Wellington Phoenix endured another season of major turmoil and underachievement, with the Kiwis on the verge of losing their A-League license if they don’t do something big very soon.
The new coach Kalezic seemed to have built a good group of players over the summer, but he proved to be a controversial figure and many behind the scenes incidents affected the displays of Phoenix in the first few months of the season. Kaljuderovic and Vidosic were scoring goals at will early in the campaign, with Krishna also very devastating in his new role as a right winger, but trusting an 18-year-old goalkeeper and using some strange selections in defence caused major problems.
Phoenix won just one of their opening fourteen games and this poor run of results really increased the tension in the club. Vidosic’s father departed his role as Kalezic’s assistant in early December and his son Dario followed him soon after, despite the fact that he scored 4 goals and assisted for 3 in his 10 matches for Phoenix. Guilherme and Abbas also left the club around that time, blaming their departures on the manager, and Phoenix had to rebuild in January.
The signings of Ljujic and Burns brought some improvement with Phoenix achieving 3 wins and a draw in the 6 matches played in the first two months of 2018. By that point Kaljuderovic had entered a long goal draught though and only Krishna remained constant contributor up front all season.
Kalezic’s controversial reign came to an end after round 21 when a narrow 0:1 defeat was suffered on the visit to Mariners, which ended Phoenix’s play-off hopes. Greenacre took charge for the rest of the season and despite earning a single point from his first five games at the helm he managed to secure a win in the last round, which was why Phoenix avoided the wooden spoon by a single point.
