Like Natalie Imbruglia, it’s hard not to feel a little torn by the latest news out of the Wellington Phoenix. They’ve found a head coach! He (or she…) has signed the contract and everything’s dandy, now we can move on to getting some of those off-contract dudes re-signed and hopefully stocking up the international player shelves as well. Exactly what we’ve been waiting to hear, gotta love it. And who, you may ask, is this new manager? Yeah that’s the thing… they’re not saying.

David Dome, Welly Nix General Manager: “We have a signed contract with our preferred candidate and pending flights and immigration we look forward to presenting our new head coach in Wellington, early June. In the interim our new head coach has been talking to our football operations department, assessing our current squad of players and potential new signings from across Australasia and beyond.”

A little weird that, presumably there are some very good reasons for keeping all this secret but it seems strange to be assuring people this is done when it clearly isn’t if they can’t even give us a name. We can deduct from this that we’re gonna be working with an overseas fellow, plus Domey confirms that Greenie & Buck applied for the gig and were unsuccessful. Dunno where they go now. Other than that you can’t even draw much speculation because it’s not like there were many public candidates before this.

More David Dome: “With a deep knowledge of European football, experience of developing young talent and a wide network of scouting contacts our prospective head coach is excellently situated to attract quality players to our football club and we look forward to announcing several key signings over the months ahead.”

Dome also adds that interviews were conducted “across three continents” so you know they had a good look around. Now finally a European based chap has been locked in and when the bugger finally gets to Aotearoa they’ll let us know who it is. Someone’s gonna figure it out before then but whatever. Maybe they’ll sneak him into the country in glasses and a fake moustache.

Torn. On one hand, sweet as we’ve finally seen some forward progress here. On the other hand, it’s also another fake-out, another act of delay. They might not have had a choice there so it’s tough to make too many assumptions on that matter, most likely it’s the pressure that the club has been placed under lately that led to a premature half-announcement. A team riding a championship wave, for example, wouldn’t have to say a word about this before names are ready to be named but the Nix aren’t anywhere close to that.

In fact the Nix have quite honestly been really disappointing the last two years. Ernie Merrick’s reign promised so much but that team had tendencies to swerve wildly in form, long stretches without a win followed by three or four in a row and then another winless month, you know. Gui Finkler and Kosta Barbarouses were hoped to be the missing pieces that spurred them towards a playoff run but they were terrible in the first half of the campaign and by the time the tide turned there Ernie had long since resigned. Greenie & Buck then showed their managerial inexperience by chopping and changing their teams in the hope they’d strike gold and the streakiness continued.

(Kosta ended up winning the Club Player of the Year but that was ridiculous, Players’ Player OTY Roy Krishna oughta feel pretty pissed about the extra room on his mantle).

Add in all this postseason confusion and combine it with a fourth season in five where they didn’t make the postseason and there’s legitimate reason to be upset with all this. We hold the NZ Warriors to pretty ruthless expectations in this country but up until now the Phoenix have gotten something of a free pass. That makes this next boss rather crucial because that goodwill is fast starting to evaporate and if the next gaffer is a failure then metaphorical blood may be spilled.

Hey but for now we can be optimistic. Not quite getting what we want but at least given assurances that it’s coming. Better being teased with a presence now then going another two weeks without any word on the managerial hunt. Trust they made a considered choice and support the new fella, we all want that anyway (and there’s no judging a manager until the results start flowing in). Hell for all we know they’ve grabbed Arsene Wenger but have to wait for him to make his extradition from Arsenal -  “deep knowledge of European football, experience of developing young talent and a wide network of scouting contacts”… sure sounds like Arsene.

Now, thankfully, the immediate focus turns to salvaging the last couple of off-contract dudes. 15 first team players are booked in for next season with three or four more to come according to Dome. It’s not fully clear if those three or four players only refer to the free agents but considering Glen Moss and Roly Bonevacia left last week, that Jacob Tratt and Shane Smeltz had already gone and that Vince Lia chucked his car on trademe the other day, there aren’t too many folks left to re-sign. Hamish Watson will surely be back, Louis Fenton ought to join him and Alex Rodriguez has to be a candidate too.

Already contracted for next season: Andrew Durante, Marco Rossi, Mike McGlinchey, Gui Finkler, Roy Krishna, Matty Ridenton, Alex Rufer, Adam Parkhouse, Kosta Barbarouses, Dylan Fox, Ryan Lowry, Tommy Doyle, Ollie Sail, James McGarry, Logan Rogerson… and you can probably chuck a couple other youth teamers in there too (at least at this stage). Not entirely sure who counts towards the 15 players and who doesn’t, that’s not really important.

We wanted them to do something and they did. They haven’t told us exactly what yet but one step at a time is fine for now. It’s okay, this is progress.

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