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  • Time To Go Babbel After 2-0 Loss To Nix

    mack

    By mack

    The tenure of Wanderers coach Markus Babbel must come to an end after another dismal loss, this time to Wellington Phoenix in New Zealand this afternoon.

    The big news from Wellington was the dropping of Wanderers marquee striker Alex Meier. Wellington bought in Jaushua Sotirio as a replacement for the injured David Ball. Both teams used the cool & windy conditions to push up their energy levels after weeks of sapping games in high temperatures on the Australian continent. Wellington were the better in the opening stages, their best chance in the first 15 minutes coming from a long range strike by star midfielder Ulises Davilia blasted onto the base of the post. The Wanderers responded going to the other end, Pirmin Schwegler on his return from suspension getting a lucky deflection that threatened to loop over the keepers head only to go just wide of the goal.

    The early warning from Davilia wasn't heeded by the Wanderers defence and he took full advantage to open the scoring for Wellington. The Nix worked the ball around on the right flank, Sotirio and Gary Hooper combining to open the space for Davilia, the Mexican had the freedom of the pitch to size up the left footed strike, with no midfielders in sight Dylan McGowan attempted to close down the shot but his pathetic attempt to get in the line of the ball did nothing to stop it blazing along the turf into the bottom corner.

    It took until the 37th minute before the Wanderers managed another decent look at goal. It was an audacious long range effort from Mitch Duke, wind assisted it rocketed high and to the right of the Wellington goal. He followed up two minutes later with another shot after cutting onto his right foot, this one fell easily into the arms of Marinovic in the Wellington goal. The game devolved into a scrappy mess heading into the break and neither side could change the 1-0 scoreline before half-time.

    The second half opened the the excitement of Wellington breaking through on goal only for the linesman to rule the player offside after they missed their shot. An hour in Kwame Yeboah had a shout for a penalty turned down after he was pulled down in the box by a Wellington defender, the VAR declined to intervene.

    Liberato Cacace hammered the final nail in the coffin of the match and perhaps the tenure of Wanderers coach Markus Babbel in the 87th minute. A simple passing movement put Cacace on the left flank with the entire Wanderers defence in front of him, and the speedy winger took them all on. He blazed past Tate Russel and left Ziegler for dead, in front of them stood McGowan who capped off one of the worst games for a Wanderers defender since Aritz Borda played for the club, as he stood like a statue and gave Cacace the green light to cut in on his right foot and fire a strike towards the near post that did just enough to beat Matt Jurman's cover defence and Daniel Lopar's right foot did nothing more than lift the ball into the back of the net.

    Wellington's win pushed their unbeaten run to 9 games and sent them into the top 4, while for the Wanderers they remain stuck in 8th place with just 1 win from their last 10 games and only 4 wins for the entire season.

    With no reinforcements apparently incoming during the transfer window, and a home game against 4th place Perth coming up it doesn't seem likely that Markus Babbel can turn around the team. With one failed season under his belt and another in progress, he has had more than enough time to find a solution. Yet he has not. Babbel's 25% win rate (just 10 wins in 40 games) puts him in the category of such failures as Mehmet Durakovic, Rado Vidosic and Paul Okon. It is more than time for a change. Not only for the manager Babbel, but the team ownership including Paul Lederer need to closely examine the ongoing position of Wanderers CEO John Tsatsimas, who has lead the club to failure after abysmal failure since 2016. It is not good enough and something must change and change drastically.

    The Wanderers face Perth Glory at the Western Sydney Stadium on Sunday January 19 with kickoff at 6:30PM.

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    Keithie

    WORLD GAME REPORT

    Babbel spoke for just 76 seconds after the match, ending the press conference amidst questions about his omission of out-of-form forward Alexander Meier.

    The German marquee has laboured to just a solitary goal after playing in all 12 previous games, but Babbel insisted he hadn't been dropped for form reasons.

    He said the 36-year-old suffered a hamstring injury at training midweek and couldn't estimate the possible time on the sideline.

    "Can't tell you. He stayed at home and had treatments there. We will see," Babbel said, before rifling his chair back and thanking journalists.

    Link to comment
    Harv
    5 hours ago, WSWJACK said:

    3 games into the season looking down the ladder from up top and thinking how easy is this, WTF HAS HAPPENED?

    what an implosion, what a fall from grace, Babbel and the squad have been given time and the expectation this is the blip that happens, she'll come good soon, but no coming good happening!

    Just feels a continuation of the last 4 years, very very disappointing, if Babbel stays or goes couldn't give a stuff now, season is over, players are losing their confidence as a group big time now, IF form suddenly turned around it would be absolutely dumbfounding, cannot see it happening though.

    I can see where you are coming from, but looking back, the early results gave us undeserved confidence for the season ahead.  Our highlight had to be the SFC game, but other than that our best effort that I can recall would have to be the friendly against Leeds when we were in the early stages of pre-season playing against a top Championship team only a few weeks out from competition.  Our other early successes , from memory, included an undeserved point against Roar and an equally undeserved win  over CCM.  In both of these games, the fact that Lopar was our man of the match says it all.  Otherwise, in full agreement - a season which began with so much promise has been a disaster.  Even the return to Bankwest has been a let down.  While the RBB continue to work hard, the response from other supporters is still way down on what we had hoped, and consequently the atmosphere we all  loved at Parramatta has disappeared along with our team's performances.

    Link to comment
    Frankos187
    59 minutes ago, Keithie said:

    WORLD GAME REPORT

    Babbel spoke for just 76 seconds after the match, ending the press conference amidst questions about his omission of out-of-form forward Alexander Meier.

    The German marquee has laboured to just a solitary goal after playing in all 12 previous games, but Babbel insisted he hadn't been dropped for form reasons.

    He said the 36-year-old suffered a hamstring injury at training midweek and couldn't estimate the possible time on the sideline.

    "Can't tell you. He stayed at home and had treatments there. We will see," Babbel said, before rifling his chair back and thanking journalists.

    Sounds like Meier and Babbel are gone...

    Link to comment
    Smoggy
    5 minutes ago, Harv said:

    I can see where you are coming from, but looking back, the early results gave us undeserved confidence for the season ahead.  Our highlight had to be the SFC game, but other than that our best effort that I can recall would have to be the friendly against Leeds when we were in the early stages of pre-season playing against a top Championship team only a few weeks out from competition.  Our other early successes , from memory, included an undeserved point against Roar and an equally undeserved win  over CCM.  In both of these games, the fact that Lopar was our man of the match says it all.  Otherwise, in full agreement - a season which began with so much promise has been a disaster.  Even the return to Bankwest has been a let down.  While the RBB continue to work hard, the response from other supporters is still way down on what we had hoped, and consequently the atmosphere we all  loved at Parramatta has disappeared along with our team's performances.

    Best effort this season was Victory away.

    Link to comment
    WHACKO
    36 minutes ago, Smoggy said:

    Best effort this season was Victory away.

     

    19 minutes ago, Neverbloom said:

    the only match where we really outplayed someone all season sadly

    I thought the same thing,  so I went back and watched the game. I don't really know if we were that good I think it was more the case that Victory were extremely poor. It was only in the last 20 minutes that Victory were all over us and could of salvaged a draw. We were lucky to hang on.

    Link to comment
    SBW

    When I saw the line up, I knew we are going to get over runned and dominated in the midfield, there is no way Pirmin is going to do the job himself. Babbel obviously didn't learn the lesson from last week against the roar.

    We got dominated in that midfield, Ziegler playing as a DM and CB wasn't working and didn't work, Davila had so much freedom in the midfield that no one was near hear or even marked him, he had so much time to score that goal and he could have scored a hat trick. Hooper went deep and was easily find the ball to his feet and play off Davila.

    As for the team, they are very low on confidence, it looks there is no belief in the team and no belief in themselves, Duke look very frustrated saying the boys are not backing themselves.

    Today theres just no excuses, the Nix are supposed to be the cannon fodders of the A-League with a rookie coach and NPL quality players but they're the ones who just pulled our pants down

    Link to comment
    WSWJACK
    1 hour ago, Harv said:

    I can see where you are coming from, but looking back, the early results gave us undeserved confidence for the season ahead.  Our highlight had to be the SFC game, but other than that our best effort that I can recall would have to be the friendly against Leeds when we were in the early stages of pre-season playing against a top Championship team only a few weeks out from competition.  Our other early successes , from memory, included an undeserved point against Roar and an equally undeserved win  over CCM.  In both of these games, the fact that Lopar was our man of the match says it all.  Otherwise, in full agreement - a season which began with so much promise has been a disaster.  Even the return to Bankwest has been a let down.  While the RBB continue to work hard, the response from other supporters is still way down on what we had hoped, and consequently the atmosphere we all  loved at Parramatta has disappeared along with our team's performances.

    Hard to disagree there my friend

    Link to comment
    Burgerman

    Time to go unfortunately he couldn't figure out how to set up the squad and hopefully we see duke muller and sulivan all play in their positions and keep a formation for 5 games straight. 

    Will expect a reaction next game and could be the turn around we need as we have a top 4 squad 

    Link to comment
    GunnerWanderer

    It’s the same every week we create next to nothing and it’s only a matter of time before we know we concede 

    no point really to dissect anything yday. 
     

    babbel has lost them, if the owners want to see out the season with babbel then at least tell the players like duke, Sullivan we are going to do our best to keep you and play them. 
     

    dead weights like yeboah and ziegler should be punted to the dog house popa style so that **** off ASAP 

    Edited by GunnerWanderer
    Link to comment
    Smoggy
    1 minute ago, GunnerWanderer said:

    It’s the same every week we create next to nothing and it’s only a matter of time before we know we concede 

    no point really to dissect anything yday. 
     

    babbel has lost them, if the owners want to see out the season with babbel then at least tell the players like duke, Sullivan we are going to do our best to keep you and play them. 
     

    dead weights like yeboah and ziegler should be punted to the dog house popa style so that **** off ASAP 

    Owners are in denial. Under 10k in our stadium should make them sit up.

    Everyone has had enough after 4 years.

    Link to comment
    WanderingToqui

    Fresh off the press!

    Santa sinks claws into Wanderers ‘absolute disaster

    Western Sydney Wanderers hero Brendon Santalab has called for root-and-branch change at the club he once graced, insisting the Red and Black have never recovered from the exit 26 months ago of foundation coach Tony Popovic.

    UPDATEDUPDATED 7 HOURS AGO
    BY DAVE LEWIS
     

    The journey from Wanderland to Blunderland under the disastrous reigns of Josep Gombau and now Markus Babbel has tarnished the brand, and left all-time leading scorer ‘Santa’ calling for a fresh vision to bring life back to the club after seven defeats in nine games.

    “It’s clear they’ve never recovered from the departure of Tony Popovic and they’re suffering right now,” said the 2014 AFC Champions League winner.

    “It just goes to show how good he is as a manager and the club never really prepared for life after ‘Popa’.

    “They’re now in a situation where they need to look from the ownership down and maybe move the club on to somebody else who has a different vision and philosophy.

    “There need to be massive changes to show the fans they are heading in the right direction again.

    “Gombau was an absolute disaster and Babbel has been an absolute disaster - what do you do?

    “Do you keep the coach and change the players again?

    “Or do you get somebody else in with the same playing group? It’s risky either way, whether you keep Babbel or get rid of him.

    “There’s no guarantee that with a new manager they will turn the corner again.

    "There are massive decisions for the club to make.”

    Santalab, 37, struck 35 goals in 97 games for Western Sydney across five seasons, often as a super sub, winning the affection of fans along the journey with his firebrand devotion to the cause.

    He is dismayed by what he sees now from those wearing the shirt of the A-League’s “biggest club”.

    “As a past player knowing the culture we had there, it’s upsetting to see them now,” he said.

    “With the training facilities and the new stadium they have they should be the biggest club in the country.

    “Something is badly wrong and mass changes are needed.

    “The playing group hasn’t shown enough fight, enough character or enough resilience for a club of their stature.

    “You play for the fans and the badge on your jersey and that’s just not happening at the moment.

    “They’re trying but things aren’t gelling and don’t look like gelling,” added Santalab, who wound up his 20-year professional career once more under Popovic at Perth Glory last season.

    He’s taken on a new challenge at Victorian NPL club Caroline Springs George Cross - once part of the fabric of the NSL as Sunshine George Cross - as both player and commercial manager.

    But despite a career which included stints in Europe and China, it’s the Wanderers where his heart lies.

    “When you have players doing interviews and see the way they’re talking it’s obvious it’s an unhappy camp there,” he continued.

    “Babbel has had enough time (40 matches, for 22 defeats and just 10 wins) to instill the philosophy and vision he wanted and it’s clearly not working.

    “Whether he’s given too much of the reins to the backroom staff, I don’t know.

    “For the fans who are bleeding red and black, they’re hurting and deserve better. I feel sorry for them.

    “Under Popovic everybody at the club was traveling in the same direction and had the same vision, from the office staff upwards.

    “It was a special feeling and hasn’t been there since he left. You could feel passion every time you walked into the stadium.

    "There was a real buzz and excitement before matches and I’m not sure people are feeling that way anymore.

    “At the end of the day, what the fans want most are results - and that’s just not happening.

    “New stadiums don’t bring results but hard work and togetherness do."

    ......

    My 2 cents worth ...

    Popovic was a dog for dumping us days before the season started!

    Popovic was inflexible with his "my way or the highway" treatment of the cattle, sorry, i mean the players. That's why we couldn't retain the likes of the Polenz, Alberto, Andreu et al.

    His "culture" involved dismantling and booting players out at the end of each season.

    Santa needs to remove his rose coloured glasses.

    No one is ever bigger than the club. The Wanderers WILL bounce back at some point, whether it's this season or next, or the one after.

    Question is, are we dedicated and loyal fans? 

    Or are we a fickle bunch?

    We will come good. That is inevitable.

    :tusk:

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