The Great 2016/17 Coaching Saga

Yep, and they probably got that decision right as Des and Chris did a pretty good job. Better to try and find the right manager than rush it to get someone in mid season.

It very much depends upon the quality of the candidates available at the time. One can only assume that the club did not find someone suitable then. I'd have thought that the market is very fluid so not finding a suitable candidate then doesn't improve or lessen your chances of finding someone now.

That's if you can find someone decent who is prepared to sign a contract to lead the team who was sitting bottom of the table (and had just been thrashed by the second bottom team) until only the end of the season. Anyone who was any good who was available would want a season after that, anyone who signed that contract would either be unproven or desperate.

Not sure that is totally correct. There are a thousand reasons why a coach might be available at any one time. It doesn't always been they are no good or in this case, not good enough for us. If a Premier League coach got sacked at the end of last season and still hadn't got a job when Ernie resigned, would you write him off because he was still unemployed?

I think Welnix were hoping that Des and Greenie would do such a good job that they would be able to sign them up for this year. That might still happen, who knows. I'm not going to regurgitate everything that was said about Welnix not having enough ambition etc, but I think that is actually correct. I also find it amazing that they are waiting this long to appoint a new coach/s. They have already lost Moss because of this delay and probably Lia [arguments aside about whether or not they are any loss] so the delay is counterproductive. A similar thing happened here in HB a few years ago with our Hawks basketball team, we lost a couple of NZ players to Canterbury because the coaching/ownership was in the air and these guys had to get a job as they were pros. By the time the Hawks got their shark together, the guys were gone and contracted elsewhere.

Maybe Mossy and Vinnie just like INXS and Planes a lot...

There were undoubtedly good coaches available, however they needed to be able to come into the a league mid season with the bottom team. A good coach will want at least a year, you're not going to get a competent coach only signing till the end of the season.

Even city with all their resources couldn't fine someone.

I'm sorry Ryan, where do you get this signing only to the end of the year thing? If you get the right guy, surely you sign him for a reasonable period? Did Welnix say they were only going to sign a new coach till the end of the year, then sign Des and Greenie?

haha it says you turned detective but I found the alternative to Petković. Fudgeing NZ media, taking away my glory 

It's the forward thinking that's at question here. D&G as interim managers because they were unable to find an alternative mid-way through the season is fine, but with them in place it meant the club had enough time to look at viable alternatives. If D&G succeeded, great, but if they didn't (which I think we can safely assume they haven't) then the club should've had a list of successors lined up, with conversations to take over at the end of the season already underway. What appears to have happened is they club waited to see how D&G did, they didn't meet their expectations, so the club began the search for a replacement. 

The situation reeks of poor management.

I disagree it is poor management.  I think it is consistent with Rob Morrison's conservative approach to business management. We may disagree with Morrison's approach but it is actually logical "within itself".

As for the potential successors that you speak of, these coaches were or were not available at the time Ernie resigned, but in either case they were not appointed even if they existed and were willing to come on board. Consequently, no good quality coach will wait another half a season to see if they are still needed if the Option #1 (D&G) does not work out for Welnix.  They might wait, but they would have asked Welnix for something in writing and for some money to change hands, otherwise they would simply find another job elsewhere in the meantime, and not wait to hear from Welnix.  Much like Moss did.

Additionally, Des or Chris did a good job. They exceeded expectations with a few big wins and some good runs of form despite all the turmoil. I read on this forum that if the season started when they took over the Phoenix would be fourth, that seems like a pretty big transformation for a team that was dead last when they took the reins.

I wouldn't be disappointed if they got the job. No doubt WelNix have had the feelers out during this period, but they were always going to deal with the current coaching staff in good faith and not sign someone behind their backs.

I still think we lost the opportunity to have a new coach come in and get to know the squad and try out some tactics for half a season so that they could plan ahead for next season in terms of recruitment, retention, and preparation. Of course it's speculation but I struggle to believe there was no one suitable at all when Ernie left. The whole D & G tenure was wasted time that did nothing to progress the team in any way. I don't think that the decision to appoint those two as interim managers was conservative, it was actually a gamble twice over - once that they would do a good job despite practically no experience, and if that gamble didn't come off (which it didn't) then that the coach you could get after the season would be better enough than what you could get mid-season to make up for that lost time bedding in.

We didn't need to rush it, we could have had a heap of time.  We could have appointed them interim managers even until the end of the season, but immediately started the process to find the coach for the upcoming season, and hopefully been in a position to announce it or make a decision as soon as the season ended.  That would have been a whole bunch of time.

But both Adelaide united and Melbourne city have had months to find someone and still haven't signed anyone.

Additionally city had far more on the line than us and more resources yet are in the same boat.

and it worked out really well for city too.

Can you say hand on heart that D&G did a good job ?

Sure there were some good and unecpted wins but in the main wins were achieved against CCM and Jets. Any game where it actually mattered for us we bottled it. Horribly.

The point is if it was as easy as people assume wouldn't city have signed someone during the season? Wouldn't they have someone announced by now?

As far as Des and Chris goes, I can say they did a good job.

Winning against CCM and the Jets are better than what the team managed last year. Let's not forget two 3-0 wins over Victory (one of them away), winning away to the Roar, etc.

As I said, someone on here posted some stats which showed that they would have been fourth if the season started when they took over. 

If say, Ernie quit at the end of last season after the team finished 9th, and Des and Chris were announced as new coaches and the team ended up finishing fourth I'd say we'd all be pretty happy, and would be really excited about building on from that platform next year.

City and Adelaide may well be looking for different things in a coach to us. I don't think that them not signing anyone can be taken as evidence that there was no one suitable for us to sign.

There is a bit of research out there that suggests the manager has a very limited impact on team performance as compared to the wage bill (i.e. the team that spends the most on player wages is the most likely to win the league). There is also research that suggests that the "new manager bounce" is just regression to the mean and over achievement followed by regression is just the same thing. So, knowing that we likely aren't in the top four when it comes to wage bill, but probably paying more than the Jets and Mariners, we should be expected to be on the bubble of the playoff picture (5-8). So, if all of these assumptions are correct, Des and Greenie got us exactly where we should be. Does that mean they did a good job? No idea.

A lot of that research has been done in Europe though where there's no salary cap. In the A League the difference in wage bill between the top teams and bottom tea will not be as great as it is in European leagues, especially if you consider that the additional wages in the bigger spending A League squads are going on a handful of marquee/salary cap exemption players rather than across the squad on average. So it would be reasonable to infer that the manager could have a greater impact on the fortunes of an A League club than a European club, because the wage bill difference is less significant.

You read on the forum that if the season started when they took over the Phoenix would be fourth? At some point maybe that was correct.

That was however only after we strung a couple of results together.

We subsequently lost games so if you look at the entire time they were in charge it's a load of tripe (Donald Trump talk)

We peaked at the end though, I just had a quick look and it appears as though we would have been sixth by the end. We score more than City but marginally less than WSW and Glory and it would have been pretty exciting to see who got fourth and would have come down to the last game.

So the earlier statement was wrong. 

Still, considering we were last when they took over that's a pretty good turn around.

But given that our last three finishes have been 4th, 9th, and 7th, my major concern is that we just have a mid-table squad and they did an okay but not great job. It might take an exceptional manager to take what we have at our disposal to the top. 

To go back to my wage bill point a little bit, I suspect that we have to pay a premium to get Australians over here unless we're signing them from the NPL. That would put us at a bit of a disadvantage from the off despite the salary cap, and -if- the wage bill correlation applies in the A-League then it will take an exceptional manager.

Except there's 2.5 million Australians per a-league team and 4.5 million New Zealanders. We have a huge advantage because we have 7 million people to draw our squad from. Our wage bill should be lower even if Australians are more expensive (and there's never been any evidence of that) because we have a monopoly on New Zealand players.

there's a pretty big difference between 4th and 9th though. When we finished 4th we were better than 60% of other teams, 8th we were only better than 10% . I'm also not sure why you are treating the squad and the manager as separate. Those 3 seasons were all with squads which Ernie had control over, and which were set up to play a specific system he wanted. A new manager can sign the players he wants to play the system he wants. Ok, he might only get to make 3 or 4 signings but that's enough to change the balance of a squad considerably.

Guys i can understand why its taking so long to appoint a new Coach/Manager, player budget will be playing a big part it would be great to know who actually applied for the job.Would any of us take it on looking at the players that are still contracted at the club and knowing what he has to bring in.It has the potential to be career ending.The club need a complete clear out from Dome down so whoever it is can put his stamp on the place good luck to whoever gets the job he need it with what hes left with 

Too bloody right I would. We want and need a manager that backs themselves to get the best out of what he has and he can get in with extra players to make it work. No one gets a clean sheet to recruit an entire team of new players, what we have here is no different to almost every other team that loses a manager. Unless you are at the very top of your profession or are being headhunted you're unlikely to be too picky about what you will be inheriting at a club. Most managers don't have the luxury of being in such high demand that they can be choosey. If you are the type of manager that Charger1 alludes to - we don't want him.

I'd take the job for my current salary, which I'm guessing is a lot less than what previous Nix managers have been paid. I have a pretty extensive FM/CM CV too.

WelNix, if you're reading this, flick me a PM and we can start talking terms 

 

Access to 4,999,998 donkeys is not much of an advantage.

No mate, let them come to you......

Des and Greenie won't be at the helm next season.

Email from Dome...

Phoenix about to make a major coaching announcement...

— Jason Pine (@pineyzb) May 19, 2017

So.... an overseas coach has been appointed. RR's detective work on Kalezic looks pretty good now...

So Stuart Pearce, then

If so, sack Domey for being either a liar or pathetic.

What does this mean for D&G? 

P45?

Sounds like they're sticking around as assistants from that press release

I reckon they will be involved, but maybe not assistance.  Des can go back to the keepers, and both could go to the academy.  I thought they showed enough promise to be kept around

We need a video analyst too

Must have own Sky subscription to apply

Key: ingredient  players have been evaluated by our prospective head coach over previous weeks

Wenger in?