I do feel like we need to be asking more questions of Dome tbh, what are the reasons that certain replacements weren't made, was there enough backing of the manager ect. He's the constant over the seasons of no success.
Also it's not wrong to label our club as losers, they objective are the biggest losers in the league. We'll be losers until we get some fudgeing silverware.
I was lucky enough to attend this seasons kit launch. At which i spoke to a number of players,Chief, Domey,Henry Tait and many others involved in the club. NO ONE not one person i spoke to that nite said gee i hope we make the top 6 all the conversations were about giving it a decent crack and winning it.
Its just BS from (i will generously call them) fans this the club has no ambition other than to make the top 6
about 1 year ago· edited about 1 year ago· History
I think Chief has been a little overconfident and a little unlucky.
That’s all.
It’s his first gig. With a disrupted pre-season, which has also led to injuries imo. Rufer and Payne the worst. Colakovski doesn’t replace Ball, but might have been better than the kids. A bit stronger, a bit more experienced. Not title winning though, this season.
One or two more players might have seen us hang in there. Equally we might have hoped for a bit more from Roa Conchie or that Chief could have found a role for OVH.
The biggest question is given how a decision had allegedly been made on David Ball pre-season, is why it took until halfway through the season to play out and we still have no replacement.
Perhaps another question is why we have been so slow to get any injury replacement players in. We’ve had significant loses- 6 useful players at my count (Ball, OVH, Al-Taay, Colakovski, Rojas and Rufer) and we’ve brought no one in to cover them.
Retre and Nagasawa don’t replace Pennington and Kraev for running and ability to drive forward. Nobody replaces Rufer.
Anyway I think the club has to do better next season. It’s a pity we couldn’t maintain our momentum from last season. However, I hope we have Chief and Adam Griffiths next season and a bit more ambition in squad balance and maintenance.
One more experienced utility midfielder/FB and a player to cover Marco and link through the midfield and I think we’d still be in with a shot.
We've grossly overperformed relative to someone's claim we don't aim for top 4? We need to spend less money so we average 6th and neatly just meet our claimed aspiration?
Objectively, someone isn't being objective.
This club under Welnix has only just, in those last five years, got their academy based strategy fully up and running. Prior to that we had all sorts of hamstrings imposed on us by the League. And by Serepiso's demise.
In the time that I think you can say Welnix has been fully up and running and unencumbered by the threat of being evicted from the League, we've come 2nd and 3rd over five years. And barely finished once in the bottom half. In pretty adverse circumstances for two of the five years.
So sure, we'd all like to win the thing. Shark happens. You don't win the A League with the number of injuries we've had this season.
I get we'd all like to win the thing. Surprisingly that's difficult.
We've grossly overperformed relative to someone's claim we don't aim for top 4? We need to spend less money so we average 6th and neatly just meet our claimed aspiration?
Objectively, someone isn't being objective.
This club under Welnix has only just, in those last five years, got their academy based strategy fully up and running. Prior to that we had all sorts of hamstrings imposed on us by the League. And by Serepiso's demise.
In the time that I think you can say Welnix has been fully up and running and unencumbered by the threat of being evicted from the League, we've come 2nd and 3rd over five years. And barely finished once in the bottom half. In pretty adverse circumstances for two of the five years.
So sure, we'd all like to win the thing. Shark happens. You don't win the A League with the number of injuries we've had this season.
I get we'd all like to win the thing. Surprisingly that's difficult.
Any yet every other club (bar AFC obviously) have managed to win something. Even those with worse financial issues.
about 1 year ago· edited about 1 year ago· History
I think the biggest problem this season management wise, are the quality of the imports that were hired and that one of the retained imports was a dead man walking from the beginning.
The ball situation should have been handled by Dome and Chief in the longest off season in football. They had the time and it may have been the best thing for Ball if he really wanted to keep playing.
The keeper situation was a joke. We let Duncan go and he looked more than useful for half a season with a rival club. Then when the import keeper showed his true colours the young understudy has stood up. These were players we had a dam hard look at last season but obviously Chief didn’t think they were up to standard. He needs to own that. Then after two flipin games they extend the import keeper when they realised at that time how stupid it was having a dead duck wasting an import spot. That defies belief and after 15 games I don’t think AFc have extended their 3 off contract imports.
A lot rested on Chiefy getting it right with the Japanese imports. Unfortunately it looks after a good sample size he got that badly wrong.
If the Nix had AFC’s four midfielder and attacking imports plus Wooten it is a different season.
And those four are not likely to have cost mega bucks. No stars, no marquee’s but just good quality and no doubt well researched signings
about 1 year ago· edited about 1 year ago· History
next year this would read (chronologically): 6th 7th 6th 2nd (THIS SEASON'S FINISH)
And unfortunately I don't think that this season is going to end well for us. So that 2nd place is going to look like quite the aberration. Also, right now, our team easily looks worse than it has during any part of those 5 years. I'll also point out that our 3 best players this season (Wootton, Kosta, Sutton) are out of contract at the end of the season (Payne and Rufer excluded due to the time they've been out). These are very bleak times. mjp2
Last five years: 2nd 3rd 6th twice and 7th.
We've grossly overperformed relative to someone's claim we don't aim for top 4? We need to spend less money so we average 6th and neatly just meet our claimed aspiration?
Objectively, someone isn't being objective.
This club under Welnix has only just, in those last five years, got their academy based strategy fully up and running. Prior to that we had all sorts of hamstrings imposed on us by the League. And by Serepiso's demise.
In the time that I think you can say Welnix has been fully up and running and unencumbered by the threat of being evicted from the League, we've come 2nd and 3rd over five years. And barely finished once in the bottom half. In pretty adverse circumstances for two of the five years.
So sure, we'd all like to win the thing. Shark happens. You don't win the A League with the number of injuries we've had this season.
I get we'd all like to win the thing. Surprisingly that's difficult.
I think the biggest problem this season management wise, are the quality of the imports that were hired and that one of the retained imports was a dead man walking from the beginning.
The ball situation should have been handled by Dome and Chief in the longest off season in football. They had the time and it may have been the best thing for Ball if he really wanted to keep playing.
The keeper situation was a joke. We let Duncan go and he looked more than useful for half a season with a rival club. Then when the import keeper showed his true colours the young understudy has stood up. These were players we had a dam hard look at last season but obviously Chief didn’t think they were up to standard. He needs to own that. Then after two flipin games they extend the import keeper when they realised at that time how stupid it was having a dead duck wasting an import spot. That defies belief and after 15 games I don’t think AFc have extended their 3 off contract imports.
A lot rested on Chiefy getting it right with the Japanese imports. Unfortunately it looks after a good sample size he got that badly wrong.
If the Nix had AFC’s four midfielder and attacking imports plus Wooten it is a different season.
And those four are not likely to have cost mega bucks. No stars, no marquee’s but just good quality and no doubt well researched signings
Pretty sure Duncan took a better offer and we looked at a bunch of keepers, signed one in Dublin Boon who wasn’t quite where it was hoped and then signed Josh because we needed someone with experience because AKH wasn’t ready and it was unfair to make him number one without any support. We certainly didn’t do that to Paulsen.
As for the AKL imports- Verstaete the Belgian lad is very good. But Moreno took ages to be ready and still doesn’t start. Nor does this guy who’s been flown in. Would we accept that? Doubtful.
May scored 1 goal in his first 6 games. How patient would we have been with that? Have a look at Ishige.
Sakai is a stand out. Gallegos might be the new Tim Brown, but he’s contributed 1 assist.
If we had Marco or a couple more players, I don’t know if we would be convinced of how amazing Auckland’s imports are.
May for example has seemed happier with a 9, and look how badly they broke down against WU with Hall out for the first time.
Much of our problems come from a lack of depth that Auckland has that we don’t. Auckland essentially have almost two A league quality teams. Their players can play 60 minutes at high intensity and get subbed.
They came into the campaign with 4 starting FBs. Attacking mid they can have Brimmer or they can go 442 instead. They can have Brimmer and Howieson on the bench.
Again think Chief is a little unlucky and a little overconfident.
Our players out in the middle of the season have been better than our players in. Which has been Piper or none?
So as I think I’ve argued before, perhaps Moreno aside, it’s been the quality of the mid-career Kiwi and Aussie journeymen that have made AFC. De Vries. Brimmer. Paulsen. Elliot. Pijnaker. Howieson. Smith. Hall. Rogerson. Mata. Gillion helped their initial game plan and shock and awe.
Only Rufer, Payne, Kosta and Sutton are in that category I think. And you can bet on 50% of them being injured most of the time. OVH and Mo should have been.
Agree with you on Ball, but without the depth elsewhere AFC’s imports wouldn’t look like much either imo.
I'm doubling down on my prediction prior to the Macarthur game that we would win no more than 1 win out of the next 9 games. I genuinely think it is a strong possibility that we don't win any of our next 6 games.
We have won 1 out of our 8 home games in New Zealand. By Chiefy's own logic (laid out in his comments that Auckland had 5 home games out of their first 6, including their game at Sky Stadium) it would actually be 1 out of 9, as we also had an away game in Auckland. One of our two home wins this season was in Sydney. Can't believe we had 9k turn up today given how bad our results are and how bad we are to watch.
about 1 year ago· edited about 1 year ago· History
Say what you want. We are probably the worst team in the league after Perth.
We literally made Brisbane, a team that has won only one game all season and at the bottom, look like a top side. I mean yeah I get it that we don't have a playmaker/no Rufer/players playing out of position, but our game plan (if there is a proper one) just seems to revolve around getting the ball to Kosta, or out to the wings. There doesn't seem to be a proper style.
I'm sorry but it's just so frustrating to see bad teams outplay us when we do have quality but we just don't seem to know how to utilise it.
In saying this, I hope that the new 10 really makes us look better.
Yep 26 games, so 37 points a fair guess. 11 games left, around 18 points required. Six wins, or 5 wins 3 draws, or 4 wins 6 draws.
In our last 11 games we have had 3 wins, 3 draws and 5 losses. That's 12 points. When you put it in those terms it doesn't sound completely insane. Just turn two losses into wins, right?
Unfortunately I think the maths is going to get a lot tougher when we inevitably fail to win in Melbourne next week and in Auckland the week after.
about 1 year ago· edited about 1 year ago· History
Looking at the table we are 10th on 19 points, 6 points behind 3rd (Sydney) who have played 2 more games than us (17). Auckland and Adelaide have both played 15. 2 wins in those 2 games and we are back in the 6 as most teams ahead of us have played 1 or 2 extra games. Where are those wins coming from is the problem, we seem to be scoring ok, but only 1 a game (16 goals in 15 games), conceding about the same too (18 goals). Such a bleh record, we either win by 1, lose by 1 or draw. Gotta turn this around, hopefully this import #10 sparks things up,.
Looking at the tabkle we are 10th on 19 points, 6 points behing 3rd (Sydney) who have played 2 more games than us (17). Auckland and Adelaide have both played 15. 2 wins in those 2 games and we are back in the 6 as most teams ahead of us have played 1 or 2 extra games. Where are those wins coming from is the problem, we seem to be scoring ok, but only 1 a game (16 goals in 15 games), conceding about the same too (18 goals). Such a bleh record, we either win by 1, lose by 1 or draw. Gotta turn this around, hopefully this import #10 sparks things up,.
Yes, we're agonizingly close to top 6. But as you said we're pretty flat. If our injured players come back firing and that import hits the ground running we're back in business. But confidence must be getting low within the team. The next 4-5 games will define the season.
Given Western United have the best overall record as well as the best record in the last 5, they are likely out of our reach.
We need to outperform 4 of the remaining 6 teams in that list for the rest of the season. Seems that despite our poor run recently, only half of those 6 sides have picked up more points in the last 5 games than us. Mathematically, this looks achievable with any sort of uptick in form.
But that is only if you ignore the fact that we have just had two very easy games at home and now have two very tough away games back to back. We also only have 4 of our remaining 11 games at home...
Edit: updated after the WU/Macarthur draw tonight.
about 1 year ago· edited about 1 year ago· History
Here is where we were last season after playing the same number of games. I'm going to use the word diabolical to sum up the season so far. image.png206.53 KB
Now 6 games since I predicted we would win no more than 1 game in the next 9. We have won 1 out of the last 6.
Now, we may actually get a win in the next 3 (though I don't expect it) due to the addition of Rojas & Geraldes, who I didn't anticipate would feature in these 9 games. But either way, this was entirely predictable. Really sucks to be right.
Welnix need to be thinking long and hard about extending Chief's contract. He definitely shouldn't get anything more than a 1 year extension.
First time I've said it openly. Chief out. He's been unlucky with the club's transfer decisions. But he also choose to build a team around Marco, and as much as I appreciate the sentiment as a day 1 fan, that was ill advised. Also, he's responsible for the way we've set up this year which has not been good enough, plain and simple. We've got to keep our best players for next year and build on what is a promising core of young (and not so young) Kiwis. But we need a fresh start.
about 1 year ago· edited about 1 year ago· History
At the end of the Auckland game we are 11th with 0 games in hand on the teams above us and 7 points + a healthy GD deficit from the top 6. Season over.
about 1 year ago· edited about 1 year ago· History
Probably the scariest thing for the rest of the season is drawing or notching the odd win from here, will likely only assist AFC winning the premiership plate
about 1 year ago· edited about 1 year ago· History
Chiefy in his presser said he thinks 6th will be around the 40 point mark and he thinks that with all the players we have back & Geraldes we can win 7 of our last 9, or win 6 and not lose the other 3 (i.e. get 21 points to add to the 19 we have from 17 games) to make the top 6.
For comparison: - We have won 2, drawn 3 and lost 4 of our last 9 - Auckland have won 6, drawn 2 and lost 1 of their last 9
Last season, 7th place was 37 points in a 27 game season, and the same PPG over 26 games would be 36, rounded to the nearest point. So hey, maybe 37 points would be enough, or only 6 wins/5 wins & 3 draws. Though right now, mid round, 7th place is in flux but a fair estimate is 26 points from 18 games, and this PPG rounds to 38 points over a 26 game season...
I guess the good news (sort of?) is if we make the 6 we will probably be in such good form that we will go all the way and win the toilet seat.
"Chiefy in his presser said he thinks 6th will be around the 40 point mark and he thinks that with all the players we have back & Geraldes we can win 7 of our last 9, or win 6 and not lose the other 3 (i.e. get 21 points to add to the 19 we have from 17 games) to make the top 6."
about 1 year ago· edited about 1 year ago· History
newzealandpower
First time I've said it openly. Chief out. He's been unlucky with the club's transfer decisions. But he also choose to build a team around Marco, and as much as I appreciate the sentiment as a day 1 fan, that was ill advised. Also, he's responsible for the way we've set up this year which has not been good enough, plain and simple. We've got to keep our best players for next year and build on what is a promising core of young (and not so young) Kiwis. But we need a fresh start.
Agree, I think Chief has reached peak arrogance with his tactics and continuation of them despite the results. Not sure I'd be blaming the club for the transfers, these are all on Chief, he went to Japan, identified Ishige and Nagasawa, he's the one who wanted Rojas back and tried to build a team around him. Colocovski was his choice, none have really set the leagie on fire or been able to fit into his plan.
I remember laughing when he was talking about LBS coming into the squad and said “I told him to play his game. If I don’t know what he’s going to do, how can the opposition know what he’s going to do?”
defense wins leagues, having more attackers back and trying to play a defensive style with bad defensive players means we are headed for the spoon and not the 6
We have a very good defense. We had the 3rd best defensive record in the league prior to the Auckland game, despite use probably being the team that spends the most time in their own defensive third without the ball in the league.
Missing Sutton for Auckland didn't help, but the main problem yesterday was the midfield (we were missing our entire starting midfield for the first half) was giving our defense zero support yesterday, and our defense finally had an off day. They had performed heroically for most of this season, Hughes' 3 mishaps and Josh's 2 blunders aside.
The actual bigger picture issue is as many have said, we have not had the attackers all season to do what Chiefy needs them to do, and Chiefy has had no plan b, no backup plan, no way to switch things up. Now, he may just have the players to do what he wants, with Rufer, LBS and Rojas back fit and Geraldes added to the mix. But even if things click now it'll be too little much too late.
We have a very good defense. We had the 3rd best defensive record in the league prior to the Auckland game, despite use probably being the team that spends the most time in their own defensive third without the ball in the league.
Missing Sutton for Auckland didn't help, but the main problem yesterday was the midfield (we were missing our entire starting midfield for the first half) was giving our defense zero support yesterday, and our defense finally had an off day. They had performed heroically for most of this season, Hughes' 3 mishaps and Josh's 2 blunders aside.
The actual bigger picture issue is as many have said, we have not had the attackers all season to do what Chiefy needs them to do, and Chiefy has had no plan b, no backup plan, no way to switch things up. Now, he may just have the players to do what he wants, with Rufer, LBS and Rojas back fit and Geraldes added to the mix. But even if things click now it'll be too little much too late.
We have a very good defense. We had the 3rd best defensive record in the league prior to the Auckland game, despite use probably being the team that spends the most time in their own defensive third without the ball in the league.
Missing Sutton for Auckland didn't help, but the main problem yesterday was the midfield (we were missing our entire starting midfield for the first half) was giving our defense zero support yesterday, and our defense finally had an off day. They had performed heroically for most of this season, Hughes' 3 mishaps and Josh's 2 blunders aside.
The actual bigger picture issue is as many have said, we have not had the attackers all season to do what Chiefy needs them to do, and Chiefy has had no plan b, no backup plan, no way to switch things up. Now, he may just have the players to do what he wants, with Rufer, LBS and Rojas back fit and Geraldes added to the mix. But even if things click now it'll be too little much too late.
Yeah, mostly this, though I'd argue that the plan B was to kind of abandon his initial intention and go back to playing more like we did last year (albeit with a weaker team available) and people whinged about that too, so... Yeah.
I'd like to think that when he says he will continue to push on playing this style, he means something more in line with what the original intention was, which we saw glimpses of yesterday amongst all of the horrors of that match. It's unfortunate that we're only seeing bits now rather than at the beginning of the season.
To be fair, I'm sure he would rather have kept at least Surman (who would have benefited from another season in rhe A-League) and ideally one between Kraev and Pennington. Imagine Surman and Wootton as CB with Hughes not being rushed to be in the starting line up, and one of the other two propping up the MF...big difference! Still...we're speaking hypothetically...what counts are the facts. theprof
newzealandpower
First time I've said it openly. Chief out. He's been unlucky with the club's transfer decisions. But he also choose to build a team around Marco, and as much as I appreciate the sentiment as a day 1 fan, that was ill advised. Also, he's responsible for the way we've set up this year which has not been good enough, plain and simple. We've got to keep our best players for next year and build on what is a promising core of young (and not so young) Kiwis. But we need a fresh start.
Agree, I think Chief has reached peak arrogance with his tactics and continuation of them despite the results. Not sure I'd be blaming the club for the transfers, these are all on Chief, he went to Japan, identified Ishige and Nagasawa, he's the one who wanted Rojas back and tried to build a team around him. Colocovski was his choice, none have really set the leagie on fire or been able to fit into his plan.
