You know how champion boxers often have rematch clauses in their fight contracts so that they can instantly avenge an upset defeat? That seems to be how the Australia Cup works too. Three years in a row the Wellington Phoenix have been drawn against Melbourne City. It happened in the 2021 quarter-finals and the Nix progressed via a penalty shootout after a nil-all draw. It happened in the 2022 round of sixteen and this time the Nix won 2-1 in regulation time thanks to goals from Kosta Barbarouses and Ben Waine. Then it happened again this year in the round of sixteen only this time the Victorian side got the dub, winning 3-0 in what ended up being a pretty comprehensive result. Three years in a row. It was like they had to keep serving up the rematches until City finally won.

Really, the writing was on the wall from the moment the team-lists emerged. City may have only had four players in common from the eleven that started the ALM grand final but that’s because they’ve been busy in the transfer market, both in terms of incomings and outgoings. That includes ex-Nixer Steven Ugarkovic who played ninety minutes at the base of midfield against his former club and instigated the first goal with his long-range volley - although the deflection off Tolgay Arslan saw the goal credited to TA instead (Arslan is a German/Turkish import who spent the last three seasons at Udinese in Italy’s Serie A).

That’s alone is more than the Welly Nix have done. There’s been some good re-signing stuff and a few exciting academy players promoted to the first team but as far as external transfers go... the only two additions so far have been Mo Al-Taay and Jack Duncan. The former was injured for the City match, the latter was the backup goalie. Instead it was a team of last year’s guys and a few young lads up against the reigning premiers and you already know how that went. It wasn’t like there was help on the bench either, with the substitute outfielders amounting to David Ball (returning from illness) and five uncontracted academy players.

Wellington Phoenix Men, Offseason Moves:

Incoming Transfers: Mohamed Al-Taay (Newcastle Jets), Jack Duncan (Newcastle Jets)

Outgoing Transfers: Oli Sail (Perth Glory), Clayton Lewis (Macarthur), Steven Ugarkovic (Melbourne City), Yan Sasse (Espérance de Tunis), Callan Elliot (Free Agent), Josh Laws (GC Zurich), Nikko Boxall (Inter Turku), Lucas Mauragis (Newcastle Jets)

Re-Signed/Promoted: Nico Pennington, Lukas Kelly-Heald, Fin Conchie

Under Contract: Alex Rufer, Oskar Zawada, David Ball, Sam Sutton, Alex Paulsen, Bozhidar Kraev, Kosta Barbarouses, Ben Old, Oskar van Hattum, Tim Payne, Scott Wootton, Finn Surman

There’s still another month until the season begins so there’s no need to overreact. As it stands they don’t even have a legal sized squad with only 17 players on full contracts. Add in that there are a bunch injuries as well, with Sam Sutton dealing with a knee issue and Mo Al-Taay having been out for several weeks with a groin strain, and Ben Old being managed through the same hip/pelvic injury that stalled Sarpreet Singh’s career last year. Not to mention a few lads with illness and Fin Conchie’s ongoing suspension. Clearly this version of the Nix was far from the finished product. Pretty sure the Mona Lisa’s eyes wouldn’t have lingered like that in Da Vinci’s initial sketches.

Having said that, Giancarlo Italiano did say prior to that Aussie Cup game that they’d “called off” the search for another import, having initially planned on adding an extra central defender to pair with Scott Wootton. That sounds like a big vote of confidence in Finn Surman’s abilities, plus we know Tim Payne is a very handy CB. Lukas Kelly-Heald can play there too, while Chiefy also mentioned how Isaac Hughes was contending for a contract (he’s currently away with the NZ U23s in Olympic qualifying). They do have options there. And, frankly, from the look of the team in these two cup games, as well as how they tracked last year, the defence is not the area that needs bulking up.

The Chief: “At the moment I would say we’ve kind of called it off in terms of bringing in another foreigner. What we have available, in terms of the centre-backs, I think they can fill that role adequately. And it’s also a really good opportunity for us to give these younger players a real opportunity. It ties in well with what the club wants to do by producing our own players. I said when I first got the job that the focus will be on developing kiwi players through our academy and through the club.”

This quote sounds like they’re not gonna use that last import spot at all, though you could choose to read it as only specifically opting against another import defender. Either way, they can always change their minds. If it’s a financial imperative that they can’t afford a proper import then why not use that last import spot on an Oceania dude, right? Unearth the next Brian Kaltack. Old mate Tommy Semmy’s been hovering around the NPL lately and there are rumours that Raphael Lea’i might be leaving his club in Bosnia... just throwing that out there for y’all.

It’s going to be a fascinating wee experiment. One of the first things that Ufuk Talay said when he was hired was that recruitment is the most important factor in putting a competitive team together. But Italiano’s hardly done any recruitment, despite losing multiple starters, instead choosing to emphasise the club’s internal player development. Every fan wants to see their team boost up the local youngsters... yet it’s a risky strategy. Young players make mistakes. Mistakes cost you games. You’ve really gotta be sure that they’re good enough first and then you’ve gotta be sure you’ve got the right environment to support them.

That’s not to say that the upcoming Wellington Phoenix season will sink or swim entirely on the quality of its academy graduates though. Chiefy’s been steadily implementing a new system of play. We got our first glimpses of it in the Peninsula Power game and against Melbourne City we got to see it some more in a different context – this time in a match where they did a lot more defending.

‘The System’ is where it’s at right now. Unless they make a few barnstorming transfers between now and the start of the season the main hope is that a different coach with a different style will get more out of these players than we saw last season. But that journey takes time. There’s a learning process and there’s also an unlearning process. Habits are being adapted.

The attacking shape has changed, with a 4-2-4 formation now asking the wingers to hold their width high up the pitch, and fullbacks tucking inside rather than overlapping. Defensively they still mostly sit in a 4-4-2 however the intention is different. Less of a block, more of a press. We didn’t see a whole heap of that against Melbourne City but that higher press is something that Chief has admitted will become more prevalent over time. Set the foundations before building the house, you know how it goes.

When asked about his style of football, Italiano told media that his main emphasis is on “command”. He wants to see a team that proactively dictates how their games unfold, both with and without the ball. He also listed three key elements within that idea: keeping possession, being positive with possession, and pressing a lot more without possession. They’re trying to do more combination passing stuff. They’re trying to commit defenders, dragging them around in order to create space.

Italiano is really honest and insightful in his press conferences and the Nix usually chuck them up on their YouTube channel too so much gratitude to all involved there. Another point he made was that in order to coach his new ideas into the team, he’s almost had to start again from scratch... it’s like the teacher who wipes all the notes off the whiteboard and tells their class to forget everything they thought they knew about chemistry/trigonometry/Shakespeare/etc. That actually puts the young guys, who weren’t as versed in Talay-ball, on much more of a level playing field. It also means these Aussie Cup games probably only showed us a fraction of what the team is working towards.

Okay then so what did we see from them against Melbourne City? For starters we saw a young team that was confident on the ball. In particular goalkeeper Alex Paulsen and left-back Lukas Kelly-Heald look unflappable against the press. Paulsen may have conceded three goals but none were his fault and he’s done his odds of keeping the starter’s gloves no harm over these games, while LKH has probably been the biggest surprise of the lot. Great touch for a big man, as the cliche goes. He certainly held his own at fullback in these games with Sam Sutton out injured.

Defensively they were pretty good up until they conceded that quickfire MacLaren double. The balance looks good at the back with the fullbacks less exposed in transition. The two midfielders, Rufer and Pennington, seem to have a solid combination going already. Good work hunting down that ball. The possession side of things remains sketchy but there are some interesting elements. One thing that we saw heaps of was angled chips over the top - guys like Rufer, Pennington, and Payne were all looking for that option. And without a doubt you’d better take the overs on Pennington for goals and assists this season because he really seems to have a licence to push forward and link up and create overloads.

But creatively there remain some huge issues. Maybe those will be eased as the team builds into its new identity or maybe they simply need more talent. The worry is that the two strikers for these games have both been imports: Bozhidar Kraev and Oskar Zawada. The team relied massively on Zawada and his 15 goals last term but he hasn’t looked so sharp in these ones, missing a couple of chances against City including one cleared off the line near the end. He didn’t get much service, often dropping deep in search of touches. And his budding combination with Kraev, the one you’d expect to be dropping deeper, clearly needs more sunlight and watering because there wasn’t much going on there.

A couple of late consolation chances mixed with Melbourne City’s clinical finishing meant that despite a 3-0 defeat the Nix actually had a higher expected goals mark than their opponents. Strange how that goes. Fact is, they didn’t hardly create anything until they were already three goals down. They hung in nicely while the game was even and passed the ball confidently around in their own half. But once the first goal flew into Alex Paulsen’s net the omens were dire. They simply didn’t have the goals in them.

To be fair, that might be too harsh of a thing to say about a team in preseason mode. There were some enticing one-touch pass-and-move flashes that look like they’ll become a prominent part of how the team operates as everything sharpens. If the Phoenix do end up having a good season then they’re going to do so playing some sexy football. That’s still very much a work in progress at the moment, though.

As it stands, the biggest gamble is less about the whether the academy lads are good enough and more about whether the change in style/formation can bring more funkiness out of the experienced fellas. Last season Kosta Barbarouses and David Ball came in way under their expected goal tallies. Kosta scored 2 goals from 5.6 xG while Ball scored 1 goal from 3.9 xG. Both had some glaring misses. Both are also very experienced A-League campaigners so we can look back into their records and see that Barbarouses’ 0.13 goals and assists per ninety minutes were by far the worst of his career (previous worse was the previous season: 0.33 G+A/90 in an injury affected Sydney FC term in which he only played 11 games). Meanwhile David Ball has gotten worse in that measure with each season with the Phoenix. From 0.45 to 0.44 to 0.38 to a mere 0.16 G+A/90 last time around.

Two things are possible: 1) these are class players who had bad years and they’ll bounce back, or 2) these are dudes with hundreds of professional games in their legs and they just ain’t the forces they once were. Regardless, the Nix are going to need more from Bozhidar Kraev in his new role and they can’t afford Oskar Zawada to be anything less than excellent again. Because beyond that quartet we’re purely talking about academy graduates. Old and van Hattum with their 1 combined A-League goal, plus the various debutants across these two cup games.

But Chiefy didn’t simply pick a formation that he liked, he picked one that he felt specifically suited the players in his squad. He’s done this with the aim of getting more out of those guys so it’s not too much to expect that outcome. Or at least hope for it. We know they’ll have to sign at least another three players before the season begins. Hope lies therein, as it does in the weeks of training ground time they’ve still got ahead of them. Don’t forget that universal truism of all sport: never ever ever judge a team by preseason results.

If you rate the yarns on TNC then please support the mahi with a nudge on our Patreon

Also helps to whack an ad, make a donation, sign up to our newsletter, and tell your mates

Keep cool but care