The Great 2016/17 Coaching Saga

To be fair to the club they didn't specify what year.

Perhaps the club just want Santa Claus to get his other comittments out of the way first??

I'm not saying all the blame but he certainly can't be sqeaky clean

No Merick there or ????? Here for 2017 or >>>>>>> 

 SMFC confirm Coaching Staff

Sorry to be a contrarian, but I am going to repeat my previous argument made some posts ago.  If Greenie was a good candidate for a permanent appointment as a head coach then I would expect the Nix to have scored more goals in general, have better record from penalty spots, and at least some goals from set pieces and corner kicks. Our high-scoring wins were usually against opposition that did not score at all (CCM etc).

Therefore, I am not buying this argument that somehow Greenie is a suppressed talent just waiting for an opportunity to deliver us a premiership or a GF win in his own name. Sure, Greenie and Des are perfectly fine blokes, great club servants and are popular with the squad etc etc. But Greenie's  assistantship tenure was all under Ricki and Ernie, and both of these head coaches delivered a poor-to-average Nix performance over their years, with an occasional burst of great results which did not last.  He learned mainly from these two bosses.

For that reason I think the best that we'd get with Greenie (and Des) would be 'more of the same' as what we've had, with some minor tweaks (more direct ball, more Watson, etc) and perhaps less lethargic performances. With Greenie and Des in charge till the end of season I think I would consider a sixth on the finals table as a massive achievement. But I am not interested in a coaching appointment that would give us more of the same. I would like a coach to enable us to challenge for the top four placing.

Ah, no, it doesn't.

Coaches spend hours looking at and reviewing video of the opposition. Changing style will catch out a few teams over a short time but a good coach keeps changing things. So a tactician may be a good addition to TEAM CHRISnDES and give along term future for them.

:-)  TRANNY

People seem to forget that we did beat CCM handily under Ernie and we also followed up by beating the Jets. Both comparable performances to the last 2. I don't think we can say anything has actually changed yet. Those two performances were followed up by the 6-1 battering in Melbourne, though.

And that last sentence? You're saying it's not a good thing that we prevented teams from scoring against us? Jesus.

Taking and scoring penalties has fudge all to do with coaching.

It is a mind thing. You are either confident or you are not. All pro footballers can kick a ball with enough accuracy over 12 yards to make a penalty un-saveable , yet many can't and that is mindset. They can do it a 1000 times in training but come matchday they look awful.

Krishna and Weemac for instance just look like they don't believe in themselves! 

Both the goals against WSW were scored shortly after a sub and formation tweak. Something wasn't working, it was addressed to positive effect. I may be wrong, but I'm pretty sure it was a coaching decision to make those changes.

Ultimately not many people on here would know if Greenacre is a tactical genius who's been cruelly undermined by the tyrannical Merrick, or if he ran the entire team while Ernie was down at the pokies so it's all just guess work.

I think that what you can say is that the sample size for Des and Greenie as managers is very small, and that in terms of these 2 games it's also impacted by the quality of the opposition. Other managers we are considering for the job will presumably have much more extensive histories to indicate their suitability in terms of style and results. Obviously everyone needs to start somewhere, but do we want to be the club to take that gamble?

Well you can only really judge them on what they have done, not what they could have done but didn't do - who knows how any other hypothetical change would have turned out?

During his first season or so, Merrick used to (relatively) frequently pull under-performing players at half time. I can't remember him doing so in the last year...

Especially Roly

Well whoever takes over has what's looking like a top class training venue.  Superb looking pitches at Martin Luckie park now fully permanently fenced off and upgrades to the old tennis club building looking like nearly finished. Kosta and Shane will appreciate that???

I'm pretty sure the plan has always been that it's open to the public when the Phoenix aren't using it, but that it's going to be shut at night because the pitch cost so much money and they don't want people vandalising it.

Ask that same question to shark loads of English clubs Patrick? They too cannot follow your logic - which is probably quite correct but Owners see it other ways.

Quite possibly completely unrelated as he is from Christchurch but Ryan Nelsen arrived in Christchurch today... just to chuck in a pot stirrer.

The parallel is not appropriate. Imagine a rugby club in the top Canadian league loses its coach, and people yell that a NZ club would be able to fill the vacancy easily. 1) distance; 2) budget.

I think we're going to sign Des and/or Chris but not because of a lack of ambition, rather because of a fear of failure.

Worst case scenario the club has 3 1/2 years of existence left. We had four years to trigger the first extension, and at the time the club said that the terms were reasonable and achievable, but that was when we had four years. 

We write this season off and we have 3 years left, and maybe that reasonable four year goal is suddenly a challenging three year goal. So we need to be starting the growth from this season, and we need to be playing finals football to do that.

When he left Ernie said in an interview that he could turn the team around but not quickly enough, that tells me that we need to be performing this year, we can't afford to rebuild.

So what we need is a coach who can hit the ground running and get the best from the team without any preparation. Therefore we need someone who knows the team well, and preferably knows the league. We could risk it all on an unknown who may excel, may crash, or may take time to cement their systems and get the players they need, or take the less risky option and pick someone who is already getting acceptable results. 

Hence, for the risk adverse the only candidates are Buckingham, Greenacre, and perhaps Hudson.

Plus add in the requirements of the necessary coaching badges.

Do you have any (realistic) suggestions Lonegunmen?

The point I am making is that Greenacre has been a striker for many years. If he had an input into Nix skillset over the years as assistant coach then surely you'd expect that scoring goals would feature highly on the list. Maybe I am too simplistic about it but then I am not a coach. Feel free to disagree and make an argument.

As for that last sentence it looks like I did not spell it out clearly. Obviously it is great when we prevent other teams from scoring, not the other way round. My argument was that we do not prevent teams from scoring often enough. The only teams that did not score against us this season were the Jets and the CCM (twice), and we won these games each time. However, we have not won a game this season if the opposition team scored at least once. We do not win if the other team scores at least one goal. Does that not make you think? I would not mind not keeping a clean sheet as long as we score more goals than the other team. This is where I would expect Greenie's input over the years as assistant coach, but please correct me if I'm wrong.

The process is not what we believe. Patricks point of view is correct imo. halfway through a season is not a good time to change and bring in a new coach whom will want to establish his or her own backroom staff and ways of doing things. Most of the time it just causes disruption.

In the English game though, where there can be promotions or relegations to be made, it becomes a different and sometimes necessary beast. Especially with a transfer window due in a couple of weeks. I am kinda broken that Ernie fell on the sword as I liked him as a person and as a coach - from only what I saw. However, he has gone and to some extent Greenacre and the players have to accept a responsibility for the current position.

That said Des & Chris are starting to show their own style with a more direct approach on the field. It could well turn out to be a master stroke and keeping them on until the end of the season would avoid a lot of potential disruption. I enjoyed the Hamilton game and watching what was happening "off the ball" with player positioning and movement. Auckland was almost as good but letting in one freakish goal by a racist and the other soft goal did not help. Yet, the team dug deep, played fairly well instead of dropping their heads and were rewarded with two goals of their own.

Should these two stay, at the end of the season their record should be reviewed with as much scrutiny as any other potential candidate CV.

I was under the belief, from an Ernie statement, Greenie was the defensive trainer.

Post-truth

For clarity, can someone power rank all the candidates in order of ambitiousness from the club?