. And I say that as an Aust citizen living in Christchurch.

The wins will come. We've never played like this away from home, and it won't be long before this side can win consistently on both sides of the Tasman. It's a huge change of style, and Merrick's had to do it with some Herbert leftovers to work in. I'll be surprised if we don't go big against WSW.

What a load of bollocks to be honest. Hernandez on form would walk into any A-league team, he is absolute class. The fans didn't want him to leave but I believe there were breakdowns in contract discussions when it was about to expire. That and internal club politics + a rare poor season for Carlos are some of the reasons why he may have left. 

The tactics that Ernie is instilling in this club is the absolute right way to play. It is the nature of modern football and if you do not adapt to the modern game (ie, very technical, possession based football) you will get left behind. If we want to develop as a club and footballing nation, we need to embrace this style of football. The amount of teams that are still playing root 1 football with unskillful defenders constantly hoofing the ball up field is dropping all the time. If you compare most top division teams in this era to the top division teams 40-50 years ago, the quality of football has increased beyond sight to be honest (not that I was around that long ago). Few people would argue with this fact. Brisbane and the Victory have already done it. We need to adapt to survive and this is what Ernie is doing. 

We are playing far better football this season than we probably ever have. I agree that some of the players may not be up to this style of football, but even these players are playing better football than they ever have. I think most of us would put our results this season down to many things including an absolutely ridiculous and absurd travel schedule (We've effectively had 6 away games and I hope he owners come to their senses and understand the impact they've had on our season so far), loss of a handful of key players during the international fixtures, adaptation to new style of play, and pretty poor luck to be honest. 

It has been a horribly disjointed start to the season and it has been completely out of Ernie's hands. Our season effectively starts now and we will probably have a far clearer reflection of where we are at in the next few games. Until then I think it is a tad unfair to blame this all on Ernie.    

+1

doloras is right to this point - and we've discussed it when ricki tried to play technical football. The players are simply not up to it. Lia, siggy in particular are not cut out to play the style the coach wants. Fact is that Ernie has the players he has and really can't change that until next season.

I'm giving him a chance! I'm not like some US Republican who wants failure so I can be right. Every game I tune in optimistic that Merrick has proved me wrong and he can make a silk purse out of Vinnie Lia and Steyn Huysegems. So far he has disappointed me.

As to coaching, I really think we should have got a professional from Europe who didn't have "A-League experience"; i.e. didn't have preconceptions about what had to be done and could have done a better job of working with what he had. No, I don't know who that might have been.

And I don't care whether Carlos could have walked into any other A-League team, right here right now he's been average-to-disappointing in his tenure with the Nix.

Carlos is the best player at the club. Simple as that.

Perhaps I'm wrong (well, almost definitely I'm wrong according to the consensus here), but what I've seen out of Carlos is a whole bunch of "almosts". Free kicks that *almost* went in, or crosses or passes which *almost* found their mark, or runs which *almost* beat their last man. People pile on Vinnie Lia when his passes *almost* hit the target. This might mean he'll be great when he comes up to full speed. Or perhaps "if".

Vinnies passes are rarely almost on target - most of them are wildly off target much like the header on goal. I do agree that Carlos hasn't set the world on fire since his arrival - this could be down to the lack of prep he had beforehand or simply touble adjusting back into the a-league from india - I have hope that he is coming right and we'll see a massive step up in the coming weeks.

Prof.... take your Vinnie hating glasses off next time you watch a match, you might actually see he is doing some good things. Yes he makes mistakes but he has been one of our most consistent this year and has outperformed Manny on most occasions

So now Vinnie is good. *Yellow Fever Forum pendulum* 

All I have said all season in relation to Vinnie is to Judge him on what he does, see the good with the bad and look at someone the reasons why the bad things happen. Of course it's far easier to just say he is shit

Vinnie was good against SFC. Or, at least, he was better than usual.

perhaps, he seems to make the howlers very early on in the game which pretty much sets the tone for the rest of the game. He may not be the worst in the league - I'd wager he'd be close - but for mine he should not be starting - his errors this season have been costly ie usually infront of the box, and the ball going to the oppostion.

Lia is rubbish, Carlos is class. That is obvious every week.

We have two genuinely classy players who have both ball skills and can read the game. The rest are journeymen or young apprentices.