A new season is upon us. On Sunday evening the Wellington Phoenix begin their latest A-League Men campaign against Macarthur Bulls... where they’ll likely come up against Macarthur’s debutant Mexican playmaker: Ulises Dávila. Say, wonder if he’s related to the Dávila dude who used to play for the Phoenix?

Ulises Dávila jointly won the Johnny Warren Medal last season, sharing it with Miloš Ninković – the fourth Wellington Phoenix player to win that award since the A-League began in 2005-06 and that is a tally that no other club can match. Only Sydney FC have even had three JWM’s and two of them were won by Ninković. However of the four Welly Nix recipients, a grand total of zero of them played again for the club the following season.

It’s not only that the Phoenix have lost their best player though. The captain also retired at sudden notice while their top scorer is goneskees too. Steven Taylor and Tomer Hemed. Plus tenacious fan favourite midfield scrapper Cammy Devlin has already tenaciously scrapped his way to instant fan favourite status for Hearts in the Scottish Premiership. Which to be fair is better than him doing so for the Newcastle Jets which was the initial plan. Given that the Phoenix love a 4-2-2-2 shape under Ufuk Talay, that’s all four of the formation lines which have had a chunk bitten out of them in the offseason. The most important chunk of each. Gary Hooper has at least made his way back to the club so he’s a straight swap for Tomer Hemed but otherwise... not looking so flash.

But the start of any new season is an optimistic time regardless. Everything is pure potential. Even if you think your team is going to lose a heap of games... they haven’t lost them yet. Realistically it’s a bit excessive to predict the Wellington Phoenix to compete with the club record finish they mustered in Uffie’s first season but making the playoffs is still a fair expectation. The Nix missed out by the barest of margins last time despite finishing on an 11-game unbeaten streak. They only had Taylor for half of it (albeit the good half). They spent almost the entire thing living in Australian limbo. And they still only barely missed out.

The vibes have been far from immaculate through this offseason but this team will still roll up with a finals place as the target and here’s why.

Familiarity of System

For all the key players who departed over the last many months, you can make a very strong case that they were able to retain the most important figure possible: the manager. Ufuk Talay signed a two-year extension back in May and will enter his third season in charge of the Nix this weekend.

That’s important for a heap of reasons. Stability within the footballing ranks. Keeping a trusted and well-liked leader around. The fact that he chose to stay whereas the last guy kinda wrangled to leave. Existing relationships with a heap of these players (those who’ve been there for all three years: Payne, Sotirio, Ball, Piscopo, Rufer, Sail, Waine, Fenton & Sutton – plus Elliot & Hooper left and have come back).

But also just on a basic footy level... Uffie knows how he likes to set up a team. It’s a 4-2-2-2 and there are a few variations upon the theme. A two-striker system or one main man with a guy playing deeper off him. The middle pair can play inwards as dual-tens or wide as wingers. But the general shape stays the same regardless. Throughout preseason he’s stuck to this formation. The final game against Sydney FC sparked a bit of debate when the line-up was revealed as to whether perhaps they were gonna play with a back three but nah seems that Josh Laws just played midfield instead. Which... yes, please. Keep that option on the table for sure.

The players know how to play within that shape, they know where they’re supposed to stand and where their passing angles are going to be. There’s also genuine competition for places in a number of areas which should spur everybody on... will Ben Waine lock down the second striker spot ahead of Jaushua Sotirio or perhaps David Ball? Or will Ball play in Dávila’s right wing spot where he showed some real promise late last season? How long before Nick Pennington is knocking down the door to start in midfield? Where does Luka Prso fit into all this? James McGarry appears to have won the left back spot, fair enough, but can Callan Elliot do the same on the right while Louis Fenton is out injured? Who fills out the rest of that bench when everybody’s available? Those are the battles that you want within a squad and they’re much more likely when everybody knows what’s expected in each role.

Internal Growth

Help is on the way. Supposedly. The Nix are scouting out imports and hope to sign a couple around the new year when the logistics of bringing foreign players into the A-League may be simpler. A lot may depend on those potential imports coming in and hitting the ground running, providing the team with a huge boost a couple months in... however for the meantime, in the absence of being able to replace most of those important fellas who’ve left, the talent gap is gonna have to be covered from within. Folks who were already there will need to take strides forward.

Luckily you sorta expect that anyway with a young squad. Ben Waine, for example, certainly took a huge leap last time when his seven goals were tied second most in the squad. Another leap from there and he’ll be away laughing. Clayton Lewis seemed to find the home in pro footy that he’s been searching for and with that newfound confidence and support he could really thrive this term. James McGarry lost his LB spot to Sam Sutton last season but has had all that time since to work on exactly what needs working on (mostly his defensive decisions). Nothing like coming through a dose of adversity to spur you on. Singing from the same hymn book, Callan Elliot will get a chance to show what he learned from a season spent on the bench in Greece.

These things are true across the board and it’s not only the younger lads who have that scope for improvement. David Ball was not at his best last time. Arguably a little squeezed out by Hemed and Dávila, he struggled to have the impact he normally would... until Dávila got injured late on and Ball covered his right wing position where he had four goal involvements in the final five games (he had 6g/4a overall).

We could find something for everybody but the guy who this applies to more than anyone is Reno Piscopo. Clearly he’s got some mad skills. Clearly he’s capable of scoring wonder goals. Clearly he can be a major hombre in the Nix’s attacks, the type of bloke that other teams design plans to contain. But the fact is that he hasn’t really done much more than dip into that potential so far. For all the excitement, Reno Piscopo has only scored 4 goals and created 5 assists two seasons for the Phoenix. And one of those goals was a penalty. We’re talking about 0.36 goal involvements per 90 mins... can’t say that matches up too well against his teammates.

G+A/90MIN for the Welly Nix

• Gary Hooper – 0.97 (21 games)

• Tomer Hemed – 0.94 (21 games)

• Ulises Dávila – 0.73 (50 games)

• Ben Waine – 0.48 (40 games)

• David Ball – 0.45 (49 games)

• Jaushua Sotirio – 0.41 (45 games)

• Reno Piscopo – 0.36 (37 games)

With Reno, a fair bit of that has to do with injuries. We know he’s capable but last season he missed the first four games, then also missed a six-game chunk in the middle of it. The season before he also had a four-game absence for Olympic qualifiers with the Aussies that came right in he middle of things. The team now needs him to deliver the end product as well as the mean flashes and if he can stay healthy and get a nice run of uninterrupted games under his belt then he may well do exactly that. There’s nobody who could positively alter this team’s trajectory more with a breakout campaign.

More Undercover Signings

Look, nobody knew much about Cam Devlin when he arrived. Nobody knew much about Reno Piscopo or Josh Laws either. Or Liam McGing or Walter Scott or Mirza Muratovic or Brandon Wilson (who is now a teammate of Nikko Boxall’s in Finland). Ufuk Talay has history within the Aussie youth system and he knows how to spot a talent. Not all of those dudes listed were massive successes for the Phoenix but this style of signing has been a common one under Uffie and when it works, it really works.

The Nix can’t go around signing the best Aussie guys because they don’t want to play for the Phoenix when they could play for Sydney FC or Melbourne Victory instead. The Nix have to be smarter about it, targeting fellas who have a reason to go out of their way. That reason is usually greater playing opportunities. Of course they don’t have to sign any Aussies at all, unlike the women’s team, but considering that’s one of Uffie’s areas of expertise it makes sense to do so. Keeps the FFA buggers happy too.

Nicholas Pennington, Mathew Bozinovski, and Luka Prso. The three latest in the ‘young and underrated Australian’ category of signings. Pennington, like Piscopo before him, is returning from a stint in Italy. Bozinovski, like Devlin before him, has been snapped up from a rival A-League club (albeit only on loan... for now at least). Luka Prso is sorta half and half. Had been working his way up the ranks in Croatia but spent last season on loan for the Newcastle Jets. Now he’s a Welly Nixer.

Getting value out of these types of blokes is something that this club has specialised in recently. They don’t miss on too many of them and the entire trio here has some serious pedigree. Just because the import additions have been lacking doesn’t mean the Phoenix haven’t been making shrewd additions by other means.

The Academy

Already written about this, actually. Since Sarpreet Singh and Liberato Cacace sparked a golden era of WeeNix graduates, there has been a steady trickle of academy players progressing to the first team. Ben Waine, Sam Sutton, Ben Old. That trickle is about to become a stream. Waine is well and truly established in the first team and Sam Sutton is pretty close to the same status. Meanwhile Ben Old and Alex Paulsen have both been given first team contracts while Kurtis Mogg and George Ott are with the squad on scholarship deals.

In the absence of the usual incoming transfer depth, the Nix have turned to their academy to fill out the numbers. These guys probably won’t play huge minutes (Waine aside) but the minutes they will get will come when others are missing, when the team is short-handed, when they need someone out of the ordinary to step up. The whole one-academy-breakthrough-per-season has reaped some mint benefits. Singh then Cacace then Waine then Sutton... but this season may bring five such guys. It’ll be a test of the WeeNix pipeline for sure.

No Slow Starts, Please

When you miss out on the playoffs by one point, it’s easy to look back at that missed Ulises Dávila penalty (or a myriad of other late-season tipping points) as a definitive moment. And maybe it was. But the thing is, the Nix shouldn’t have been in a position where the margins were so fine. If they’d only managed to win more than one of their first eight games then they’d have been all goods.

These slow starts have been a pattern. Dunno why, but they have been. Actually, I do have a few theories as to why... there have been a couple new managers plus major squad overhauls in those seasons. It’s taken them longer to gel than they ideally would have. Look at the handicaps they’ve begun with the last three years...

• 2018-19 (Rudan): 6 GM | 1 W | 2 D | 3 L | 4 GF | 10 GA | -6 GD | 5 PTS

• 2019-20 (Talay): 5 GM | 0 W | 1 D | 4 L | 5 GF | 9 GA | -4 GD | 1 PT

• 2020-21 (Talay): 8 GM | 1 W | 2 D | 6 L | 8 GF | 14 GA | -6 GD | 5 PTS

The Nix probably won’t muster the same long unbeaten streaks as they managed in a couple of those seasons (including the active streak) but they won’t have to if they don’t dig themselves a hole to climb out of first.

Remember this team has a level of continuity that they haven’t had for a wee while. The manager re-signed. Only four of their fully-contracted bros have never played for the Phoenix before (Pennington, Paulsen, Prso & Bozinovski). Can’t say ‘no excuses’ because they’re still sequestered in Australialand for at least the first couple months of the season but a cheeky winning streak to get things underway would clearly not go astray.

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