Wellington Phoenix vs Ah-Deh-Laid-Eh

djtim3000 well said my friend. For your first post you have spoken far more sense than a lot of others on this thread. Please continue contributing, i for one will read your posts with interest each time.

imo it's pretty subjective now. Greenacre pulled the arm of the CB who was moving towards Ifill.

Probably need to watch it a zillion times on youtube though but my first inclination was that it was a fair call (even though I was pissed off)
valeo2009-09-04 23:11:35

cant believe some of the bullsh*t on here. We absolutely dominated this match, just one roll of the dice away from the same detractors saying "the phoenix were awesome, i knew they had it in them"

goals just then - gah im mad bout that. Brown should have had 2 as well

Just took another look on telly.

Greenacre never interfered with play, nor did he hinder the defender from getting within 5 metres of the ball, don't give me the 'rules', go and have a proper look.
Appalling decision and poor form by those who think it was a fair call. Still - games over, can't be changed. Can't believe there are people so stupid to think it was a fair offside call.

Mistakes are made and this was one, albeit a clanger.

Off to bed
Royal2009-09-04 23:19:10

Even if it was offside, how about the two obvious penalties we were denied in the minutes that followed?

agreed. it was PLAY ON !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

ok - what have you been smoking ?

all i remember is Brown's piss weak effort (that was going over he bar) an the final stages.

but i think the ball hit the players chest.

I said it b4 and will say again, brown is crap fullstop, no creativity, works hard and runs all day but what else?? No vision, no direction??

yeah i couldn't believe what i saw and you will hear it from Ricki in some press release. wow. it annoys me.

as a side. Diego was average

even if greenacre didnt interfere i can see why the official gave it. From where i was waching it looked like the pass was destined for greenacre right up until ifil touched it - by which time the flag was already up. Whether or not the decision was technically correct, i dont blame the official. By the book i think he did the right thing.

@paulm - thanks for the compliment mate, and I totally agree with your last post. I was so surprised to get back from the game and hear so much negativity over what could/(should?) have been an easy and entertaining phoenix win.

I ask all who watched - we complain about our defense down the flanks before this game right? How many times vs adelaide did someone/anyone manage a successful run down either the left or right hand side agaisnt us? once or twice IN THE ENTIRE GAME. Admittedly we looked a little lost at set pieces but coming down the middle, durante, brown and mckain gave adelaide absolutely nothing in terms of easy balls to the front. On the occassion a good ball actually made it through, lockhead (great game btw) or siggy covered very well. Also I could go on and on, long balls? Where were they? I only saw intellligent (though sometimes slightly too tricky) passes utilising well structured triangles up the left, right and middle of the park.

Yes the laide had a bit of dominance for about 20min of the second half but made nothing of it. The angst is misplaced guys - the nix have it in them to be in the top 3 or 4 teams this season providing they fix the HUGE gap between their best and their worst - and I'll be there supporting and flying the phoenix flag the whole time (win OR lose).

Edit: just to clarify my point was to highlight some of the good, obvious improvements in this game rather than to whine about obvious definciencies in our game - we seem to be fixing issues that we have rather quickly (game on game) and evenutally a little consistency from our undeniably talented starting 11 will go a long way.
djtim30002009-09-04 23:26:33

brown is purely defensive and he broke up so many adelaide possessions tonight - too many retards on here think he is something he's not. he had a great game in my books - aside from the misses, but that's not what he's there for.

Paulm,, watch his games when he plays, he is not creative no X Factor nothing, He gives away to mych ball, I know players in the nzfc better than him, it stood out like a sore thumb once again that he is not up to it!!! SACK RICKI ASWELL!

I think Brown is basically just a chopper, but I thought he was effective tonight. I can handle having one guy in the team like him to fight hard to win the ball / headers.

We dominated the first half but couldn't finish to save ourselves.  Sorry, but it's the ball in the back of the net that counts.  And, apart from 10 mins at the end, Adelaide dominated the second half, with a weakend side (Five players including Travis Dodd out)  happily playing for the draw.

Definately some possibilities but same old problem - no-one in midfield that knows what a goal is.

What's with our corners?  We have two guys in the box and the others outside the box don't attack the ball.

Realistically?  Entertaining first half but no finish.  Poor second. Failed to convert at home against a weak side.  "We absolutely dominated this match"  Lovely.  Obviously that's why it was 1-1. 
mjp22009-09-04 23:32:50

Doubt anyone in the NZFC would have handled Owusu that well. It was pretty ridiculous how many headers Brown won against much taller, stronger bloke.
valeo2009-09-04 23:31:53

Your joking right? he was worse than average he was horrible

Simple answer get a manager who has a wee bit of footballing knowldge!

yes brown is just a chopper - but a f*cking good one. Without mckain in the midfield that's exactly what we needed tonight.

Only thing I think everyone can agree on - Diego was pish.

Look Brown battled well, but he does nothing else, look all I am saying is that he shows no creativity, flair or anything going forward, surely 3/4 of the users here will agree with that, Owusu isn't exactly a world beater either!

good point brown is very good against the bigger players

Way too harsh on Brown. Tonight, Brown did the exact same job as McKain does usually. Except Brown has the ability to pop up and get to the goal. I havn't been a Brown supporter at all but I think he deserves to be playing. The only thing I could see was that perhaps him and Lia do not necessarily compliment eachother. I guess that we expect some sort of creativity out of these two but I think it was more tactics and selection rather than thosae players having a bad day.

And yet for a guy who showed nothing going forward he had 3 very good chances - more than most strikers have in a game!

Yeah he did have three, how many did he score?? hmmmmmmmmmmm ZERO!! Good players put them away

I think Brownie will acknowledge his own limitations, but it does put pressure on the other midfielders.  He;s a guy who will do a specific job, win the ball etc.  You don't want him touching the ball too often in the final third, he's got to have other players around him to make up for that part of his game. 

This is an excellent point.

james dean, you're on to it

f**k i'm just going to leave it here. Well pissed off that Ifill's second wasn't allowed. Ifill and Daniel were very good tonight, Greenacre and the defence also looking good as well. f**king annoyed with the offside, as a Nix fan I'm allowed to be. Bottle throwing, f**k off the c**ts who decided to do that (even though I think the refs probably deserved it after the offside...). Enjoyed being back at ROF but fark.... can't wait for NQL. Also look forward to seeing what goods Caceres can bring to the table.

I'll be honest, it did kind of look like greenacre was moving towards the ball but was pushed off. Ref's decision was wrong, but he doesn't have slow mo vision.http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9Lf4xBhIdL4Stefan2009-09-04 23:43:11

Im sure everyone doesnt need reminding but Tim Brown is still the nix's highest scoring midfielder (equal with Bertos!) and if that means he gets into scoring chances he still:
a) gets into more space with chances to score
b) even though he misses often STILL manages to convert more than most

I think - again - the angst is misplaced.

edit (apologies - second highest after Daniel: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wellington_Phoenix_FC)
djtim30002009-09-04 23:43:50

And how many chances have you seen, say, McKain pop up for?

Those were the first big misses I remember from Brown too.

He's not the best player ever, certainly, but he's also not the worst midfielder in our squad. Much better than Ferrante.
valeo2009-09-04 23:44:22

AGREED !!!!!!!!!!!!!!  

Ok Diego was sh*t, but come on he played for under 10 minutes. How was he suppose to get in a good rythem to do anything in that time?

Riki's subs were absolute crap like usual. Also the offside call was correct IMO, he had enough of an impact on that defender.

Some calls from the ref were shocking though, like that chop from the guy who already had a yellow.

Thought Brown fronted up in the midfield battle particularly making life hard in the air for the big fellow. Watching that made me realise that we don't really have a centre back that can dominate in the air and we really look vulnerable at corners and dead balls.

Lia did just as well battling and liked the way he stayed calm once he'd won the ball and laid it off.

Midfield lost shape in the second half but I thought that was more to do with Bertos having an uncharacteristically quiet second half. Whilst I loved the long range goal against Perth think it is in danger of being overdone trying to repeat it.

great comment stefan, exactly what i was getting at - possibly it was technically not offside, but how was the official to know. In his books he probably did everything right.

The players were not awful but were the better team in fighting for 50/50 balls. In some of the flat patches, some of the players can't do much if the ball is in the air and bouncing and not on the deck. Daniel is expected to lose a few balls as a flair player, but he gave plenty of ball service into the box. Brown worked hard in defensive midfield although he was risky on a quite a number of challenges especially when he was on assignment marking and was able to work himself into scoring positions. Lia was generally fine with his passing and later had a few shots at goal, himself but he had to cover for the other opposition midfielders because Brown was on assignment marking. Bertos was not at his form he had for his last number of games but he still created chances and allow the others to take the more attacking role that he was doing. We had players swapping flanks and introducing varied attacks and so in order to allow Bertos, Ifill, Daniel to move freely with Greenache working as the solid targetman, and with Lochy and even Siggy having the advance overlapping on the flanks. Lia and Brown working hard in the midfield to get turnover ball and occasionally they got forward as well. Everyone on the field had a chance to get forward and threaten Adelaide without losing much in defence. Paston was the only one who didn't advance forward into the attacking third because he was the goalkeeper.

When that is happening, you know they were much better team than the other.

What I found, was we had the passion, when any of our players lost the ball, they were the first players to regain the ball back for a counter turnover which has lead to plenty of counterattack opportunities. We were the better team, even when both team were flat without a shot at goal for a while. Some games have that patchy nature but we were still the better team. The only thing, beside Ifill, was shooting on target by the players that was lacking. That was the only collective problem. Tactically we had the higher tempo in attack and defense as well as having people available to pass. The execution of the tactic had the ball in the air rather than on the ground, the lack of early call (expect for Ifill) mean we had patchy work, especially in the flat moments in the game but we were still doing it better than the team. Strategically, we were looking to flank them as well as having mixing early crosses and to the goal-line crosses to the box.

We had 20 minutes in the first half when both teams were flat and there was 10 minutes in the second where Adelaide had near total possession and we had to defend in our half. But for the rest of the game we were either advancing, attacking or scraping a counterturnover/counterattack.

Lochhead was linking well with Daniel or Ifill on the left flank without being caught on the back foot. Even Siggy had a few runs and it is not his natural position. Durante and McKain kept the other team's forwards silent.

Statistically we were dominant.

We had 18 attempts on goal (about a shot every 5 minutes) compare to the 5 attempts (about shot every 19 minutes) they had. Sadly only 4 were on target. Out of the 4, one was a goal and the other 3 were GK saves. We had 53% possession (6% more than the other team with the ball - nearly 6 more minutes with the ball than without it and obviously in more goal attacks rather than defensive possession). As a rule of thumb to indicate which team had the stronger attacking role, we had 6 corners to their 3 that roughly says we were in our attacking third twice as much as they were our defending third.

Also for people, to claim that Adelaide is a poor team ( i don't think that any team is poor although Fury is ), don't realise how close this League is. While it is true that they are near the bottom of the table in the early rounds, people forget that they were the runners-up in the Asian Champions League last season and a win can suddenly can change their fortune as it happen for us last season.AllWhitebelievr2009-09-04 23:59:49

Lia stood on someone studs up and he was on a yellow too. Evened out I say. Also Brown went in with a raise arm (ala Cristiano's red card in last years GF but a bit worse) and got nothing so I don't think we're in a position to complain really.

Some of the linesman's calls with throw ins and corners were horrible though. I thought the corner that they scored off should've been a goal kick too but not 100% sure.