What's really wrong with the Wellington Phoenix?

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What did they say?

It doesn't sound like hes been sacked (yet). And it doesn't sound like he resigned. Sounds like he told the players he wouldn't be coach next year, but that's neither being sacked or resigning really. Sounds to me like hes waiting for the inevitable sacking. And Domes public expansion of the situation is really not needed at this point

Narrator "there wasn't" 

Someone needs to take control of this, Dome cannot front the media and not know whether he is sacked or not! 

Can we have a marquee player next season?.

seriously, how is David Dome still there? Club is a shambles

If Darije is still there coaching this week, then he hasn't been sacked, it is just as was said. Not doing the job again next year. No doubt the new coach will have to be signed on soon though because players need to be signed.

Mickey Mouse material. 

Can you recap?

Anyone actually read what Dome said, or are you all basing judgement on the one sentence that Piney pulled out?

I can only assume that's a direct dig at me given it's the post after mine referencing what I wrote - which is somewhat baffling as I've not posted about sacking him at all. 

Since you're on your moral high horse, please explain what you think the club has done correctly in the past 12 months - because ( excluding those with knee jerk reactions every few seconds) there are plenty of disgruntled fans losing faith in the club they spend time and money supporting. 

What there are are plenty of fans reading the conjecture on these forums and on the even more stupid facebook groups and assuming any of it is fact.

Most of the whining and angst is based on the opinions of a sea of knockers (interestingly many of which don't even live in Wellington) who invent rubbish like the owners not wanting to spend money or Rado should have been kept, or Darije quit because the board didn't like him demanding more money, or the football committee don't know anything about football.

The club did an exhaustive search and Kalezic gave all the right impressions had the right credentials and seemed a reasonable punt.  Very few people on here raised a red flag because we thought the same thing.  Then they added Rado - now I suspect that they signed Rado knowing that if things went wrong he'd be a pain in the arse because he is but to be honest you've backed your squad and your coach to be competent so you'd be selling yourself short if you didn't take a punt on Rado - and most people celebrated.

Unfortunately things start going wrong.  The signings that were meant to be A-League quality were not - Kosta had gone because his Mrs couldn't stand being around his mother (allegedly) Gui couldn't find form/didn't want to be here (allegedly).  Rossi never gave a shark. Galloway looked like an Aussie journeyman not great Australian hope he was meant to be.  They deliberately avoided signing NZ players to avoid a clash with a busy year for the national side.  They signed Italiano based on the clamour of people who never really watched him play ASB Prem and Rado became a pain in the arse.  

The club had backed Darije and when it came to a Rado or him decision they kind of needed to stay by their man particularly as Rado is not a head coach and would likely be a pain in the arse for anyone else as well of course this meant Dario as well.  

They gave Darije a chance without those influences but also without key players, the defensive line destroyed by injury, Italiano was as expected and the players got frustrated with the coaching style and Darije's lack of ability.

Sure some of this was the clubs fault.  Italiano should not have been re-signed as number 1, the decision to avoid NZ players was foolish and hurt our identity and the chances for NZ players. Signing Rado was a mistake but as I said if you don't back yourself to win and avoid the issues Rado can cause why are you even trying?

However there is an element of the club being a victim of circumstance.  They backed the man in charge and the team to win and not have the Rado issue.  How could they know Finkler and Rossi had just given up? They had done due diligence how could they know Darije would go wrong? How could they know we'd spend the first half of the season with 9 defenders on the books and at times only 3 of them fit and even then not fully fit? On paper Burns is a superb signing, on the pitch he's been frustrating. Colorado unsettled Krishna (no they are not entirely innocent here but rest assured the guilt is at best evenly split between all the parties involved).

Just remember NZ Football had Hudson for 3 years and never clicked he wasn't up to the job, the Phoenix realised it and took action within 8 months

I'll also give you the fact that the decision to move the last game was dumb (exacerbated by the late notice of the move) but even that is only because two other outside Wellington games fell through in circumstances beyond the control of anyone at the Phoenix be it playing side, back room or WelNix.

While I'm going of on one people calling for WelNix to go, the board to go, blaming Huawei really need to step back and think this through. We have a club by the grace of these people and organisations.  Our ticket purchases do not come close to funding this club.

Huawei are a massively credible sponsor and financial contributor for the club and I imagine they are having some concerns about re-signing for the coming season which won't be helped by people on Social media slagging them off despite them doing all they can to keep a professional club going in New Zealand.

We have a better youth set-up than any other club in this league, there is work continuing to try and make a Women's team viable in the W-League without any of the FFA support Australian clubs get.  We are also by no means the poorest funded side (or the cheapest squad) in the league and have an ownership group and model that many of the Australian clubs envy and they look to Rob Morrison as a leader in the ownership group. 

I'm all for people having their voice and fan power but we need to be careful not to get carried away on a sea of righteous indignation without taking a step back and evaluating the full facts. Yes there are some errors being made but the sky is not falling.  We're not going through a head coach a week as some of the chicken littles would have you believe, we're not close to being wound up, the FFA aren't close to kicking us out.  Yes we need more (and a stable) back room staff at the club, yes we need more NZ players getting a chance, and yes we now need a new coach.  None of these things are insurmountable and it's certainly not a 'list 1 good thing the club have done in 12 months' bad.  Most of the things they had done prior to 10 weeks ago were being celebrated by the same people now demanding the club be folded.

I'll also add that anyone considering the opinions of anyone at Radio Sport other than Jason Pine and perhaps Daniel McHardie as being worth anything are delusional.  

I see even old fairweather Devlin popped in with pop guns blazing at the Phoenix.

Oh the irony.

When things are good he rushes to get in the picture and be on the bandwagon and when it's bad he sits on the sidelines and lobs grenades but in between he is nowhere near the domestic game.

When it goes well, becomes trendy or someone pays him he becomes a leading expert on it and acts like he was there all along. When it goes badly he offers horrific takes like people are stupid for "assuming these clowns care about the club and the game"

The people he is talking about throw hundreds of thousands of dollars a year at maintaining a professional club in New Zealand, what exactly does he think is in it for them? They have little to no media profile, they get slandered by ill-informed media and glorified social media warriors like him and all for a chance to lose money.

The one thing that is clear is that they and the loyal supporters of the Phoenix and before them the Knights and the Kingz (People still remind me how quickly he bailed on that market when it's stock stopped climbing) and the ISPS Handa Premiership sides have all put more time and effort into the game in this country than he ever will.

Thanks for taking the time to respond. In short, the club tried their best, failed miserably and made a few silly decisions along the way. 

All of which I can accept, but the silly decisions compounded with the performance on the pitch and false sense of expectation (given the new signings, coach,way we started off) is why people are frustrated. I appreciate some of it is probably a sense of entitlement "we changed stuff up, now we have to do well," but the decisions made by the club, albeit in good faith, have still been gambles for the large part. 

We appointed a head coach with a relatively poor record, who hasn't been in charge of any club longer than 2 years, an assistant manager who's also bounced around clubs regularly in the past 6 years or so, revamped the whole squad and we expected some sort of continuity? Half of our starting squad weren't here last season an we lost two players prior to the transfer window on mutual termination. 

The handling of the current DK situation is also poor. He's not continuing, yet, the club haven't decided if he's going to be around until the end of the season or not. I can speculate as to whether he was pushed or chose to resign, but either way given how the season has been, we should've been ready for either scenario. Not making a decision as to whether he'll stay or not appears as though there has been no contingency planning what so ever. If your coach isn't going to be here next season, he shouldn't be in charge.

Yes some of these have been bad decisions made in good faith, but whatever way you want to skin it, we're meant to be a professional football team, our decisions should be more calculated and we should be prepared for the worst case scenario and we appear to have failed at both.

Most of the NZ sport talking heads have 0 clue when it comes to football.

The story from Dome is they were negotiating Darije's departure but he announced it prematurely before negotiations about when he left were finalised. It seems a shambles because it wasn't supposed to be public yet.

Surely if you go into a meeting with a Manager you don't want next year, you know what you want, ie him given a cardboard box and a cab to the airport.  You have a last ditch strategy where you agree to pay out his entire contract. Maybe your opening gambit is that you offer him 25% of that and work up from there. YOU DO NOT let him out of the office to control the narrative and create another shambles.

Is it Domes fault? Are his hands tied by the board? More than likely they are but if he keeps getting put in these compromised positions, I wonder how he sticks it out? I know I could not stay in a role where your hands are tied by a board to the point you are unable to perform your role.

The other aspect is the mythical Football board. What role and responsibility do they have in this shambles? Do they even still exist? Are they accountable for any of the decisions?

The club, just two or three short seasons ago was considered to be a well run "model" of a club of the pitch. Something , somewhere beyond just bad luck with a few signings has gone badly wrong.

Bang on

That's the reality of football clubs within NZ and Australia though, there isn't the same resource available as there is in the European league, for example. Even the ISPS Handa clubs are run on a few people doing an exceptional amount of work.

The club hasn't fallen off the rocker off the park like you think it has. 

You say in your first sentence that too many people have left, over worked underpaid etc etc, Does that, with the omnishambles that is this last 12 - 18 months sound like a club that is tracking on well? 

yeah, that worries me as well

Not if you go in with a negotiating position and the manager refuses to negotiate.

The problem is at this stage it would seem he's owed wages for next season as they're not out of the hunt for the six yet. Negotiation takes compromise.

Darije's lawyers might have different opinions.

That would be my take on it too. At this stage with a mathematical chance at the six he might well be digging his heels in on a pay out of next season too (if such an extension really does exist). The club throwing money down the drain on that doesn't seem prudent when their negotiating position gets stronger with every passing day. Nothing against the guy for digging in his heels on his contract terms but also a dose of reality probably needed as well. 

I don't see it taking that long for both parties to come to a compromise on it tbf especially with a decent gap till the next game. I'll be suprised if he is running things come the 10th.

and you know that this mythical top 6 clause is in the contract?

The fact is the club wants rid of him. They need to make it happen. If it costs them money to do so, so be it.

I think was pretty clear that I have no knowledge if that is in his contract but with these things where there is smoke there tends to be fire. It's been rumoured more than enough in media I'd hazard something exists.

When you are talking probably a six figure sum I'd rather we can use that for player recruitment than tidying this up a few days earlier personally. A clean break would have been ideal but there are two parties here and club is only one of them.

We could ask the FFA for the 6 figures.  They could take it out of Lowy's backhander to Gallop.

10-15 staff. Maybe keeping the ones they have wouldn't hurt either.

It's been widely reported by most of the football media now so seems a reasonable supposition to base conjecture on, certainly it's more appropriate than some of the purely invented theories that fly around regularly.

amazing how often the media get rubbished. Unless it meets your Narrative.

When have I rubbished the media? Its amazing how you can rubbish widely reported stories if they don't fit your narrative. Must be nice to live life with the blinkers on.

@sthn.jeff, I'm starting to think that calling people on their narratives is your narrative

Play nice please.

KTHXBI

sooorrrryyyyy news, sooorrryyyy jeff