What's really wrong with the Wellington Phoenix?

Yellow Fever is different things in different people's eyes. To some it is everyone that is registered on this site [and in some cases those that follow it without posting], to others, its just the group that stand in the zone at Wespac or wherever the home stadium is that week. Undeniably, the elite [and I use that term tongue in cheek] are the most visible of YF and quite honestly those that do the most work to enhance the Phoenix supporter experience. They fill those roles with a passion that can't be denied and [even though I get pissed off with some of their attitudes] they deserve our thanks and gratitude. That shouldn't stop us from saying when we thing they have done something wrong [like the Martin Out banner] or they haven't jumped onto our own particular bandwagons [like LG's protest] though.

I am not an avid listener to the podcast but when I do listen, I enjoy them [both the old and the new version]. The 2 'elite' people I dislike the most from their writing in the forum - I actually enjoy listening to on the pod. The pod and the activities in the zone enhance my enjoyment of the Nix supporter experience and I want them to stay.

Hatter is an extremely disgruntled former elite member and what he is experiencing is not an uncommon phenomena. He probably mirrors a lot of older supporters to a degree and this is the conundrum that the Nix have to juggle to remain relevant. They need to attract new supporters and not alienate the old ones. I don't think they've quite got that balance right.

To bring this back around to the thread topic, the Nix organisation need to really address the supporter issue. I'm not certain that they have a suitably wide strategy for this. We have seen a rebranding and reconnection with Wellington but then they easily bugger off to Auckland at the 11th hour, a connection with Iwi, but what are we seeing as the outcomes of this? New beer and food options at the stadium, yet the crowds aren't increasing [can you still get a pie and chips?], some whizz-bang communication expert but they can't even let supporters know that they are playing a game elsewhere until a week after we read about it in the media - the list is probably bigger.

I've worked for a couple of dynamic organisation in my time [and a couple of duds] and what sets them apart from each other is their total focus on what the customers wants [and in many cases knowing that before the customer even knows] and on top of that the striving for excellence to make that all happen. I accept that the team on the pitch can't always perform to our expectations but there are far too many examples of this club, not being very good at what it does. That's why I have this little theory about them holding on until confirmation they are in the A League for good, I just can't believe that some of our Country's finest business brains are so bad at running a football club.

That's mostly just because Phoenix City isn't as good as In The Zone though. #BringBackITZ

But to get a permanent place in the league, they need to show they are good enough. Chicken and egg?
And re finest business brains, is that all it takes to run a football club? Is it really just another business, like running a building company or an airline?  

If A-league clubs get more control of their game which finances FFA it can only be good for Nix   

While I like the rebranding I just dont get it. If you are keeping a tight watch on  finances   why spend all that money in doing the rebranding not sure it was a neccasary expense.

You can get pies and chips of course. And also crap beer. They cater for everyone :P

Definitely not, it is actually much harder.

Still, some manage to stuff it up, even if their CEO is Ralph Norris (and he used to run an airline too)

"The suffering, amazingly, is not yet over for long-suffering shareholders in building giant Fletcher Building after it put its shares into a trading halt on Thursday"          https://www.interest.co.nz/property/92009/building...

Even if the club-run league idea has substance in reality and is not just everyone's wishful thinking, it would not apply to next season, and this is what we need to focus on right now. Andnext year we are still under the same conditions. What happens in 2020 will take care of itself soon enough.

I doubt they're sitting on a license and waiting, if that was the case they'd do a mariners and spend the cap minimum, the team spends more than the cap and last year had two marquee players. They're spending a lot, probably not top 4 but definitely not the least, and are trying hard, but for a multitude of reasons it's not coming off.

Disclaimer: I agree we need PASSION, and I love Motörhead.

But macho, borderline homophobic bullshark like this is not passion. Nor is being able to call the referee something fishy. "Not PC" is code for "macho dingbat who wants to ruin the zone for everyone who's not a macho dingbat".

I'm passionate as both a fan and a player, and this kind of language just pees me off.

What are the owners expectations for the team and club?

A-Is it to Win the competition each year, and disappointed if we dont? or

B-Or is it to have a nice football club, that performs okay, hopefully making the top 6 each year and forming part of the local community?

The owners expectations are what creates the culture thru out the organisation and breeds whats acceptable and whats not.

Im not critising the owners, as they are the ones making the financial investment and can run the club how they want, but it seems to me B above is whats happening, which is now resulting in whats happening with the players and whats happening on the field and has been for the last few years, its just seems to be getting worse, more noticeable.

Until people can go to the stadium with an expectation that at least 75 % plus of the time they will see a winning team, then crowd numbers arent going to improve. To have a winning team, it appears from a distance that the owners are going to have change their approach to running the club/players. No amount of rebranding will make any difference without the team winning.  Unless the owners adopt approach A above this club will slowly sink into irrelevance and then disappear sadly

Two reasons, the one that is most obvious is because the club has said so. They may actually be under the cap now depending on the payout to Finkler but last year they had two marquees, this year they started with at least one, and in previous seasons they normally have one (in the past it was Ifill), they've always framed them as accounting marquees. If they're under the cap it's clear it's just because of player movements and not something that they've targetted. Merrick also said pretty much every year that the playing budget increased from the year before.

The second reason which you may or may not believe because I won't go into details is I asked one of the WelNix members about eighteen months ago when were were involved in something completely unrelated.

To be a professional footballer and or a professional club, you should always aim to be the best, the number one. Nothing else matters. To stagger along and "hope" to finish 6th says a lot about the lack of ambition/professionalism of some.

There is a big difference between spending the cap and spending it wisely.If we have in fact spent all our cap and used our marque spots it dosnt say much about those doing the spending  if this is the position we find ourselves in.

Someone mentioned elsewhere about what could be the problem as it just seems that something has happened at the club.As that person mentioned prior to the Hutt Rec games we were flying high but since then apart from the occasional performance here and there. It seems as if something has changed but no one seems able to suggest what.Makes it even harder to take when you see Ernie flying high with Jets.

Please WelNix, give us the progress we need to survive. I don't want to support another club if we're kicked out.

Best scenario for the fans is that everyone gives a 1000% and it results in win after win, but reality is that each player is different and has different motivations.

Yep, that's right. Assuming we're on par with the likes of the Jets and spending more than at least the Mariners then we're really overspending. 

But, there is a difference in intention. If the club was spending the bare minimum then that would validate the view that some have that they're simply treading water until some hypothetical point where it will be worthwhile. However if they're spending the full allocation and more then that indicates the complete opposite.

A new logo, craft beer and a witty social media presence will do nothing to return crowds to the Nix.

Winning games , winning them regularly at home  is all that will do that.

They can have whatever beer you want on tap at a reasonable price and it alone will not draw people through the turnstiles.

They could give away sausage rolls and it would not draw people through the turnstiles.

The only thing that will do that is winning

Ive been a regular reader of the Forum for some years and have enjoyed the frank, irreverent and often spot –on comments from all of you. Now’s the time to have my say.

My take on the State of the Nix is this:

The present position the Nix find themselves in, is not surprising .There has been a fundamental flaw in the squad recruitment process year in and out. Coupled with this there has also been an only partially fulfilled strategy which is still in the process of being built- that of training up and making NZ born players HAL-ready.

This is because it hasn’t been recognised that the HAL standard of performance has significantly improved year on year over the last 10 years for a number of reasons, not the least of which has been a large number of imports who have effectively helped lift the game. This has spurred many Aussie born players to match them and this competition within the competition has been quite successful. It hasn’t happened that way here in NZ.

Our own academy was late in getting started and hats off to the Nix owners, the young guns are now starting to emerge in reasonable numbers, but not yet in enough numbers to make a huge difference to the Nix squad. Whether the present batch is all ready for HAL as regular players is a moot point.

This is subjective, however IMHO the quality of the present squad is and has been 2-3 years behind the standard of the other teams in the HAL for the last 5 years at least.

The biggest issue is the middle tier of the squad which is deficient in one or some of the crucial skills required to be more than competant in the HAL. These (others can be added) to kick and pass with equal confidence using both feet, accurate passing with 85-90% accuracy, have good vision, be able to run as fast as the opposition wide-strikers or wing-backs, to run for 95 minutes per game and be willing and able to develop personal skills year on year. And basic football intelligence. These are the minimum standards a coach must expect and it’s what we as supporters are entitled to expect and see on a regular basis.

There is a high proportion of the current squad who don’t meet these criteria. Some may be close to meeting these and as long as they are not game breaking features then they should be considered for selection.

Because of this there is a mediocrity there which I suggest has existed for some time, and unfortunately it does affect the higher tier players as they join the squad as well. Look at Roy, Goran, Rossi and Burnsie. They played well to begin with and at varying stages of the season, but not consistently. They can’t help but see average performances being acceptable, so they think this is the norm. We don’t have many out and out leaders in the squad and its left to Dura to fight the fight internally. He must be a very frustrated man.

We have been recruiting towards a static mediocrity IMO and until the owners and management both recognise this then we are doomed to staying at the bottom of the table.

Maybe the owners are biding their time, waiting for the Weenix players to appear in numbers. Yes, but time is fast running out.

Thanks for a good post Gdog. You were able to put in words the nagging worry I've been having about the good import players at Phoenix often trending towards mediocrity over time.

The issue of HAL playing quality improving over the last several years has been clearly overlooked by many. It has been on the horizon for several years now and I believe Ricki Herbert was a victim in a way of also not being to match the rise in HAL quality. It is easy to see the FFA fumbles as a sign the whole league is crap. It is not; it simply has organisational issues which caused many owners to ask for a better deal, or to allow them to run the thing by itself. However, I would argue that Sydney FC is one level in quality above the Australian national team; surely a mark of a good league (even if they are well ahead of others except maybe the Jets this season).

In my own opinion, the rising quality of HAL has been largely ignored or discounted by the general NZ audience, possibly not excluding the club itself, but definitely by the general public. Part of that can be attributed to cultural bias; since we are swamped here with regular EPL updates and news bites the general public will compare HAL to EPL and consider it poor. It is easy to therefore for Joe Bloggs to think that the Nix should still be able to beat everyone in HAL, since we were quite good at it 8-10 years ago. This gives rise to a sentiment that if we cannot be successful therefore "the club should not exist", or "football will never succeed here" etc etc. The fact that our own forum here, let alone the club, seems unable to diagnose the reasons of this malaise is a problem in itself. That we seem to be doing poorly over the last several seasons could be an indication we do not have enough player depth in this country, or give them opportunities, or we do not enough money to pay good quality imports (both visa- and non-visa ones). And finally, it is unclear to me how the national body (NZF) relates to the Nix since they actually hold the licence on behalf of WelNix, and whether there is any chance of alignment of interests and plans.

I don't think the league is that strong this year at all. Jets are an average side and bothy Victory and City are worse than previous versions. Sydney are very good

But this just shows whats so wrong with Aussie football.  I'd never pay $2k for anyone to play club sport anywhere no matter the code.

My point exactly. The Jets have been consistently poor for the previous few seasons and look at them now.

Does anyone really think our players aren't good enough? I think they are quite good enough by and large, but there is something bigger preventing them from being their best. At times this season we have been damn good.

yes, the goalkeeping situation is a joke, Galloway and Abbas have been poor, and Parkhouse is terrible on the right and not that much better on the left. But apart from that, we should expect a better showing than what we have been given. The rest can play, if their mind is on it.

I don't think its got anything to do with salary caps, recruitment, the a-league getting better. I think its far more that we aren't a team and don't play as a team. Why that is , I really don't know, but something is rotten in the core.

In the "old" days you would have suggested they all went somewhere they can't be recognised or get into public strife, get a pile of booze in and let them get amongst it and bond. Tell some home truths, enjoy each others company and just figure out what makes each other tick. In the modern day of the professional athlete, I have no idea what the equivalent is but we need it and fast.

Tldr; figure out how to develop the "in the trenches" mentality.

nice post gdog. IMHO...

our squad is way below the standard of the league

we have the second weakest squad behind the mariners. but they have a coach who has made something out of very little

the other stuff is just noise, some good some not so good, but this all comes down to the squad

And we have a bad squad because we don't have a clear strategy for how we put the squad together

How many of the current squad would make Sydney(1)or the Jets (2) current squads?

Krishna maybe - thats about it.

Im sure the players all give 100%. Unfortunately very few are them are good enough to be in a 1st or second  a league team.

Terry for all of his faults was very good on the social side. He organised several get togethers for players and their families and you could sense that there was a true bond between the players. This was most evident in the season that they made the semis in the knock out stage, they were putting everything on the line for each other. 

True. But even without the booze-up, our current team still seems to look like a bunch of polite strangers meeting in the same airport lounge

Team spirit doesn't help you win games, teams that win have good team spirit because everyone loves winning!

team spirit will help a team win games, a happy bonded team will play together and for each other and hopefully the coach. Which in theory should help with results. But this is always easier when you're winning.

These are all cliches - there are loads of examples of successful teams where everyone hated each other

I think these days they use "Sports Psychologists" whom charge an arm and a leg and achieve little. Bring back the drinkies.