Phoenix coaches impress Muscat
Wellington Phoenix coaches Chris Greenacre and Des Buckingham have earned the praise of one of the Hyundai A-League’s toughest taskmasters.
After championship-winning coach Kevin Muscat watched his Melbourne Victory side get dominated in a 3-0 loss to the Phoenix at Westpac Stadium on Tuesday, he offered up rare positive words for the opposition coaches.
‘‘I think the boys are doing are very good job since they’ve taken over, they’re a lot harder to create opportunities against and they’ve got some threats going forward.
‘‘There is a massive contrast in the way they play, we noticed that during the week when we analysed them.’’
The co-coaches took over from Ernie Merrick on an interim basis after the Scotsman resigned on December 5, before being installed to permanent positions until at least the end of the season.
In their seven matches in charge, the Phoenix have lost once and have climbed from last on the ladder to fifth, with the chance of reaching the top four if they can beat the Brisbane Roar by two goals or more this Saturday.
It has been a remarkable turnaround built on a solid defensive platform – the Phoenix have kept four clean sheets since the pair have been in charge.
They also changed to playing one high striker in most matches, bringing in Shane Smeltz to play that role, while shifting Roly Bonevacia up the park to a No 10 role which has revitalised the Dutchman and allowed Alex Rodriguez to flourish in a holding midfield role.
All that led to the Phoenix’s best performance of the season on Tuesday, with Buckingham praising the players for the way they have embraced the new gameplan.
‘‘The last five or six weeks since we’ve taken over we’ve implemented a gameplan and the players have hugely bought into it, and I think the key combination of our two holding midfielders and what is now a steady back four – that’s only the fourth time we’ve been able to put that back four out – we’re starting to get some consistency, very similar to what Victory had on their winning run.’’
With that being said, Buckingham made it clear that their work was far from done.
‘‘We won’t get carried away with it. We know the points that we require, we set our target at the start of the season, we’re nowhere near it, and we feel we still need 25 points from the remaining [12] games to get to fourth and stay in fourth for the playoffs, and that’s what we’ll be doing, but we’ll be taking it game by game.’’