First game of the season, the Welly Nix were up against the two-time defending champs. They’d had a disrupted pre-season with a few new players so although they lost it was understandable. Conceded two stunning goals too. That’s the way it goes sometimes. Second game of the season and it was an excellent performance up until a dodgy red card changed the course of proceedings and while a draw was disappointing it was also excusable. Come to the third game of the season however, following a two-week break, and another loss means it’s safe to say the emotional safety net has frayed away.

The Phoenix have a reputation for slow starts. Under Mark Rudan they won their first game but then took just two points from their next five. Ufuk Talay’s reign then began with four straight defeats (all by a single goal) and then a draw before the first win finally arrived at the sixth attempt... and they still recovered for a club-record finish. Now we’ve got three winless games here to tack onto the five winless games that we finished the previous season off with. Eight games... that’s a lot. And while it doesn’t really count as a continuous streak when it crosses over multiple seasons, it’s still a bit of a concern that it’s the same major issue that seems to be bugging this team.

Well, a concern and also a relief. Because if problems are lingering between seasons then that at least means the Wellington Phoenix are having consistency between seasons. The departures of Steven Taylor, Liberato Cacace, Gary Hooper, Matti Steinmann, Callum McCowatt, Callan Elliot, etc. therefore haven’t disrupted the lads so much that we have to completely reassess where they’re at. We’re not starting again from scratch, as is the usual tradition. That’s a good start.

But cast your mind back to the elimination final against Perth Glory. Or better yet, watch the highlights...

Thirty-one shots. Eleven shots on target. Thirty-five crosses into the box. Sixty-seven percent possession. And a one-nil defeat that stopped the Nix’s season right then and there with a screeching halt.

Gary Hooper was out injured that day and without his clinical nature - the only fella in that squad you could use that descriptor for - it got messy. Uli Davila had seven shots. Jaushua Sotirio had nine shots. And this was not a problem that suddenly arrived in the elimination final, it was a ghost that haunted them the whole way through. Last season’s squad featured six players in the top sixty for shots per 90 minutes. Only Ulises Davila, the team’s top scorer, was in the top twenty. That’s not terrible. It could be better but mostly what that says is that the Nix share the shots around. Except that they didn’t exactly share the goals around. There was a huge reliance on Davila (including from the penalty spot) and Hooper to put them away and it’s not as though Uli is particularly efficient – he scores plenty but he tends to take lot of shots to get those goals. Also his tally is bloated by penalties (8 goals from open play, 5 from penalties). But mate his numbers make him look like Pele compared to some of the other forwards in that squad in front of goal.

Compare these 2019-20 Shots Per Ninety Mins numbers, with league standings in brackets, to the Goals Per Shot ratios and it’s stark reading with one exception..

• Ulises Davila - 3.70 Sh/90 (4) | 0.09 G/Sh (44) | 13 goals

• David Ball – 2.57 Sh/90 (22) | 0.08 G/Sh (52) | 5 goals

• Reno Piscopo – 2.41 Sh/90 (32) | 0.03 G/Sh (93) | 2 goals

• Jaushua Sotirio – 2.28 Sh/90 (35) | 0.12 G/Sh (28) | 4 goals

• Callum McCowatt – 2.27 Sh/90 (36) | 0.03 G/Sh (95) | 1 goal

• Gary Hooper - 1.79 Sh/90 (45) | 0.36 G/Sh (1) | 8 goals

The one exception being Hooper’s brilliant conversion rate although the problem with Gary Hooper moving forward is a simple one: he doesn’t play for the club any more. Neither does Callum McCowatt although his conversion rate was terrible anyway – which was a weird one given how utterly prolific he has been at every other level of his career (he does seem to have carried that profligacy in front of goal to FC Helsingor though). David Ball’s numbers are fine but he still scores a lot less than he should compared to the rest of the league, he’s really more of a facilitating second striker. whereas poor old Sotirio actually goes a little better with his finishing than his notoriety suggests.

Of course there are other factors involved here and Sotirio isn’t one like Davila who’ll take a hopeful pop from outside the box if he gets impatient. Sotirio tends to shoot in clearer moments so he should be scoring at a high conversion rate. It’s not the overall figures that grate ya with Sotirio, it’s the big moment misses. Meanwhile Alex Rufer has never scored an A-League goal while Cam Devlin has yet to score for this club.

Side Theory: I almost made a joke about poor finishing being contagious but then I realised it actually sorta is. When you’re involved in a lot of close games, the big chances take on more pressure because they’re so decisive. When you play for a team that doesn’t score a lot, same deal. The best goal scorers in the world will tell you it’s all about endless repetition on the training field and being in that completely unselfconscious zone on the playing field. But it’s hard to trust yourself that implicitly when that pressure is on.

Tomer Hemed has been signed to cover the loss of Gary Hooper. He’s less pedigreed than Hooper but he’s much fitter and as the saying goes the best ability is availability. Gary Hooper coulda been Lionel Messi or Cristiano Ronaldo reincarnate but when the Phoenix needed him in that elimination game he was injured. Tomer Hemed has a weird record as a goal scorer. Not so great in England even though his time there is what we mostly hear about, but he had a lovely rate of scoring in Spain. Yet so far in 152 minutes he has more offsides than shots on target. It’s early days for him and remember he missed a lot of preseason while he was stuck in quarantine so no reason whatsoever to panic but yeah it hasn’t happened for him quite yet.

This is what was so annoying about the loss to the Newcastle Jets. It was also an annoyance from that Macarthur game too, to be honest. Okay there was a ridiculous red card that spun the game on its head but the Nix were only 1-0 up at that time when it could have easily been two or three. Should have been two or three. But the same struggles in front of goal remain, struggles that are gonna be exacerbated this term because the distinct lack of Steven Taylor in the backline is going to probably mean the defensive record isn’t as good as it once was. Hence a team that won seven games by a single goal last time now runs the scary risk of those kinds of games now going the other way. To put it precisely: the Wellington Phoenix absolutely have to learn how to convert their chances if they’re gonna make this a successful season.

Through three games the Welly Nix have scored three goals. That’s from 58 shots with 18 of them on target. Third most shots in the league (having played 1-2 games less than most of them) but equal fewest goals. One of those goals came from the penalty spot. In terms of shots per ninety minutes the Nix are top of the pops and yet so far it’s not led to what shots are supposed to lead to. Part of that is bad luck and small sample size. Part of that is because this team has bad finishers. Part of it also perhaps is that not all shots are created equal. Take a peek at the shot chart (plotted with xG reflections by Infogol) from the Jets game...

Some highlights there include the Davila penalty which is the big bulbous one. Those three other medium sized ones in or around it were shots from Hemed (14’), Davila (65’) & Waine (90’). Guts to Luke DeVere who only got given a 6% chance of scoring early on with a header from a corner which was brilliantly saved. There’s also an Uli Davila strike off the post which had a low xG but that’s Uli for ya. He’s so talented in those area that it’s worth giving him like 3-5 shots a game from just outside the area because he might actually slam one into the top corner. That’s a legitimately potential outcome. And don’t forget that flicked header from David Ball, also from a corner (sudden set piece dominance this season would definitely help with all this... one to keep an eye on) which also came back off the frame of the goal. Six of those other shots were blocked. Almost half of them were from outside the area.

Uffie: “I think we need to get better. Maybe I need to starve the boys of some finishing this week and they might be hungry and they might actually hit the back of the net. That’s one thing that we definitely need to improve on because we can’t go through games where we create a lot of opportunities and not score and reward ourselves.”

This might have to be a multi-week exploration because this team is still figuring out how it’s going to score its goals. There’s a new striker integrating into the squad. The left-back who was so influential last season is gone – though James McGarry’s been one of the brightest lights so far. Plus it’s been a disruptive start for reasons that have nothing to do with football.

This team does have plenty of avenues to creativity though, with lots of players who add unique little skill sets to the mixture. Ulises Davila’s curling left-footed shots. David Ball’s hustle. Tomer Hemed’s aerial strength. Clayton Lewis’ vision and passing. Reno Piscopo’s dribbling and directness. Tim Payne’s crossing. James McGarry’s speed and power. Mirza Muratovic and Ben Waine’s sneaky knack for finding themselves in the right place at the right time. Alex Rufer’s willingness to push a pass to a striker’s feet. Jaushua Sotirio’s speed and movement.

That last one is pretty interesting because there was some criticism about how Sotirio was picked ahead of Lewis in that Jets game... but it was pretty obvious why Uffie did that. Lewis is a creator who is going to play in front of the defensive line whereas Sotirio is someone who’ll run in behind that line. The Jets play a back three and a high line, several times in that first half Sotirio tried to break that line with the Nix targetting those early balls into his path. Simple as that... the only problem is that Sotirio is brilliant at getting into great areas and terrible when it comes to the final product. It’s incredibly exasperating because on the one hand he’s wasting these glorious chances. On the other hand he’s the only guy who’s capable of getting into those specific areas.

We can’t really judge what this team is trying to do until we start seeing more out of Tomer Hemed, not when this is literally what he was signed to do. For example: Tim Payne’s delivery into the box has already led to one goal this season, which is halfway to his assist total from all of last time, and Hemed’s aerial prowess should bring out the best of that aspect of Payne’s play. Although... it’s a slippery one because Payne can only really cross to Hemed’s head because who else is gonna challenge for those? Same goes with the way that a lot of these dudes prefer to play where it’s nice to have these points of difference but we do also need them all to be on the same page.

Creating chances isn’t the problem though, the problem is not being able to finish. But it’s still early days so we’ll put a pin in this idea for now.

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