vs Planes Sunday 4:30pm

so Ricki quoted as saying we were never threatened and there was only one team in it? the man is delusional if that's true.

I wasn't blaming Greenie ; just saying that I think we miss him as a player . Hard to tell really what he adds as an assistant coach ( not a criticism ) but his value as a player was easy to spot. 

we are, sadly, just a very average football team

#I'veStoppedBelieving!

Oh dear, C-Diddy....*shakes head*

 You can't stop beleivin now.  We're one week in to our five year plan.

Kudos to the Zone for yesterday. Banners looked amazing and there was plenty of noise about the place. Showed that we care, despite how pathetic and unsophisticated we might be :)

For anyone who missed it, News got the the ground two hours prior to kick off to lay out the banners for us to pull out. As the team walked out, he picked up his corner, looked at it, looked at me, and said "it's upside down". To his credit, he managed to do a quick switcharoo and get it up the right way up.

Well done Newsy. TIFO champion.

Disappointed that we reverted back to our older style of play. 

Also, the cat chants: 

not gonna start a rant about it - but thought it was sad that the most successful chants were cat or gareth related rather than football. Sad that the whole crowd got standing chanting stand up if you love your cat - cant we change that to stand up if you love Muscat?

Also we seem to slip and slide an awful lot regardless of whether dura has even done anything - not necessarily a bad thing though I guess

Had a great day with Timmy, Mike and the Newcastle guys!

Some of these fellas were on their 5th trip to Wellington and had promised that if they scored a point against us, they'd jump into Wellington Harbour.......

....which they followed up on last night - it was hilarious! :-)

Oops, we couldn't quite hear it so assumed it was stand up if you love the nix. Hadn't realised it was cat related just thought we'd changed the stand up one because of the whinging about our inability to chant the old one correctly.

I didn't mid the clap if your pathetic ones as it got people clapping and the clapping was louder than the chant.

#

#sackgareth

#sackfullofkittens

Wouldn't "stand up if you love the nix" work better then?

#hashtag

Jeremy Brockie's total contribution to the game: 7 completed passes, 1 of which was a 'key' pass and 4 incomplete passes. 3 shots, 2 on target. 1 unsuccessful cross. 2 recoveries of possession and 1 clearance. 1 unsuccessful dribble and 1 foul lost.

As a team our distribution on the weekend was poor:

compare this with the CCM match just over a month ago on the 22nd of Dec:

A big issue is our distribution from defence, from the game on the weekend it shows how often we played long balls that resulted in possession being turned over:

Paston:

And the defence as a whole:

Again, comparing to the CCM game:

Paston:

and the rest of the defence:

It is interesting to see Ricki go back on his words and revert back to a more direct style of play. On the weekend Dura and Siggy were both getting wide allowing the FBs to push forward but not many options in the centre of the pitch with most passes going long and down the wings. Against CCM they are still wide but both Manny and Vinnie provided options for short passes, the directive against Jets was to get it long and compete for the 2nd phase with not many short passes out of defence.

This is the midfield distribution from the game against the Jets:

And against CCM:

You can see how much possession Vinnie and Manny are receiving from defence in that area around the centre circle. Vinnie was very disciplined in the game against CCM a high concentration of his passes in this area, switching the ball to either flank while Manny's passing was evenly spread around the middle third of the pitch.

what are you basing this on? where's your evidence?

 I think you missed Cosimo's sarcasm there Bullion.

Just a few late points from me:

Was expecting nothing from Cernak, but was pleasantly surprised. Covered a lot of empty space in the middle of the park. Would be happy to see more of him (whilst still not being convinced yet).

Think it's definitely time to give Moss a go in goal, Paston is not in the best form right now as evidenced by their goal which he flapped at aimlessly.

The defence seemed more stable with Muscat sitting in front of them.

Noticeable that up until we conceeded that goal Paston didn't once go short from a goal kick (see chart above) and Siggy hoofed the ball at any opportunity (but it was often quite effective). Definitely not expecting to see a lot of "possession football" for the rest of this season.

Did anyone else notice the last Newcastle player to get subbed (Regan?) go ballistic at GVE? What was that about? It seemed to be the guy that was almost dead 5 mins earlier, then running round the field 2 mins after that.

Not the first one *looks out of jail bars. Tries to dig a hole through the bricks with a rusty penis*

Oh that's right, Heskey ended up in defence, I was going to mention that too. He actually looked pretty at home there.