Is Phoenix missing their key men?

After many seasons struggling, Wellington Phoenix could finally have a season to make their fans happy. The 2018/19 season of the A-League, the Australian top-tier where the New Zealand-based club play, saw the Phoenix to end inside the playoff zone in the 6th place. It is true they lost to Melbourne Victory in the first round by 3-1, but since the 2014/15 season the Nix did not took part of the decisive part of the A-League season.

The newly appointed coach Mark Rudan rebuilt the team from the goal to attack: Filip Kurto was the best goalkeeper of the league, the English defender Steven Taylor was crucial for the team, Sarpreet Singh was vital in the midfield while David Williams and Roy Krishna were lethal in the attack. Together the Fijian Flyer and Williams scored 32 goals for Wellington Phoenix.

The season ended and the Rudan Revolution seemed to not really give a longer outcome: under polemics the coach announced he would be leaving Phoenix after the end of the season – not honouring his contract of two years. Alongside Rudan, former Phoenix captain Andrew Durante, the goalkeeper of the year Filip Kurto and the midfielder Max Burgess left to their new club: Western United, the debutants in the A-League. They already won three of their five starting matches in the campaign sitting second in the laddar, while Phoenix is at the bottom of the table.

Sarpreet Singh departed to the German powerhouse Bayern Munich and already played friendly matches for the first team. Singh was instrumental in the good campaign of Phoenix, but surely the big miss for the fans are the deadly duo Krishna and Williams. Both of the them are now playing their club football in the Indian Super League for the ATK club.

Krishna and Williams already scored three goals each in the first four matches of the team in the season. The duo seems to keep working very well, but now miles and miles away from Wellington.

Phoenix is still waiting for his biggest signing of season to get completely fit; Gary Hooper, despite already scoring for Wellington, missed most of the game time due injury concerns. The club just got one point from 15 in the start of the A-League 2019/20 and is already five points away from the playoff qualifying zone.

Nix needs to find their best form in their next matches if they want to recover from this very bad start of the season and they already may have in mind the firepower they had in the previous season will not be with them for this task. Despite of the bad results, the performances were not so bad – the goalkeeper Stefan Marinovic is showing his pedigree of European experience, but much of this comes from a fragile defensive system that already conceded nine goals. The Mexican import Ulises Davila scored three goals in the competiton so far and the promising forwards Ben Waine and Callum McCowatt are really impressing in their first matches defending Phoenix colours.

There is surely room for improvement, but Phoenix needs clearly need to forget the success of the past and focus on what Hooper, Davila, Ball and the team can bring for them.