The All Whites’ Wing-Back Conundrum
Most of the problems with the All Whites right now are things we can deal with. We’re over-reliant on Chris Wood’s goals? No worries, he scores a lot of them and he’s pretty fit these days. The midfield doesn’t offer much size or strength? That’s okay, they’re good on the ball and they work hard. Anthony Hudson updates his own Wikipedia page? Hey there’s nothing wrong with a manager showing a bit of ambition.
Uncle Tony has very firmly set this team up to play in a 5-3-2 formation. Now and then he’s mixed that up with his second half subs, when chasing a game or whatever, but that’s the way they’ve shaped up to begin 18 of their last 19 games, from the Oceania Nations Cup to the Confederations Cup to the latest friendly against Japan.
It’s a good formation. It means they can get somebody playing off of Chris Wood up front without sacrificing numbers in the midfield. The three-man central defence has become pretty popular in both club and international football the last few years and the best way to counter that shape tends to be to copy it, plus it stands up well against other formations too when stuck in your own half defending... as the All Whites often understandably are against better teams.
Yet no matter how you set a team up, you only get 11 players to work with. Put an extra man in midfield and you have to sacrifice a bloke somewhere else. With this 5-3-2 thing, the sacrifice is wingers. We don’t have any. Instead the wide defenders are expected to both defend the flanks and also get forward to stretch the attack and whip in a few crosses. There’s a risk there if you happen to come up against some serious playmakers out wide without that extra teammate to help, but you do get an extra defender in the middle… you know, where the goal is.
New Zealand has a problem with its wing-backs though. There are a bunch of candidates but none of them have been able to secure their first XI status. Huddo’s rotated his wide defenders with almost every successive match – with the amount of work they’re expected to do that’s inevitable but it isn’t only rest that’s causing the mixing and matching.
Going back to the beginning of the Confeds Cup tour, these are the last eight wing-back combos:
- Northern Ireland – Colvey & Doyle
- Belarus – Colvey & Wynne
- Russia – Colvey & Wynne
- Mexico – Ingham & Wynne
- Portugal – Ingham & Doyle
- Solomon Islands 1 – Roux & Wynne
- Solomon Islands 2 – Roux & Wynne
- Japan – Ingham & Colvey
It’s a little confusing and that confusion is only added to by Ingham going straight back in to start against Japan after being dropped from the last squad for fitness reasons. And Storm Roux getting left out for so long then leaping back in there for the Solomon games. The one thing that you can almost glean by squinting hard enough at these teams is that Deklan Wynne is probably the first choice left back.
But is Roux the best option on the right? Does Hudson think so? We know he loves a bit of The Dane judging by how he pushed to get him eligible… which is ironic because Roux and Wynne were both caught up in The Great Eligibility Scandal of 2015 and Colvey is a US citizen by birth. Doyle’s the only one of them who was actually born in New Zealand. It doesn’t make a difference to this argument where they were all born but maybe it does hint towards Aotearoa not developing enough specialised footy players? Dunno, somebody ask Declan Edge...
Liam Graham has played at RWB before but injuries have set his career back lately. Michael Boxall can do a job there but he’s essential to the central defence. Louis Fenton has gone the same way as Graham. Matt Ridenton played as a wing back in the Nations Cup one time. It’s a big pool of players to have been tried for nobody to have really figured it out yet.
There’s a simple reason for that: none of them are especially good. That’s not intended to be harsh, it’s more that all these dudes are young players at the start of their professional careers. Chris Wood and Winston Reid are playing every week in the Premier League. Ryan Thomas, Michael Boxall and hopefully soon Marco Rojas are regulars for their clubs. That’s not the case with any of our wing-back prospects, however.
- Tom Doyle – 25 years old, playing most weeks for the Wellington Phoenix
- Dane Ingham – 18 years old and only just working his way into Brisbane Roar match squads
- Storm Roux – 24 years old and has spent heaps of time injured and ineligible for NZ. Signed on again with Central Coast Mariners in April though
- Deklan Wynne – 22 years old, playing reserves for Vancouver Whitecaps
- Kip Colvey – 23 years old, has jumped between MLS and USL footy in America but hasn’t actually played for the San Jose Earthquakes in an MLS game this season
Five main candidates, none older than 25 years old and only Roux and Doyle are established players at their club. Neither of those teams tend to employ these lads as wing-backs either. They may all be wide defenders but that doesn’t make them entirely suited to the roles asked of them. Which is why the youngest and least experienced, Dane Ingham, seems to have the inside lane on the right flank. He’s a converted winger with good pace and more to offer going forward. Problem is he’s also super raw on defence, like the worst of any of the quintet and probably by a distance.
The games against Mexico and Portugal at the Confeds made that pretty clear, particularly in the Mexico clash where they were chasing a result. Javier Aquino roasted Ingham as Mexico made a concerted effort to play faster and wider in the second half of that one. It’s not hard to isolate the kiwi WBs and Lil Dane paid the price. Check out both MEX goals here:
What we saw against Japan was something similar, at least in theme. This time Japan started fast and were finding success with early passes forward, picking on the wing-backs for either playing too high or too centrally. For Ingham to find himself defending on the other side of halfway at any point when there are four other defenders in that line makes no sense. He was getting sucked in and so was Kip Colvey on the other side.
Japan went away from that tactic as New Zealand were able to hold the ball a little more, meaning they could push their opposition back some, except that they’d already figured out that thing about isolating the wide defenders. Rojas did a lot of defending on the right, Thomas did a lot on the left. That meant Mike McGlinchey holding the middle alone. You have to prepare for a certain amount of Doing Whatever It Takes against better teams, so it’s hard to be too critical of that. Still, it was no surprise when the winning goal came from a cross from Ingham’s side. Colvey, meanwhile, was subbed for Doyle with 25 minutes remaining.
It’s not particularly great, although you have to make-do with what you’ve got and Cafu and Roberto Carlos ain’t walking through that door any time soon. (And even if they do they won’t be eligible… although that might not be a barrier). What’s even more frustrating is that we aren’t getting anything from these guys going forwards either. Honestly, which one of the five would you most trust to whip in a perfect cross to Chris Wood, given one opportunity, deep into stoppage time with the scores tied against Argentina or Chile? Probably Deklan Wynne but he scuffs twice as many as he doesn’t and the others are worse.
Wynne also has the tendency to cross from very deep too, crosses which are more easily repelled (but which mean he’s not as far out of position). Basically, you put a crap cross in that’s picked off by the first defender and the other team are straight on attack and you, as a humble wing-back, had better sprint the hell back on defence because they’re heading for where you’re supposed to be.
What we really want is our wing-backs, as the only source of width on attack, getting in behind their opposites and pegging them back. Crosses coming in from the goal-line and all that. Stuff that Woody can really attack. Problem is, and this isn’t the WB’s fault, we don’t tend to hold the ball long enough to allow them time to get there.
We can get into all sorts of other little tactical things but it’s kinda irrelevant because the bottom line doesn’t change: our wide defenders just aren’t that good. There’s lots of depth looking at the five young prospects there but that depth only exists because we don’t have a Winston Reid or Chris Wood in those positions who’d blow them all away. At least we don’t have one yet. To be fair, we haven’t had one for a long while either: remember who the wing-backs were in 2010? Tony Lochhead and Leo Bertos.
Storm Roux showed some positive signs in his two games against the Solomon Islands which suggests he should maybe be considered to start on the right for the Intercontinentals. He’s definitely the most pedigreed at club level so far and his combination with Monty Patterson in the first SOL game was encouraging. Monty won’t be starting in the next WCQs but a better version will be in Marco Rojas. Thing is, Ingham was dropped for that window and Roux was injured for the next so it’s not obvious which way Huddo’s leaning. The other alternative is to play a defensively sound winger there for added attacking prowess – think Victor Moses or Antonio Valencia in the PL (both of whom are pretty much just defenders these days because of how well they adapted). Only we don’t have anybody like that so… as you were.
Look, it’s not the biggest problem in the world and it’s not really a problem that Hudson can solve either. This formation has worked best for the team and being left exposed on the flanks is balanced out by the options going forward and the extra central defender. It’s just that good teams target weaknesses and it’s already happened to the All Whites before. You’d be well within your rights to fear the implications as the kiwis travel to South America.
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