R9 vs Melbourne Victory | Sun 3rd Dec | 4:30pm | RoF

Bet Wellnix are wishing they had just kept Merrick and fired all the players except Krishna now!

Sad truth is MV should've buried us - on another day they would've scored 6 or 7.

Don't know why people are saying Krishna was MOM....  He should've gone off after his injury. He never fully recovered. At fault for Melb second goal then did nothing. He's quick and gives it a good go but not much else tonight unfortunately.

AK clearly MOM. 2 world class finishes.

Ridenton not up to it and we need an actual no1 keeper.

Whens the off season?

For those that stayed longer than thirty seconds after the final whistle you might have seen Hamish. 

we seem to have solved our goal scoring issue, but now we have to deal with inept defending and two below par keepers. I held out hope for Italiano but I fear he may not be up to it - or maybe its just his defence making him look bad?

We have faults that arn't getting fixed, backline is a shambles and the midfield is getting bossed again in the 2nd half. Durante needs to go. No plan for when our midfield gets bossed. Our wingbacks were pretty good for most of the game, Krishna was crocked and should have come off which a mistake of his conceded a goal. This club really lacks ambition if it thinks it can squat on a license invest little and hope for 6th, should be aiming for no1. Another tough season ahead but I hope someone at the top can make the right calls and steer the ship properly because the future ain't pretty.

Losing 2-3 flattered us, we were much much worse than that. A confident Victory side with their shooting boots on would have put 6 goals on us.

Sorry Dura, you are a club legend and deservedly voted the best A League defender ever, but this is another example of a great sportsman going one season too many. His lack of pace directly responsible for two of the goals and a couple of chances they did not take.

Great selection to omit Finkler, I hope we see the same bravery by the coaches to put Dura on the bench and start Mullen next week.

I hope that the bad patch most teams go through at some stage of the season is just coming early for us because if this continues I worry that we deservedly be thrown out of the league for one if the many ambitious clubs in Australia.

We are not capable of playing the ball out from the back. Opposition teams are waiting and shut us down then we lose the ball to them to swarm all over us.

We  stand so deep at the back then when opposition teams run at us in our half we run away rather than looking to shut them down. We also let opposition stikers roam unmarked in our back third.

Crap with a few class players thrown in which just makes things even more miserable.

Hmmmmm..other teams have not had winners playing but they became winners.

https://www.stuff.co.nz/sport/football/a-league/99490429/we-dont-have-winners-wellington-phoenix-coach-blasts-his-squad-while-disciplining-gui-finkler

Ridenton and Durante were awful in patches. Italiano should have done more with the first and second from the stands. McGlinchey,where was he , we need him at the heart of the 4-4-2 and  if that means Vidosic doesnt play then so be it, put Parkhouse on the width. Kaludjerovic, two brilliant finishes but never at any time did it look like that would be enouhgh.

Hang on. You 'don't get the angst' but you also acknowledge that they 'might have had three or four'. Don't you see why people are angsty if we are 80 minutes into a match at home and we might have conceded 3 or 4 against a team which is second bottom on the table? We shouldn't be giving teams these chances.

I remember a lot of people yelling at me when I said that Darije had given up on this bunch of losers.

Missed the game as my bloody BT TV didn't record it (again, might be a blessing!), but I felt letting Moss go was a big mistake when it happened. 

I think Ridenton and Durante are bench warmers, to see them continue to play and to read comments here about those two plus Mambo playing badly just backs all this up.

"Letting Moss go" - assumes facts not in evidence. His contract was up and maybe Ernie made him an offer that couldn't be matched. (My pet theory is that Mossy rates Ernie as a coach and was sick of the rest of the team ignoring him before he left.)

You're missing what he's saying, he said that the team has shown its good enough but isn't showing the mental fortitude.

Interesting to see what happens in the January window.

The team has said that never offered contracts to any of the players that left, there was talk that Moss wanted a substantial pay rise.

It's a shame the team didn't stream the conference like they were doing at the start of the season. According to that article it was a twenty minute long conference but we'll just end up with the cut down version on the a league website.

Crowd of 5700 and a coach saying he has a team without winners. Yep we hit rock bottom. Hope the players get their shark together as soon as possible.

Piney is saying that Darje said the team are good enough to win but that they need to develop into winners which is quite a different spin to stuff. Need to watch the press conference to understand what the exact meaning is.

All I can say is that if everyone gave the effort of Krishna every game, we would win a lot more.

We lost that with McG going off.  Ridenton got through a ton of work but was having to get further forward because Parkhouse offers little other than a wing styled role - he's not effective centrally.  Sure Ridenton turned over three or four balls and one of those led to a goal, but he was trying to do everything, through the middle.  Supporting Paracki, playmaking and midfield grunt.  Too much to ask.

We need to get rid of Finkler and replace him with someone who can do the job he's supposed to be here for.

Durante, yep.  Just a yard too slow reacting and in pace now.

Saw Watson head down the tunnel in tears. Looks to me like quite a few of the players care more than you would think about making the fans proud and feel the losses as acutely as we do

Hello,

I have come here to register my displeasure at the Wellington Phoenix home loss to Melbourne Victory tonight.

Thank you.

Singh...

To be honest, I’m even getting bored with moaning about the Nix now. I haven’t been to a game this season, and that doesn’t make me proud to say, but I just can’t be bothered with this crap right now. Every week I think I’ll go along to the next game, I end up not bothering, and more often than not, the team proves I made the right call.

And before anyone says they don’t need fans like me, you’d be wrong. They need fans more than ever, but some huge changes are required. I fear the FFA will take our licence before that actually happens though.

I can understand the ‘entertainment’ argument to a degree, but when it’s 99% of the time Nix losing such games, the argument wears thin. 

Crazy as it may seem, I want to see Nix win. At the moment, the chances of that happening are so low, I don’t bother and watch on TV.

I agree with Fenix on that.  I would want us to win and to win well, but I also appreciate a good loss.

Like everyone I have a bellyache about losing 2:3 after leading 2:0 but this was a much better game to watch than the crap we produced against the CCM and also against the Jets.  This game was more on par with the Brisbane game.  

And yes I agree with Darije. We do not have a winning mindset while on the skillset level we are capable of winning games.

So sick of losing. 2nd half killed us big time. Something has to change, maybe bring in Singh?

I'm not so sure that a winning mindset is the issue here. I saw plenty of hard running, endeavour and passion from us today, and even as late as 80+ minutes we were still looking to grab a winner. But the fact is that teams are exploiting some major deficiencies in our set up and tactics. You can show all the passion you like but if your defence is being ripped apart week after week it's clear something is badly out of whack.

We have now been taken apart by Roar (2nd half), Jets, CCM and MV. Not just beaten but destroyed in the most demoralising way. Hard to have a winning mindset when that's happening.

Ground hog day...

Our defence has be piss poor for what 3+ seasons now stretching back to the end of Ricki's tenure.  It's interesting to note that the one season we really did well of late, was ruined by our defence and we so reliant on one player to play out of his skin (when we came 4th but should have won the league). 

I do wonder how much Durante's leadership as well as physical ability have been a factor in this.  He's been our greatest servant but should have been moved on from his captaincy role a couple of season's ago and now should be riding the pine and being used as a super sub, and yet he continues to play and captain the team.  Neither of these are his fault so it does go to show how significant our failings really are.

Lets see what the new FIFA appointed board has to say.

We're not the only fans getting sharkty

http://www.chroniclelive.co.uk/news/north-east-new...

There was a record set last night. The fastest emptying of the stadium after a Phoenix match. 

Locker room feud in progress?

Well something needs to change doesn't it? We all have our theories about why things are going pear shaped but I wonder what the coach thinks it is? More importantly, what is he going to do about it.

He looks like he might have some balls and is not afraid to drop players, even from the game day squad - tough love might be whats needed.