Roy Krishna didn’t score in the Wellington Phoenix’s 2-2 draw in Newcastle on Boxing Day. He’s scored seven goals already, good for second equal on the A-League goal charts, but he didn’t manage to put one away against the Jets. He did, however, grab himself a pair of assists to carry on his outrageous influence on this Phoenix team’s attack.

Officially he didn’t get credited with the assist for the first goal, so that was kind of a lie, but as usual Roy’s footprints were still stamped all over it. It was his clever run angled right of the defence that set the whole move up, telegraphing the through ball from Jacob Tratt and turning back away from goal as he collected it. Krishna flicked it square to Kosta Barbarouses who dummied and turned on it while Krishna bolted in behind the defence, creating enough of a distraction for Kosta to slip through a weak-ass attempted tackle from Daniel Mullen. From there it was a simple finish for Barbie.

The second goal was even more Pure Krishna and this time they didn’t have a choice but to give him the assist. Tratt did some tricky stuff in sucking in defenders with his unique brand of tightrope-footy and, taking full advantage of the overload created, Krishna slipped out to the right where there was roughly an acre of space for him to wave his hands for attention. Tratty got the ball through the traffic and Roy did what Roy has been doing all season and blitzed it to the by-line before punting it across for the simple Gui Finkler tap-in. Some abysmal defending in there but some gloriously direct football as well from the bloke who’s been responsible for most of that for this team.

The Wellington Phoenix have so far scored 13 goals in 11 games. Roy Krishna has scored seven and assisted three – which doesn’t even include the first goal against Newcastle. That’s 11 out of 13 goals that he’s been directly involved in – plus he’s missed a couple penalties in there too (one of which he scored on the follow). When Kosta scored the opener on Boxing Day that marked his first A-League goal since returning to Welly and it made him just the fifth man to hit the net for the Nix this campaign. Krishna has seven, nobody else has more than two.

Here’s the complete list of 2016-17 goals, as of the Boxing Day game:

1 – Roy Krishna scores from the penalty spot in Melbourne against the Victory to make it 2-1 with a little under half an hour to play. Smacked it low and hard to the left, sending the keeper the wrong way. Krishna also won the spottie getting in behind the defence on the end of a long ball from Glen Moss before being hacked down from behind while through on goal. We lost 6-1.

2 – Roy Krishna bagged an easy one, tapping in from close range after the Newcastle Jets’ keeper had only parried a shot from Kosta Barbarouses at Westpac. Easy does it. He might have been offside but he’s had a few dodgy ones flagged too so they level out.

3 – Roy Krishna again, making it 2-0 against the Jets to complete the scoring late in the first half (the Nix’s first win of the season). Newcastle turned the ball over in the middle and Kosta again got running at the defence, sliding it across for Roy who thumped it home.

4 – Roy Krishna made it 4/4 as he ran in behind onto a Hamish Watson lobbed pass, catching out a high defensive line, rounding the keeper and holding off the defence pretty much through sheer pace and then he finished it off from a deceptively tough angle at speed for the 1-0 lead away on the Central Coast.

5 – Hamish Watson set Krishna up for the first goal vs the Mariners and seven minutes later Krishna returned the favour, sprinting onto a Finkler pass and with the keeper out to close him down he dummied and squared it to Watto for the simplest of finishes. The first player other than Krishna to score this season, completing a 2-0 win.

6 – Roy Krishna had his fifth from six yards to equalise away to Melbourne City. Kosta won a penalty getting tripped on his way through and although Krishna’s driven spot kick was saved mid-height to the left, the ball fell gently back to him for a sitter. Unfortunately a weird penalty at the other end meant for a 2-1 defeat.

7 – Hamish Watson began the post-Ernie period brightly with a second-minute banger in Hamilton against CCM. Kosta ran, Kosta shot, Watto got in the way and inadvertently deflected the ball into goal. For the first time in months, Krishna got to watch it all happen from a distance.

8 – Vince Lia. Yes, Vince Lia, with his quinquennial goal-bound shot. Actually that’s not fair, he scored one last season – an 89th minute winner away in Perth – but still it was just his fourth goal in over 200 A-League games and what a stunner too, a thunderbolt from well outside the box, hit first time from a loose defensive clearance. No Krishna in sight. Made it 2-0 vs CCM.

9 – Roy Krishna, because you can’t keep a good man down. Deep into added time the Nix went into full-on counter attack mode: Roly deep on defence feeds it to Kosta who straightens at pace and plays in Tratt who in turn hit it back the other way to a scintillatingly quick Roy Krishna. One touch and it’s in the back of the net for 3-0, goals 7-9 all coming in the win over the Mariners.

10 – Gui Finkler, from the penalty spot. A couple of misses meant that Krishna had lost spot kick duty but he was still winning them. A big switch from Bonevacia to Krishna on the right flank allowed him to attack the defence but although he lost it, the ball bounced loose and getting to the ball first Krishna went down under the challenge. Finkler was safe from the mark.

11 – Roy Krisha for number seven, which also completed a 2-0 comeback for a draw with Western Sydney at Mt Smart Stadium in Auckland. A bit of footy on the edge of the box and Adam Parkhouse chipped one over from the left, which Krishna rose highest for to head home to bag the leveller.

12 – Kosta Barbarouses, see paragraph two.

13 – Gui Finkler, see paragraph three.

It’s been a strange season for the Nix, from the departure of Ernie to the return of Shane Smeltz but about the one constant has been that without Roy Krishna they’d be completely buggered. Hard to imagine that this would be the case for the dude a few years back when he signed a short term deal as an injury replacement for Paul Ifill – there’s a bit of Phoenix mastermind for ya. He was the first Fijian to play in the A-League and two months later he had his first goal in the competition. Pretty soon he’d signed a two year deal and he’s since signed another. It’s a fairytale story for a lad that moved to New Zealand in 2008 with patchy English from a country that has struggled, like most Oceania sides, to get any sort of international football at all outside of FIFA qualifiers, let alone produce professional players.

Maybe his success isn’t all that surprising, he’s scored goals everywhere he’s played. 55 in 75 games for Waitakere City, getting on the scoresheet in his brief time with Auckland City at the Club World Cup, not to mention buckets of them at international level. He got a double in 2008 as Fiji upset New Zealand 2-0 in Lautoka. Heck, the lad even scored at the flippin’ Olympics the other month.

Roy Krishna is already a Fijian legend just by playing his first game for the Nix, let alone forcing himself into the starting team and eventually becoming a key player. All of that maybe distracts from how good he’s been this season.

Not always the most clinical finisher, Krishna makes up for that with an abundance of attempts at goal. His 22 shots dwarf the rest of his team and what’s crazy about that is he’s got a 72.7% accuracy with shots on target too. Finkler’s the guy creating all the chances but Krishna’s the one making that possible with his runs off the ball and in behind the defence, using his speed and also his deceptive strength to make fools of defenders.

Watching this team from a distance you’d never think that Krishna didn’t even sign a professional contract until he was 26 years old. He’s spoken before about having to learn to work off the ball, well he’s definitely got that lesson down now – his defensive output has steadily increased in his time in Wellington and these days he’s a genuine asset initiating the press and keeping defenders and goalkeepers on their toes. Krishna and Tratt are the only two ever-present players for the Nix this season.

There are two ways to look at this. One is the way explored above, all adoration for the Footballing Fijian Flyer himself. The other is a stern glance at the rest of the team, wondering why exactly nobody else is able to hit the net consistently without his help. Relying on one guy for goals is in no way a sustainable strategy and you only have to look as far as the ankle injury that ended Krishna’s season last time out to realise that.

It took Kosta Barbarouses, one of the three prestige signings of this campaign (along with Gui Finkler and Marco Rossi), nine games before he finally scored despite playing along the frontline the whole time. Rossi’s been a rock at the back but Finkler’s puppetry has only recently begun to shine. Hamish Watson is too young to be relied upon yet and beyond him lies nothing much. Mike McGlinchey’s injured. Roly Bonevacia’s been playing too deep or too wide to have the effect he should be having. Roy Krishna has had to be this good because he’s holding these guys together.

But there might be hope in the arrival of Shane Smeltz. It’s a lot of pressure to drop at the feet of a 35 year old striker but if anyone knows how to carry the load for this team, it’s Smeltzy. He’s done it before.

The Phoenix don’t need him to score 15 goals or anything. They don’t need him to be the leading man - they already have one of those: he was born in 1987 in the town of Labasa. But if Shane Smeltz could maybe score five or six goals and keep defences from being able to load up on Krishna, because they’re only gonna get smarter with that stuff, then that’d be pretty sweet.

Honestly, any help at all would be greatly appreciated.