Previewing The Wellington Phoenix’s Elimination Final vs Adelaide United
The Ufuk Talay Era of Wellington Phoenix footy is almost over but before the torch is passed to assistant Giancarlo Italiano there’s one last chance to do something his Nix teams have never yet done: win a finals game.
It didn’t happen in year one when the onset of the pandemic disrupted all their momentum and they went down 1-0 to Perth, failing to score despite a whopping 31 total shots and 68% of possession. It didn’t happen in year two because despite ending the term on an 11-game unbeaten streak they didn’t make the finals, missing out by one point. Too many pesky draws in that streak combined with the usual slow start. It didn’t happen in year three against Western United when again they conceded an early goal which combined with a lack of attacking incision to doom them to a 1-0 defeat. The problem that time was more a lack of clear chances than wasted ones, although Jamie Young did make one outrageous save late on.
Maybe it’ll happen on Friday night away to Adelaide United. 9.45pm NZT at Hindmarsh Stadium. It’s third against sixth with the winner progressing to the two-legged semi-finals against... well, if it’s the Nix then they’ll play Melbourne City because they’ll be the lowest seeded qualifier from the elimination finals games. Adelaide would play Central Coast if they advance. The other game, Western Sydney vs Sydney FC, obviously depends on which team wins out of ADL/WPX.
Getting to the finals was hard enough for the Welly Nix. Prior to a gutsy but grinding 1-0 win away to Macarthur they’d lost four games and drawn one across their previous five outings, conceding 17 goals in the process. It was as bad as they’ve ever looked under Talay’s leadership – certainly the longest winless streak of his time in charge – and you did have to wonder if maybe the team had taken their eyes off the prize. Talay’s own departure was expected and, to be honest, handled about as well as it could’ve been by himself and the club. It was more the triple-banger departure of Oli Sail, Clayton Lewis, and Steven Ugarkovic revealed at the start of March that instigated the wobbles. The Phoenix did win their next two games after that news... but then came the five-game trough.
Was that impending overhaul to blame? Had the focus shifted too much to next season at the expense of this one? Hard to say although the case against that assertion is a strong one because the same issues and limitations that we saw from the team over that stink spell have been there the whole way through. They didn’t suddenly appear.
All season this has been a team that doesn’t finish chances very well. They have lapses at the back, probably caused in large part to the constant changes due to injury/suspension and some inexperienced fullbacks. They don’t have the same tactical flexibility as they’ve had in the past, in particular missing a vertical runner like Jaushua Sotirio to take advantage of high defensive lines. And, frankly, there’s been a psychological brittleness to their recent performances as well. Much of this was written about in this article a couple weeks back and most of those points still stand.
Luckily this is the A-League where nobody is perfect, not even close. The Nix can beat Adelaide despite their limitations... as long as they can limit those limitations. The win over Macarthur did flex a couple of sneaky factors which could help them on the road to an upset against ADL. Again, there’s already a write-up of that one, and in that piece it was noted how the Nix exploited Macarthur’s weakness when having more of the possession. A team with poor build-up and an inability to break down set defences is a team you can allow to control the ball and then pick them apart when the mistakes happen.
Here’s what that article didn’t get into: the Wellington Phoenix, in contrast to their usual intentions, might themselves be a better team when they sit deep and play on the counter. They’ve also lost the only three games in which they topped 60% possession (two of those being vs Melbourne Victory) and have only won one of their nine best possession games. Flip that around and the Phoenix are undefeated when they have less than 44% of the ball this season (four wins and three draws).
The Wellington Phoenix have had trouble with their transition defence all term. They want to push the fullbacks high and allow their wingers to drift around for overloads but then they lose the ball and there’s so much space in behind and out wide through which to counter. Melbourne City have torched them that way. You know who else did the same? Adelaide a couple weeks ago.
In finals footy you’ve just gotta do whatever it takes. Perhaps that Macarthur game has shown them one such pathway. Playing deeper and more cautious wouldn’t do much for their struggling attack but then they also have to make sure they don’t damage their chances at the back by putting too much energy into searching for solutions up front that they’ve had all season to look for and still haven’t found. This is a bad finishing team. Oskar Zawada aside, they don’t convert nearly enough of their chances (and even Zawada is only good for one goal per game – this’d be a nice time for his first ever A-League brace, aye?).
A bit of playoff pragmatism can go a long way. It could even keep them close enough for long enough that the one obligatory Zawada goal makes all the difference. Remember the Nix are the underdogs here. A tight low-scoring game plays into their own favour. Get those home fans boiling in the nervous energy. Plus it’s not like these two teams are miles apart or anything – as the regular season results will attest.
The Wellington Phoenix have met Adelaide on three occasions this term. In week one they drew 1-1 as Ben Halloran equalised in the 93rd minute. The Nix had played with ten men since Yan Sasse’s red card in the 25th minute but couldn’t quite see it out after Ben Waine’s 75th min goal had given them the lead. That was at home. As was the case when they met again in December for the Nix’s second win of the campaign. Oskar Zawada scored bright and early and although Craig Goodwin equalised after 12 mins, a Kraev goal had Wellington leading at the break. Then the hero/villain dynamic from the first game was inverted when Halloran got a red card and Sasse scored his first goal for the club. 3-1 to the Wellington Phoenix.
The third time these two met was in Adelaide. It was mid-March, just before the international window, and the Welly Nix got smoked 5-1. A Scott Wootton own goal (for which Oli Sail was equally at fault) got it started and the blows just kept coming from there with only an Alex Rufer penalty early second half (to make it 3-1) saving them from utter humiliation. That’s not really the tone you want heading into a finals rematch... but here’s the thing: it wasn’t as bad as it sounds.
Easy to forget, given how it ushered in a five-game winless streak, but there were large stretches of that game where the Nix were the more dominant side. The xG backs that claim up because the Phoenix actually won that duel: 3.72 expected goals to 2.67 in favour of WP... yet somehow they lost 5-1. Baffling footballing areas. The Phoenix kept on missing great chances while Adelaide kept on scoring via weak defending. Then as the game got stretched with Welly throwing numbers forward to try and find a lifeline they were skinned alive on the break a couple times. A poor reflection of the Phoenix’s finishing and almost as bad when it comes to their mental fortitude. Yet in terms of proper football there’s plenty to look back on and be (cautiously) confident about.
More than anything else, the Phoenix’s chances likely hinge on fellas like Kosta Barbarouses, David Ball, Yan Sasse, and Bozhidar Kraev being able to bury a couple chances. That’s proven a fool’s bet for most of the campaign... although you never know. Better to have bad finishers with lots of chances than good finishers without any. Clearly a lot of these keys to victory require the Phoenix hitting a certain level of competence but there’s no point in discussing the flipside because if they don’t then they’ll lose. Simple as that.
They’re also going to have to contain a team that’s scored 53 goals in 26 games. A team that has the best goals per shots on target ratio in the entire league (0.35). An obvious match-up in favour of the Reds is that the Phoenix’s set piece defence has been far from spectacular this season while Adelaide have Craig Goodwin. Good thing that Scott Wootton just had his best game in weeks because they’re going to need him big time – and the fact that Adelaide attempt the most crosses of any ALM team might be what nudges Tim Payne in alongside him instead of Josh Laws (though expect the shift to a back three in the last half hour again if the situation allows).
Goodwin is ridiculous. 12 goals and 10 assists – only Jamie Maclaren has more combined goals and assists (25 and it’s not exactly an even split: 24 goals/1 assist). Goodwin’s 258 attempted crosses are the most in the entire A-League by a margin of more than a hundred ahead of the next bloke. Containing him will go a long way towards giving Wellington a chance.
Adelaide set up in a 4-2-3-1 shape though you can often catch them in a back three in transition as they like to let their wide defenders go gallivanting. That was an area that the Nix had a lot of joy (until the time came to shoot) in that recent meeting, maybe look to see if the tens operate a bit wider than usual in this game. United do concede a lot of goals as well. The most of any of the top six teams.
In that 5-1 loss, the first three Adelaide goals were all scored after crosses. One from open play, one from a free kick, one from a corner kick. The other two were scored on the break as they found space behind an advanced Callan Elliot. Admittedly that was late on as Welly threw caution to the wind but it still feels like a sensible thing would be to give Elliot less of a leash in the oppo half – particularly as he’ll be largely dealing with Goodwin.
Funny thing though... these two teams have the same amount of wins in their last five games. ADL’s 5-1 win over the Phoenix was the third in a four-game win streak that was also a 12-game unbeaten streak. However that came to an end when they lost 1-0 to Western United and since then they’ve drawn 4-4 with Perth and lost 4-1 to Central Coast. Eight goals conceded in the past fortnight. Chuck in a 1-1 draw with Sydney beforehand and the Reds did not win a game of football in all of April. They also haven’t kept a clean sheet in any of their past 13 games.
This is all a hodgepodge of notes and research. We could go on and on, haven’t even mentioned Nestory Irankunda nor Waiheke Island’s Joe Gauci yet. But the thing about previews is that it’s all guess work. The game hasn’t happened yet. We can only speculate.
Tell you what though, there’s a little more going in the Phoenix’s favour here than you’d expect considering they lost 5-1 to the same opponents not so long ago. And as scrappy as that Macarthur game often was it may prove to be the bridge they needed to reach a more... shall we say fundamental style of play in which they spend more time worrying about the opponents than they usually would bother with. They created some good stuff against Adelaide last time but conceded some featherbed soft goals. They don’t have to be that much better to balance those scales so if you then chuck in ADL’s recent stumbles and a couple tweaks that can slow down their preferred avenues... we’ll see how it goes.
The Welly Nix have coped poorly with expectations lately. Well, there are none in this game. They’re the sixth seed away against the third, having limped into the finals. Bring on that underdog mentality and give it a good crack. It could be the manager’s last game and it could be the last game for several players. Or they might win – a prospect that’d serve up a home leg in the semi-finals, as well as finally ticking off that target of a first finals victory since 2012. Either way, these are the games we wait all season for and this one has a chance to define not only the past year but the past four years of this club. Exciting times. Come on you Nix.
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