Round 1 - Wellington vs Sydney FC - 2/1/21

Good to see that because we were denied one banger in our last game at WIN we got 2 today.

Hof great, Wood not so much but tough time for him to be brought on.

Baumjohann was excellent on the ball. I just think he should probably coming on for Ninko - who seems to be fading late in games.

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Excellent from Hof, King, Brattan, Warland. Hard to judge Wood off a few mins as its not exactly a time for a striker to put their best foot forward.

Good win the start the season and excellent goals

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Problem is that Caceres didn’t have his best (or worst) game and was on a yellow. We needed to bring on more players than the five subs the teams were allowed. Maybe things will get better as the season progresses as players get more and more match fit, but it’s also asking a hell of a lot for Ninko to come back so often to help defend given he’s now 36. He put in such a big shift for the team.

Wood did a fantastic impression of Simon in the final 10 minutes.

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Ninko shouldn’t be playing 90 minutes every week. I get he probably wanted to this week being round 1, but as he gets older, we need to use him better.

His work rate is so often overlooked by folks outside this forum, but today he was Herculean, seemed like he won more ball than anyone else on the pitch.

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ninko was so tired at the end but simply through experience was still great at the end - i recall him winning a ball twice from the floor then forcing a throw late in the game.

not saying i disagree with you, just showing appreciation for the lord and saviour ninko,

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Wellington are probably the best coached team in the league - Talay is doing a hell of a job there.

We were a bit flat but still created the better chances I felt. The last period was largely comfortable despite what Bosnich was saying. Don’t like us sitting that deep, but we looked tired which is fair enough this early in the season.

We drop deep and play the counter all the time under Corica. It made sense to make the most out of ALF+Brosque and then ALF+Kosta (with Buhagiar off the bench), but I don’t know whether it continues to make sense with decent depth keeping legs fresh and Bobo coming off the bench.

The frustration with that last period for me is that sitting back so deep and inviting pressure seemed unnecessary. In that situation (5mins to go, 1 goal lead against a good side) I would hope Wilko would step them up 5m and the fresh legs (5 subs!!) of Woods, Bernie, ABJ and Zuvela would start pressing them a bit and not just letting them ping crosses in. Fatigue is an issue with the age of our key players so understand why we aren’t hammering away at full tempo for the whole game but we need some game management. If we copped a draw or a loss against Wests in that fashion there would be a revolt.

tend to agree, we were not great at holding the ball either in that last 10 mins especially. we kept trying to attack even in injury time.

Yeah I was a bit concerned but I really hope that it was just the fact that it’s the first game back with a really disrupted pre-season. Hopefully a few games in we’ll be better placed to run games out.

That was a horrible goal for Wellington. Lazy from the chase down the right, to the man marking at the spot, and even the dive from Redders seemed half arsed…

Anyone who hasn’t seen the Nix goal can see it here:

Gotta love the ABC they fuck u for the Nix goal and leave the telecast to go to the news when the match is still playing

It wasn’t the ABC, it was Fox. Or more accurately, the local live broadcast. Every live broadcast was affected. I was watching Japanese YouTube with a VPN and got the same thing. Sometimes shit just happens and there’s nothing you can do.

Cutting the end of the game before full time was definitely ABC.

It’s also included in the kayo mini.

ABC did this last year for all the games