Saturday arvo at Dave Farrington Park and it was a top four clash between two teams trying to bounce back from defeats. Team Welly were topped 3-1 by Auckland City in the Old Firm, while Eastern Subs took a shocker 4-0 loss across town in Waitakere.
The Wellington Phoenix lost again on Monday night. Their third loss of the season and all three of them have been 2-1 defeats in which the Nix seemed to have the majority of the chances yet somehow conspired to emerge pointless.
It’s a debut. Just days after signing with the club on loan, Winston Reid was named on the bench for the game against Bristol City and with a 3-1 lead and only about five minutes left he was chucked on for a sneaky runabout.
There was a bittersweet feel to this clash of old foes at Kiwitea Street. There’s a chance that this will be the last time that we ever see Auckland City versus Team Wellington. There’s an even better chance that there’s one final clash in the playoffs but who can say?
There’s some Deadline Day drama for ya: Winston Reid to Brentford on loan for the rest of the season.
It was first versus last at David Farrington Park. In some leagues around the world that fact alone is enough to make a game a forgone conclusion but not in the ISPS Handa Premiership, dear friends.
The Phoenix have a reputation for slow starts. Under Mark Rudan they won their first game but then took just two points from their next five. Ufuk Talay’s reign then began with four straight defeats (all by a single goal) and then a draw before the first win finally arrived at the sixth attempt.
The hits keep coming for Sint-Truiden as they beat KV Kortrijk 2-0 in the midweek. Another strong performance from the fellas in which they scored 14 minutes in thanks to Yuma Suzuki after young American right-back Chris Durkin had finessed a penalty.
The ISPS Handa Premiership might not be the pinnacle of world football but it’s ours and it’s beautiful and it can take any league on the planet for sheer unpredictable entertainment. This weekend’s fixtures had more than enough proof of that.
Well obviously. But just like last week’s late 1-0 loss to Adelaide, the Save of the Week award has proved a poisoned chalice for Lily Alfeld as her team lost another close one.
Through a vintage performance and some luck with results elsewhere Auckland City got themselves back up into the familiar nest of first place in week seven. As wild as this season has been, some things are apparently untouchable.
Fiiiiinally Thommo’s back. To recap for ya once again the bloke hadn’t played since going off injured in a Europa League match back in early November two full months ago. But that mini-break over Christmas/New Years did its thing.
Some things don’t ever seem to change. Summer time brings sunburn. The dog is always going to bark at the mailman. The last dregs of the beer are always the worst. And A-League just doesn’t make any sense.
We’re back, comrades. A few weeks off to recharge the batteries and now we get to have a geeze at which players perhaps indulged too much in the holiday festivities and which dudes were up at 6am on Boxing Day to go for a run.
As far as first games of the season go, that was certainly one of them. Bit hard to say much else because that 2-1 loss to Sydney felt more like tentative steps into the 2021 campaign rather than the Phoenix busting down the gates or anything.
It’s been a long time coming and we’re still not exactly out of the woods with all the confusion but a brand new A-League season is finally here and the Wellington Phoenix are locked and loaded.
They finally got another win last week, now STVV are officially on a winning streak after scraping by away against Standard Liege – a new experience for Libby Cacace in Belgium. Which sounds like a major upset against a strong team but Standard Liege aren’t what they usually are.
Everybody sees different things, everybody brings different experiences to the table, everybody had their own ideas of how the game should be played and what constitutes a good performance. This is how the prudent and propitious pages of the Premmy Files saw things...
Doubt anybody on the planet would be surprised to see that Chris Wood presses less than almost any striker in the Premier League (and less effectively than most too) given the way that Burnley play their football.
One last round of fixtures before the end of this mental old year and it began with a bit of Auckland City, fresh off the upset defeat in Canterbury, searching for their absent form with the Wellington Phoenix coming to town.