Roy Krishna vs Wellington Phoenix: The Contract Conundrum
Player contracts and the Wellington Phoenix have been an odd combination at times. Like how about when they gave Ryan Lowry the world’s softest two-year trigger extension? An inessential squad defender who played eight times in the A-League, only once more than he did for the reserves team in the NZ Premiership, and somehow he got two more years for that. Then the club waited months to announce it because they didn’t wanna make it look like they were making moves until they had a new gaffer in place but Lowry instagrammed the news out anyway.
Or how about the fact that they’ve got two-thirds of their current squad coming off contract at the end of this season? That’s not so much their fault as it is a league-wide trend towards shorter contracts in a league that isn’t necessarily the most financially stable but… damn. For the most part, that’s good. A bunch of these players need to prove they’re worth keeping and with Darije Kalezic hinting a few times that the squad really up to standard (well spotted, amigo), it gives him flexibility to move into the future.
Then again, the list of players contracted for next season isn’t the prettiest. Included in that are Lowry and Adam Parkhouse – don’t wanna dwell on this but suffice to say there are kiwi players of equal/greater ability in the Premiership – as well as Keegan Smith and Sarpreet Singh (who are probably both a couple years away from being starting material) and Ollie Sail (who’s struggling for games with the reserves at the moment). Nathan Burns and Tom Doyle are quality, Dylan Fox might be as well, but there’s a lot of work to do if they’re gonna mould a squad out of that. Let alone one that can crack the top six.
It’s understandable if Kalezic, Davie Dome and all the rest of them want to wait until after the season before making decisions on players’ futures but there’s a risk there as well. Wait too long and other offers might come flying in. Other offers might not turn the heads of the players sufficiently but they’ll definitely perk the agents up when it comes to salary discussions. A club legend late in his career like Andrew Durante, there’s very little worry. Same for the likes of Matt Ridenton at the other end of the scale. How about Roy Krishna though?
So… Krishna’s been missing for the last couple games. They said he was injured and he probably was but a couple different doctors haven’t found anything wrong with him. His current deal has another of those triggered extensions for if he plays 15 times this season and currently he’s at 13. His agent denies that he’s sitting out to avoid hitting that mark but it’s kind of obvious.
This happens in football all the time, it’s best not to hold it against the player. Krishna’s in a push and pull between the club and his agent and his career and his wallet. Safe to say those four concerns are not inclined to work together in mutual reward and harmony. Fans tend to get snappy with players that oppose their own clubs (which is a survival mechanism, since we all intend to be supporting our clubs a lot longer than the career of any single player) but in the modern professional world it’s really unavoidable.
And who is it out there arguing that Krishna doesn’t deserve a better deal? He came in as an injury replacement when Paul Ifill did his achilles and, although it was hard to imagine at the time, he’s evolved in the following five years to be the natural successor to Saint Paul. With 32 goals in 86 games, he’s the club’s second highest all-time scorer (add in 21 assists as well) and we’ve seen the last three weeks what this team looks like without him. His pace is essential, his ability to both create and finish chances is crucial. That much is evident on the very surface when you look at the stats with and without the Fijian legend this season...
Welly Nix When Krishna Plays:
3 W | 4 D | 6 L | 21 GF | 26 GA | -5 GD | 13 PTS
Welly Nix When He Doesn’t:
0 W | 1 D | 5 L | 1 GF | 14 GA | -13 GD | 1 PTS
Yeah, she doesn’t take too much mathletics to see that the Nix have been utterly impotent when Krishna hasn’t been available. Scoreless in five of the six games that he’s missed. This isn’t just some useful re-signing… this is a bloody essential signature.
But while the Nix have laid an offer on the table, it’s apparently not what Krishna thinks he’s worth. Without knowing the details of that offer it’s impossible to say if one party is stiffing the other or if Krishna’s agent is asking for way too much or whatever. There’s plenty of time left in the season so this could be the early bartering hard-balls that get softened towards a compromise in the middle there over time, always start high as they say. Or it could be that the Phoenix think that they don’t need to pay max dollars for an Oceanian player whose professional career they pretty much launched.
If Krishna’s interested in chatting though, that means he’s interested in staying. Which means that from the club’s point of view… what the hell are you waiting for!? This is the one player they can least afford to lose so give him a blank cheque if that’s what it takes. (Obviously that’s not what it takes. Gotta trust they’ll meet his evaluations once they bring said evaluations down a bit. Hashtag: Business).
Then there’s the interest from Colorado Rapids. This is what I wrote about that whole situation back when it first got reported…
Feb 4 on TNC: “Now, Roy’s a favourite at TNC Towers, you may have already guessed that. But this is odd for a couple reasons. First is that as fantastic and crucial as Krishna has been for the Nix, he’s a 30 year old Fijian forward, currently injured, being linked to a Major League Soccer club. The only current All Whites laying it down on the regular in the MLS are… well, it’s basically just Stefan Marinovic and Mike Boxall right now. Tommy Smith will soon join that crew and a few others are possibilities. Krishna might be good enough, Boxall made the jump from A-League to MLS (with South Africa in between), but he’d be no slam dunk. Also Boxall had been there before and knew what to expect. It’s just an oddly specific transfer target under the circumstances.”
Nothing has changed. The Rapids have snapped up another international roster spot but would need another to register Krishna in their squad (unless somebody else gets cut) and it just seems like going to all that trouble to get a player of that age who has never played at that level is all sorts of risky. Shout out to Roy and his boys if they can make that happen but it’ll have to be seen to be believed. If you want the Nix to raise those dineros though, you’ve gotta create a bidding war to spark their interest. That’s pretty much what this is.
A bidding war and suddenly there’s an urgency to proceedings. Same goes with the Mahrez-esque contract holdout. Again, it’s all business. Dirty business, perhaps… except all business is dirty. Krishna’s trying to get paid and the Phoenix are trying to decide what to do with a bunch of underachieving players, two-thirds of whom are coming off contract and not just Krishna. It’s just that Krishna is the one watching his team lose 4-0 the last two weeks because the incentives in his current deal are working in reverse.
Morale of the story? Dunno about all this Krishna stuff but the Phoenix have honestly gotta stop chucking these ridiculous extension triggers in everyone’s contracts. They’re not bloody working.
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