KEY POINTS:
Days out from the biggest challenge in their history, Auckland City have been thrown into turmoil with the club and coach Roger Wilkinson parting company.
Auckland City will represent the Oceania Football Confederation at next month's Fifa Club World Cup in Japan but who will coach them at the six-team tournament is up in the air.
"Simply, we were just not compatible," said Wilkinson last night. "Sometimes you go into a situation/club in which you quickly realise it is not going to work. Things did not work out. In the end I and the chairman [Ivan Vuksich] mutually agreed to terminate the contract."
It was a contract sealed with a handshake for the 2006-07 season. Now, six matches into the third New Zealand Football Championship, it is all over.
Vuksich admitted a stand-off between Wilkinson and some senior players led to the decision.
Wilkinson would not be drawn too deeply on this but it appears there was no love lost between him and South African strikers Grant Young and Keryn Jordan.
"As a squad we worked very hard," said Wilkinson. "I wanted them to play a more expansive style. But I quickly realised it was not going to work. It is not my kind of club."
Vuksich said, effective immediately, the club and Wilkinson had mutually agreed to go their separate ways.
City board member, and former coach at sister club Central United, Paul Marshall will step in as caretaker coach but Vuksich insists "we will be out tomorrow looking for a permanent replacement".
Asked whether former coach Allan Jones, who took City to victory in the first two New Zealand Football Championships, figured in his plans, Vuksich said "the thought did cross my mind".
Vuksich said some of the senior players at City "are not easy to deal with. When you look at some of the issues you can see there was a problem. We wanted everybody singing from the same song sheet. That wasn't happening."
He would not say Wilkinson's departure was a case of bowing to "player power".
"Players did not approach me directly, but you hear rumours."
Vuksich said Jordan's absence from the squad which travelled to Christchurch for Sunday's 1-1 draw with Canterbury United had nothing to do with the upheaval.
"It was a work-related decision." Wilkinson would not be drawn.
Vuksich said: "We have missed three penalties which cost us five points. That, and the three points we lost after beating Waitakere could have had us eight points better off."
Asked whether that could have made a difference in coming to yesterday's parting of the ways, Vuksich said: "That is difficult. I don't know the answer." But, he admitted, the timing was horrible.
Wilkinson disagreed with Vuksich in saying the coach's son Sam was "unlikely to stay".
NZFC manager Glyn Taylor said he had confidence in Auckland City in controlling their own destiny.
"Nobody likes this sort of thing," said Taylor. "But I don't see it as a problem."
He might be alone in that.
Auckland City's run in the New Zealand Football Championship
v Otago, drew 2-2
v Manawatu, lost 1-0
v Hawkes Bay, won 6-2
v Waitakere, drew 0-0
v Waikato, won 3-2
v Canterbury, drew 1-1
