What's really wrong with the Wellington Phoenix?

We see the Newcastle Jets performing well with a coach who said he failed to get the best out of the players at the Wellington Phoenix.Why is this club under performing so? 

Is it our calibre of player?

Is it our calibre of coaching?

Is it our club management?

Is it our club ownership?

Interesting question, and no obvious easy answer. I think it's a combination, to various degrees of all 4 although, as you said, Ernie couldn't buy a win here but he's achieving great things with the Jets. Which might suggest that there isn't too much wrong with his coaching.

Alarming parallels with the Warriors, who've made a habit out of signing good players who suddenly turn to crap as soon as they put a Warriors shirt on, and they still haven't found a solution.

I think for the most part our players have the quality to compete with the top end of the table.

Ernie and Darije are both good coaches.

That only leaves Welnix and Dome. I think a big part of it is the culture at this club. A family atmosphere with the goal of just making the finals and see what happens. 

Unfortunately I think players who have served the club well over the years are past their use by date and should not be in the squad going forward.

I don't know the answer - but it has been so long since we had any genuine momentum.  It's just the same old shark, couple of decent results.  The go backwards for another period of losses.  Then a couple of ok results, then back to the crap again.  It's so frustrating!

Personally, I think you look at the fact that three players signed at the end of last season are now deemed no good by the club (Watson, Lowry and Italiano).  That's absolutely terrible planning.  We also had a policy in the off-season of not signing Kiwis and then now seem to be reversing that.  These are only two visible examples.  

If that's the kind of decision making that is going on then it's no surprises that we're not performing on the park.

The biggest blunder in recent times has been the non recruitment of Darije in the middle of last year. 

Just add it to the list

I also think that a problem for us has been the relative lack of contribution of young players. We are operating with a smaller budget than most I think success depends on contribution from young, relatively cheap players.  We have not had much output from young guys so that has exposed the depth in our squad somewhat

Ernie did well in his second season, season 3 and 4 recruitment was bad with either dud players signed or an unbalanced squad.

This year i thought the squad looked much better and more balanced but obviously there have been issues. This imo is our worse season as its hard to know what the problems are.

yeah, Ernie must take blame for some of the poor signings - didn't even fit what he wanted to do either. He has not setup the jets the same as he did with us.

List of things that pundits, ex coaches, fans have said, take your pick:

East to west travel
Time differences
Travel time
Climatic differences
Small population base in Wgtn
Not a good stadium
Low interest in the hal in nz
Football committee performance
Youth development
Cost of tickets
Cost of food and beverages
Lack of community engagement

I would pull all of this together under "lack of clear strategy".  I do not think we have a strategy for how we can overcome the issues that undoubtedly make it difficult for us to succeed.  We have lacked someone with a vision for how to achieve success on the field.  Darije implies that he has identified what needs to change so let's hope he knows what he is talking about and has the ability to make the changes he wants.  

U cant make a silk purse out of a sows ear.

We need to march to the stadium and chant for the players for an hour before kick off.

Yeah, so we seemed to have had three problems. The first is that Merrick had success turning Robbie Kruse and then Nathan burns into a striker so ha backed himself to do it again, hence the not a striker meme. He tried to replicate the success he had in season two by hiring players like Sarpong. We also seemed to hire the best players available never mind who we had in the squad. Case in point we had to play Bonevacia out of position because we had Riera, then a couple of seasons later we had Bonevacia, Finkler, and WeeMac (probably three of our highest paid players) all vying for that attacking mid position.

From where I sit we have three key issues. In no particular order, these are:

• We aren't good enough at stopping our opponents putting the ball into our goal.
• We aren't good enough at putting the ball into our opponents goal.
• *We don't appear to know what the fudge we're doing on, or off, the pitch.

*this could be two issues, thereby giving a total of four.

And he was trying to play a press but with a static player like Finkler, and possession football with a 'keeper that couldn't play out and our tiny attackers to challenge in the air from clearances. Finkler also ruined our flexible midfield that could dynamically adjust shape during games based on player movements.

I agree with this, but also the clubs seems to block their pathway. It seems like we have a have a youngster who plays in that position, then we sign someone else anyway. The latest being Singh and we sign Ljujic in his place. But before that we had parkhouse for Mcgarry, even A-rod for Ridenton (at a bit of a stretch as Matty was a bit younger).

There could be many reasons for this, but the outcome is a lack of contribution from our youth setup. 

Fixed!

Makes me angry every time I think of it.  It has wasted pretty much a season and a half of time.  The last half of last season was wasted by him not being here to look over the squad to build what he wants in the off season, and this season has been wasted while he actually does that.

hindsight is 20/20.

I do wonder if we need an experienced director of football to plug the gap between the coach/board. It's all very well bringing in good players, but more important is bringing in the right players. 

With regards to young players, there's obvious issues there. Some of which can probably be attributed to being in NZ and our lack of footballing culture.

Maybe Darije was not available then

even better

Kosmina wants us out!.

It’s time to say goodbye to Wellington

  Very True Brisbane has shown it can support more than 1 football team in the A-League and Queensland has shown total support for 3 A-league clubs. Come on Johnny ya haven a laaaaugh

Expand the League, don't shrink it.

Surely a lot of this has to sit with Dome. Every year they cock up something that disenchants supporters (ie Season Passes, rubbish media etc) I would hate to think what gets screwed up behind closed doors (Vinnie exit?). I know he is committed but it must be time for a change, how many CEO's last as long as him with poor outcomes being delivered.

They got wrapped up in the moneyball theory with Earnie, I don't think we turned good players into rubbish ones, I just think we made them look ordinary because there was not enough class around them to allow them to function properly. We are still holding most of those players.

DK looks like a great football theorist, ie I have to have left-footed CB playing at left CB, regardless if there are better R-F options, or wanting crosses shaped differently so playing Parkhouse on a side he struggles on, but theories don't always work in reality.

This is what I mean, it's not strategic.  If we are committed to a youth team set-up then we should want to be the pathway of choice for young kiwi footballers on the basis that (a) they will get an opportunity to play and (b) we won't stand in their way if they want to go overseas and we can get a transfer fee for them.  But the academy set up has to be able to produce the goods and there has to be a guarantee that they will get opportunities.  

At the moment I am not sure if there really is a plan - not that long ago the whole idea of the WeeNix was for first teamers to be able to get match fitness when they weren't playing because we couldn't have an A-League youth team.  Now it's 17/18 year olds and first teamers rarely play...  

Everything, basically. It's no one particular thing.

- Poor management at the top level

- Staff doing multiple jobs

- Poor player recruitment and poor retention of talented Kiwis

- Bad pre-season preparation - Darije complained about it at the start of the season 

- Bad crowds and poor atmosphere (not YF's fault) due to lack of interest in Wellington / cavernous stadium

Getting rid of Dome would do nothing unless we get a guy like Pignata in again.

Dome basically said he was and had applied but decided to give Des and Greenie a go ie the cheaper option

for me this confirms what is wrong with the club at the moment - the leadership is just not up to it. I like Dome as person, he's always been interested in us as fans especially when he wasn't CEO. I dont think he has what it takes to lead this club to greatness.

and foresight shows competence

he is struggling to lead it to mediocrity

Did we as a club lose our way, our identity and rapore from the club towards fans and visa versa when Tony Pignata left? I kinda feel like part of the club died with his departure. Domey is nice to chat with and I believe he is as genuine as you can get but... The switch of our last game of the season to North Harbour?? Muppets.

Can you expand on this? Can you relate the lack of game time of young players to the reason you mentioned?

Oh for FUCKS SAKE!!!

"Wellington Phoenix to play season ending clash against Melbourne City in Auckland"

Now that is how to lose fans you stupid stupid people. 

Jesus, Domey and I quote him via "Stuff" - "Dome said fans have embraced the team when they've left Wellington, with 20,000 attending games in Christchurch and Auckland in the past." 

In the distant fudgeen past. Last season, the two games in Auckland had 5k crowds.

When people don't show up in Wellington, then I can't blame them for trying to recoup costs elsewhere.

There's six points the team could use, put them in 6th place.

A 2nd game in Auckland? Is this a f*****g joke? I was already committing to the first game in Auckland which is costly enough, but this now leaves 2 of our last 9 games in Wellington? Literally fuming.