http://www.stuff.co.nz/sport/football/a-league/87959351/australian-pundit-mark-bosnich-says-wellington-phoenix-offer-the-aleague-nothing

Totally agree with Bozza. Get rid of them.

That whole "save the nix" thing he mentions was driven by SFC fans and Pignata... to not have a Shire team. That new team is coming anyway

"For me, regardless of the political side of why they are in the A-League, let's put that aside for one minute, they should be up there like they were two seasons ago making a difference. 

"They are not making any difference whatsoever and they've very frustrating."

What Bosnich failed to mention was the Phoenix's opposition on Monday in the Jets have not made the A-League playoffs since 2010. The Central Coast Mariners haven't tasted finals football since the 2013-14 season.

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Removing them and replacing them only takes us further away from the 12+ team league we need.

Merely kicking them out and replacing them does nothing to solve the incredible repetitiveness of a league growing stale.

Bozza been speaking alot of sense lately, what is going on?

Newcastle and CCM have won silverware. They provide Aussie players. They don't piss off the AFC. Wellington haven't won any silverware. In fact no NZ team has.

The staleness of  the league won't solve itself if there is one team doing sweet FA. We aren't in a position to play charity.

Either off the gear or on twice as much, you can never quite tell with loose units like this

Was also complaining about no relegation.

The AFC rubber stamped Nix's inclusion in the league. If they really pissed them off they would have been canned. CCM are only just becoming a competitive football team in an equalised league after being the laughing stock for the last year. 

Newcastle had to be bailed out by the FFA to even exist. 

Wellington have contributed to the Socceroos more recently than some clubs as well after taking a chance on Burns and jump starting his career. 

They have owners who are still pumping through money into their squad, including marquees. 

Unless there comes a time when the owners don't want to fund the club anymore, it will never be a better option to REPLACE them when we can add to them with the club that would replace them. 

Glad to see him wake up

Agree get rid.

They have offered nothing for years now. 

WP are happy to exist but that is not enough in a 10 team comp. 

Afc mayve rubber stamped them but its not q normal situation. Yeah play in aus but stay out of the acl.  Its just weird frankly and impossible to justify them taking a place in our league and not be able to qualify for asia, over an aussie club in their place that could actually qualify. Its baffles me beyond belief. Theyd want a pretty compelling reason for creating this kind of unfairness and limitation of austrlian footballing opportunities.

They cause anomalies with plater classifications, ie rojas is a foreigner, but nz are in our league. We dont have to sign kiwis i know..but deal w anaomalous shit one must. And is pretry rich considering ffa essentially provided the pathway and funded the development of the kid. Pet hate of mine. But actually will affect our player classification come our next acl appearance.

Nzfa on record stating that the nix prioritize spots for kiwis over aussies and that nix serve as a development club for their national team. Its ckear we have poured millions and millions of dollars at an overseas franchise thats frankly offering less pathways for our players than an aussie club in its place would. There is something seriously wrong with that picture.  Theres a long list of other benefits to keeping that kind of dizzying financial investment in aus, being poured into (insert aspirant npl club here) and strengthening the infrastructure of the game here in every way possible.

Re ccm and jets. Two clubs that have won trophies. Ccm have produced how many socceroos. How many have nix, how many will they ever? Investment is important yes, but if we soley folowed that logic, then a team from singapore, malaysia or Hong Kong that has investors should take the place of ccm and jets and other australian clubs?? Its baffling to even go down that line of discussion... aussie clubs dont have to justify why they are in a league in their own country, teams from other countries do. And the jets are funded by ledman now anyway... prob not the best example to draw on for this argument. 

Jets are funded by Ledman now and everything seems stable, however you could have said that when a local billionaire took them over years ago.

Things change and this league is volatile. We have a will they won't they situation every off season with the Bakties, Charlesworth is reportedly heavily pissed off at the losses he's accunulated.

'Problems with player classifications'.

Someone who is not Australian is still not going to be Australian whether or not Wellington are in the league.

'FFA essentially funded Rojas' pathway'

Who knows if he would be the same player (or if he'd even be a professional player' if it weren't for the Phoenix fans funding him.

All the arguments about Australian player development aren't exclusive to kicking the Nix out, like I've stated before you can add another Australian team to the Nix and bam there's your extra funding.

Heck, we even just signed anew broadcast deal that will give us more money if we hit 12 teams, so we're a lot closer to extra funding and pathway opportunities with the Nix in the competition.

What's interesting at the moment is that for all the talk about multiple bids for expansion - there's only South Melbourne saying that they are ready to go ASAP.  Bosnich has talked the South bid up a couple of times.  Meanwhile, Sydney, Brisbane, Perth and (I think) Adelaide have all said they don't want cross city rivals - whilst players from both Victory and City have said they think South would be a good addition, and that Melbourne can support a 3rd side.

FFA may have issues with South's history - but at the end of the day, if you can have a cash drain in a foreign country or a cash positive side in your own country, providing an extra 6 derbies a season...  Which would you go with?

Will also be interesting to see what happens with Wellington's coaching situation...  Almost wonder whether Merrick walked because he knew there wasn't a future to build toward, so why bother with the hard yards now?

Expansion preferred, but it makes the current situation with Wellington very interesting that they can be replaced at very short notice if they are seen to be failing their KPIs.

We have 10 years to work on things, At the moment we are coach-less so that don't help much. But we can still make the top 6 and scape into the finals to meet some metrics at the expense of a Aussie side.
We are not the deadbeat dads of the A-League, Melbourne City and CCM take that honour.  

@Benjamin

Part of my angst is it shouldn't take kicking out the Nix to add a team that is ready to go with a sustainable business model but that's not the point of this thread.

You mention cash drain, by all reports under the previous deal the Nix were costing around $500k more than Australian teams after travel allowance payments.

When you consider the deal has now been significantly increased, it doesn't seem like all that large of a number. When the FFA renegotiate the Sky TV deal, that number will reducee that number more.

If a new team like South (or Tas, or South Sydney or wherever) were to be added, we'd only be 1 team away from an increase in TV money. Considering the FFA's history with expansion it's probably unlikely that we even see two new teams added, but it's still far more likely than 3 teams added in the next few years, imo.

Off the field for the Nix, they have just signed their largest deal everwith Huawei- not many teams boast a sponsor of that stature. They also averaged 9k last year iirc, a very reasonable number that compares favourably to other teams in the league, before they were hit with the 'we might fold your club' phase which kills a club trying to build.

It's just far more preferable imo to have teams like South become expansion teams rather than replacement teams.

Ffa fund the nix. The fans funded him to play in a club and league sanctioned and funded by ffa, our tv money, is what i mean. Naturally a foreigner is a foreigner....but kiwis enjoy all the benefits of being an aussie/our tv money. I guess they get the better deal then.

"Heck, we even just signed anew broadcast deal that will give us more money if we hit 12 teams, so we're a lot closer to extra funding and pathway opportunities with the Nix in the competition."

Without them,  thered be more,

Whilst the nix are in the league there will always be that discrepancy/loss of pathway/opportunity/experience in the HAL and ACL for aussie players. It jsut is what it is. If there are 10 clubs or 20, the nix are still hogging that spot.

I just dont see the point in ever reducing financial investment or player opportunities for the game here. Imo its wrong on every level. Especially that we are stuck with a closed league and no national div2. 9 teams is slim pickings when it comes to pro pathways. Not something to be simply glossed over. And as i said would require a pretty compelling argument for shooting ourselves in the foot on purpose. All you've basically said is use them as leverage to get more clubs in essentially. We can do that without them too.

Auatralian clubs shouldn't be used in this argument.

The fact people think they should not be in the league should be a good enough sign that something is up.

We may as well bring in Singapore. Same thing but even better, they would be part of AFC.

I agree with bozza, but im not rating his argument, wellington has served its purpose in our top flight, but they can easily be replaced now, it has no bearing on them being average on the field, would bozzas argument be the same if they were top 3? Ladder position shouldnt matter, a nz team in the australian top flight has gone past its used by date.

True. In fact the better they play the more it highlights how dumb it is having them playing here. Say they win the ffa cup. Who wants to see that? A foreign club cashed up by the ffa knockinhg out a slew of Australian grassroots minnows who could really do with all the benefits of winning or at least playing deep in the cup. 

And then theres them winning the league and gf and the runner up aussie club goes to asia. We send our second best to represent us. Lol. 

Bozza did allude to a little more though: 
"For me, regardless of the political side of why they are in the A-League, let's put that aside for one minute, they should be up there like they were two seasons ago making a difference."

What does he mean by that exactly i wonder...

Im sorry but melb city are a hundred times more interesting to watch than phoenix. Agree with ccm tho

Aus is in Asia. NZ is in Oceania.

Well what youre saying is the political reason why they should not be in the league i wouldve thought.

He wasn't saying the Nix shouldn't be there, he was saying that the whole league rallied behind them but they are not showing anything.

So it's obvious he's not saying Nixout, he's saying prove the faith that the league had in the club.

He went on to talk about the quality of the players so it's clear he's talking about the lack of quality in the coaching and management staff, and I agree. The club has had two good periods, one was the second year of Ernie's coaching before his tactics became stale and they lucked out on a couple of players. The other was a period when they had 36 undefeated games in a row at home and made the finals 3 or 4 years on the trot. The only sustained success they had was under Ricki and Tranni, Greenacre has presided mostly over mediocrity. You want a coach who knows how to win and to install a passion in the team so that they live and die for the shirt, and I don't think the caretakers can do that.

I still favor Ramon, but I wonder if Fox would be more on their side if they hired Rudan.

As far as the development pathways go, NZF may consider the Phoenix an important development pathway (which is a change as they're usually at loggerheads) but the Phoenix have said themselves they'll develop NZ talent if they can but not at the expense of the team, there are Australians in the Phoenix academy system, and the Phoenix had three young freshly signed Australians from the NPL on the park yesterday, whereas the jets had none. Bosnich himself said forget about the politics, so we shouldn't be discussing that anyway.

What people across the Tasman might not realise is the amount of money being pumped into the Phoenix. They now have 4 or 5 teams competing in various domestic competitions (and all are doing well), they have a good squad and use all the exceptions of the cap (two marquees, home grown player, mature aged rookie, etc), they spend a fortune on sports science and are by all accounts one of the top teams for technology use (heck, they train in a heat an altitude simulator), and they're about to move into a new state of the art and purpose built training facility which by all accounts is pretty amazing.

All the pieces for the club to succeed are in place and why the nix continue to struggle in mediocrity is a mystery, the team doesn't have the fight it once had and that's probably down to coaching and culture. Culture is unlikely to change with Greenacre there, he's one of the boys and played with a number of the current players, Des is new enough that he probably gets a pass.

If Greenacre wants to be a head coach in the A-League I'd like to see him go off and be head coach at a NZ Premiership or Australian State League team and prove himself there. He can't stay as an assistant with the first team anymore, we need a complete change.

One thing that's often not discussed in this debate is what's the alternative for Phoenix?

Would they (and NZ football generally) be better off playing in NZs top flight? Whilst there would be a significant loss of income and star players would they provide a potent rival to Auckland City if they moved for example?

At the moment it's difficult to argue the presence of Nix in the Hal benefits either Australian or kiwi football - that alone makes them a real conundrum

The Newcastle Jets/Mariners add to the Australian Fox TV deal just signed, the Phoenix add something like 800k from NZ Sky. Not even close to enough to cover there own Salary cap and that is not even taking into account the aleague clubs costs when flying to NZ for those away matches.

From an Aussie Football perspective we are carrying NZ soccer, why?

The NZ Warriors contribute around 20million a year from NZ Sky tv rights and countless amounts of quality players for the NRL. Now that is a great partnership that is a win for the NRL and RL in NZ.

There are 600k people in Australia eligible for a NZ Passport, and the Phoenix often rate higher in the ratings than the other small city teams so that's not quite true. But Sky TV should be contributing more.

@Waz, the Phoenix do play in the NZ top flight and bet Auckland City just a couple of weeks ago. They're sitting fourth, three points off top place.

Simple solution to all this. It shouldn't be up to the FFA or the fans to decide which teams deserve to be in the A-league or not. Bring in promotion/relegation and let the the results of each club decide for us.

#NiXit

@RyanM

That's a bit like saying SFC play in the NPL .... and it doesn't answer the question - would football be better off if Nix (senior team) played in the NZ domestic competition?

And as for the assertion that Nix "often outrate" smaller Australian clubs I'm pretty sure the average ratings published on another thread had Nix firmly at the bottom.