Burns up for challenge at struggling Phoenix
Life at the bottom of the league is an uncommon experience for Nathan Burns.
The 29-year-old has spent the majority of his 12-year professional career at clubs towards the right end of the league table.
But that changed during a difficult campaign last year with Japanese J1 club Sanfrecce Hiroshima, where he played very little, watching on as the club avoided relegation by one point.
He joined the Wellington Phoenix in January, but was yet to score in his 10 appearances (seven starts) for the club rooted to the foot of the A-League ladder.
Contrast that with his first stint at the club in 2014-15, when he won the Johnny Warren Medal and the club briefly topped the league, before losing in the first round of the finals.
‘‘Yeah, a different challenge,’’ he said yesterday of this second stint at the club.
‘‘My whole career, 10 years, I’ve always been in a top team. Before I came here, with Hiroshima, they were in the relegation zone, now Wellington down the bottom. So it’s been a different year and a half for me, but I’ve learnt a lot.
‘‘I’m adapting to this situation as well. You’ve got to work harder for the team, rather than individually.’’
That goes some of the way to explaining why Burns hasn’t been able to recapture the form he showed a few years ago this time around.
By the time he arrived, former Phoenix coach Darije Kalezic had the team set up very defensively. That meant more work tracking back for Burns, receiving the ball a lot deeper than he was used to.
He was the sort of player who thrives on getting the ball in and around the box and making something happen.
He showed small glimpses of that in the 4-1 loss to the Western Sydney Wanderers on Saturday night, with interim head coach Chris Greenacre deploying him as one of two strikers, with Roy Krishna the other.
‘‘I had a few shots, Roy had a few, and in games previous to that I wasn’t getting close to the goal being so deep defending. I felt very comfortable, it’s just a matter of getting used to that intensity.’’
The Phoenix were able to press the Wanderers well in the first half, but could not maintain it in the second, which Burns put down to lacking the requisite fitness required to play that style of game.
‘‘At the back end of the season I think the boys’ fitness was dropping off and we weren’t playing with that intensity in other games.
‘‘I don’t think we have bad fitness, but if we want to play that pressing style as we did in the first half, it’s hard to just turn that on for 90 minutes. If we can get to that level where we can pick our times to press for the full 90 then we can cause some problems.’’
The other issue was their set piece defending, having conceded twice from corners to go from 1-1 at halftime to 3-1 down.
Centre back Dylan Fox said the fix was simple.
‘‘It was just poor marking to be honest with you. Two poor marking goals off the corner, those goals cost games, silly errors leaving your man. That’s all I can say about that really.’’
The Phoenix welcome former coach Ernie Merrick and his highflying Newcastle Jets back to the county this weekend, taking them on at QBE Stadium in Auckland on Saturday.