Same Old Phoenix In The FFA Cup
The first game of the Mark Rudan era was no better than most of those other stink ones from the last couple years. Up against a lower league opposition in the FFA Cup, the esteemed Bentleigh Greens, they somehow conspired to lose 1-0 despite playing against ten men for two thirds of the game. It wasn’t pretty. At times it was downright ugly. But it was also just the first step of a long journey.
The initial signs that we were in for something dull came with the team naming. Four centrebacks and Libby Cacace, how exactly was that gonna work? Why, with Dylan Fox in the midfield, of course! And also Ryan Lowry at right back. There were club debuts for Filip Kurto, Steven Taylor, Michał Kopczyński and Mitch Nichols. No trialists signed up on one-day contracts or anything today, not at all. (Unless you count Alex Rufer, who put pen to paper a couple days earlier and played off the bench here).
Obviously Rudes is dealing with a squad that’s not fully furnished. We already knew we needed a couple more midfielders and the striking situation wasn’t helped with David Williams missing this one with injury. But Fox in the midfield was awful, man. He just didn’t have the touch to play under pressure, working as hard as you’d expect but not contributing anything to possession other than giving it away like a young Anthony Kiedis.
Kopczyński was a little better but still looked like a dude who hasn’t had a preseason yet while Nichols was so bloody slow. Same deal, he didn’t look anything close to match fit. You could see the touch he’s got, the clever vision he can bring, but he turned like an ocean liner and basically just stunted every damn thing. Almost as if he hasn’t hardly played for six months, right? It was super frustrating and with a midfield performing like that it was always going to be a tricky one.
So Bentleigh Greens, who it should be said are down at the business end of their season, mucked around and controlled the ball for most of the first half hour. Roy Krishna got a stab in at goal from one scramble which probably gave the Nix a bit of false hope for what was to follow when it drew a nice save out of the oppo keeper (it definitely gave me a false impression) but other than that it was mostly just the Nix sitting back in formation while the Greens struggled to turn their possession into chances. Until they did, Marco Jankovic flicking on a header from a corner for the goal. Fox got beaten there too, sad to say. It was no less than BGR deserved.
The red card helped things. James Kelly was perhaps a little unlucky with the second yellow but he also coulda been sent off for the first one, leaving six sprig marks in Cacace’s shin. It all comes around. Except that with ten men, the Greens had licence to sit back and clog things up. The Nix were easily at their best when Roy Krishna had the ball at his feet, though he struggled to combined with his teammates. Nathan Burns tried a few things and mostly buggered them up, shades of the end of last season there – but I'd rather he tries and fails than plays it safe. It’s his job to take risks. Sarpreet Singh grew into the game in the second half. He’ll be better when he’s got more space to play in, we just need to see him shooting more. That wand of a left leg is his best weapon and if he’s got space on the edge of the box… just shoot bro. Give it a crack.
Taking injury time into account the Nix played against ten men for more than an hour and barely ever looked like scoring. The only player who seemed to be able to find any space was Lowry and that’s because nobody bothered to mark a centreback playing out of position. Lowry is pretty clearly the fourth choice centreback now and he’s not much use on the right flank. Not sure why Louis Fenton didn’t get that gig instead. Or even Cacace on the right with Doyle starting left. Fenton’s not really a natural fullback but that’s the only position he’s getting into this team in and having his extra attacking threat in place of Lowry once the game got set in its ways in the second half would’ve helped. Same for getting Rufer on much earlier. But Rudes only kinda sat there, taking it all in.
Past Welly Nix FFA Cup Lineups
Ben Waine did get a go, shout out to him on the senior debut, but about the first thing he did was get muscled off the ball by two bulky defenders and, yeah, welcome to professional footy lad. Time ran out and the Nix lost at the first attempt in the FFA Cup for the fourth time in five years.
This was not a good performance. There were hints of something decent, some quality set piece moves and the odd bit of link-up play. And the defensive shape was pretty good. But they were rudderless without a proper striker, playing way too much purposeless stuff in front of a deep Bentleigh Greens midfield. The set piece things are a glimpse that they’re working hard on the training paddock. The rest of it was proof that they need to work a lot harder for the next two and a half months.
Mark Rudan: “We’re going through a whole raft of changes at this football club as well. If you think that we should be at a stage in our development under a new coach, with new players, that we should be winning five or six nil against a very quality side like Bentleigh, then maybe I’m looking at it differently… We’ve got a long way to go. We’ve got a lot of players left to fill our roster as well. So certainly, calling it an embarrassment, you’re being very disrespectful to Bentleigh Greens because they’re a good outfit, they’re a very good side and they’ve been a good side in this competition for a while. We’ve got a long way to go to improve, results don’t always go your but it’s a long way to go for us to get where we want to.”
Getting knocked out of the cup wasn’t such a big deal. Let’s be honest, the Nix aren’t ready for that yet. This is still stage one. They were rubbish last season and if their new signings weren’t ready to add anything yet, which they weren’t (the run of the game meant we didn’t get to see what Kurto or Taylor can do whily Kopy and Nichols were pretty average), then status quo suggests they’re still rubbish until that changes. But we don’t need a cup run. That’s not the problem. The problem is more that we saw here that a sharp-talking new coach and some fresh additions to the team won’t fix things automatically. There’s heaps more work still to do.
I was going to go in on the issue with kiwi players again, particularly after watching this game and reading Mark Rudan’s comments in that Simon Hill article, but we’re also 1200 words deep already so best to save that for its own article in the next couple days. A sneak preview being that, staying up ‘til midnight to watch that trash, there’s no doubt at all in my mind that Cam Howieson could improve this team… but you can wait patiently for that one.
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