Once again, I'm surprised by the negativity on display here (and I'm saying this as someone who did go to bed fuming and with a stress headache on Saturday).
Writing off the whole season on the basis of the first three matches is completely ridiculous.
We kicked off 23/24 with a scoreless draw and two wins but I think the positivity was overblown by putting 5 goals past Brisbane in round three. We settled into our low-scoring rhythm pretty much immediately after that, with a few outlier matches here and there. Not all players were sharp from the get go and Paulsen had conceded 4 goals by round three (versus Olu's 3). I admit, though, that it's easy for doubt to be superseded by the good memories of being top of the league for a lot of the season.
We haven't been fantastic so far but we also haven't been terrible, all things considered. A bunch of our players have been or are still injured, our pre-season was quite disrupted and yes, we did lose valuable players. In saying that, though, I think the biggest loss is not in technical prowess but more so in chemistry. I don't think our current players are worse. I think they're not used to playing together just yet. I'm still spotting moments where more than one player goes for the ball or where nobody goes for it. Passes that go where someone should have been but wasn't, etc. The best runs of play have come from combinations we already had going last year. I think (and hope) it's just a matter of time until we click.
On the other hand, Auckland have had a long pre-season with several competitive games, no injuries, no suspensions, home matches (let's face it, Wellington isn't exactly a massive away trip) and possibly some "help" from officials to keep things interesting (not getting into conspiracy theories and nothing particularly blatant - just a couple of instances of "looking the other way" when it matters, etc.). They now get a nice little holiday to recover, too, which I'm hoping will actually kill momentum. Paulsen will not keep clean sheets all season, their players will eventually fatigue and luck will run out - hopefully in time for the next derby :)
Writing off the whole season on the basis of the first three matches is completely ridiculous.
We kicked off 23/24 with a scoreless draw and two wins but I think the positivity was overblown by putting 5 goals past Brisbane in round three. We settled into our low-scoring rhythm pretty much immediately after that, with a few outlier matches here and there. Not all players were sharp from the get go and Paulsen had conceded 4 goals by round three (versus Olu's 3). I admit, though, that it's easy for doubt to be superseded by the good memories of being top of the league for a lot of the season.
We haven't been fantastic so far but we also haven't been terrible, all things considered. A bunch of our players have been or are still injured, our pre-season was quite disrupted and yes, we did lose valuable players. In saying that, though, I think the biggest loss is not in technical prowess but more so in chemistry. I don't think our current players are worse. I think they're not used to playing together just yet. I'm still spotting moments where more than one player goes for the ball or where nobody goes for it. Passes that go where someone should have been but wasn't, etc. The best runs of play have come from combinations we already had going last year. I think (and hope) it's just a matter of time until we click.
On the other hand, Auckland have had a long pre-season with several competitive games, no injuries, no suspensions, home matches (let's face it, Wellington isn't exactly a massive away trip) and possibly some "help" from officials to keep things interesting (not getting into conspiracy theories and nothing particularly blatant - just a couple of instances of "looking the other way" when it matters, etc.). They now get a nice little holiday to recover, too, which I'm hoping will actually kill momentum. Paulsen will not keep clean sheets all season, their players will eventually fatigue and luck will run out - hopefully in time for the next derby :)