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.
Well, of the candidate names being bandied around, Luciano Trani has been at the Nix before as Ricki's assistant, so he knows the senior players like Durante, Lia and Moss, as well as Greenacre who was a player when Trani was assistant - and he knows the A-League extremely well, having also been assistant at Adelaide, Brisbane, Melbourne City and Newcastle Jets. (Until checking just now, I didn't realise that Trani had been assistant at five A-League clubs. Wow! Suggests that he was kind of sort after by coaches and keen to broaden his experience.). It should be noted that Brisbane won the A-League in 2013-14 when he was assistant.
Trani will also go the extra mile, as revealed in Ben Sigmund's autobiography, and risk life and limb climbing trees to spy on the opposition training. He may have other secret agent skills up his sleeve such as disguising himself as a groundsman or a call girl to wheedle secrets out of the opposition.
Another name mentioned, Mark Rudan, knows the A-League extremely well as a player and an analyst on Fox Sports. I've always been impressed by his diagrams and tactical analysis of games. He's articulate and has a bit of charisma.and a positive personality and some head coaching experience, having won the NSW state league a few times.
Ramon will have watched a lot of Phoenix and A-League games over the years and will be pretty familiar with the league. He'll know some of the Nix players such as Roy Krishna. personally and will be familiar with how the rest play.
Another thing with Ramon, is that if Roly did pack his bags and leave in the January transfer window (or at the end of the season), Ramon would have the contacts in Spain to instantly replace him with someone decent. Rodriguez is probably missing having no Spanish-speakers in the squad any more, unlike when he arrived when there were a few, so he will enjoy having Ramon to talk to.