Football
AAP 6y

Chris Greenacre 'not in any rush' to become Wellington Phoenix manager

Interim Wellington Phoenix coach Chris Greenacre says he's not in any rush to land a permanent head coaching position, but insists the perennial A-League battlers can recapture the success of his playing days.

Greenacre started his third stint as the club's interim coach after it parted company with Darije Kalezic on Thursday.

Phoenix competed well for most of Greenacre's first game in charge away to Western Sydney on Saturday, but conceded three late goals in a 4-1 loss.

He admitted it wouldn't be easy to restore confidence after such a shattering defeat.

"You don't become a bad player overnight," Greenacre said.

"We said to the players that it seems to have just been hibernated away for a while and we've got guys just playing with not a great deal of confidence and keep telling them they are good players."

Greenacre downplayed any suggestion he could use the last few rounds as an audition for a full-time head coaching position at the club.

"At this moment in time, it's not something that I am predominantly interested in," he said.

"I just want to use the experience and the past experience and use this as a learning curve going forward in my own coaching career.

"I don't want to look too far ahead, I'm not in any rush to be a head coach."

Greenacre played through the most successful part of Phoenix's A-League tenure to date, when they made the finals for three straight years from 2010.

While they are languishing in last spot, Greenacre remains unshakeable in his belief they can get get back to the level they did early in the decade.

"There's no real reason with the right guidance and the right people -- the club has got a lot of good people at it -- that we can't get back to those finals days," Greenacre said.

He made his presence felt immediately, by leaving leading scorer Andrija Kaluderovic out of the side to play the Wanderers.

"We wanted to hit Western Sydney behind, especially with the pace of Roy [Krishna] and Nathan [Burns] and we thought it was a better option to go with those two guys and purely a football decision, purely just a tactical decision," Greenacre said.

"I talked to Andrija during the week and obviously he was disappointed, which you would fully expect.

"I'm sure that next week in training he'll be showing us that he wants to get back in the side.

"He's our top scorer, so it was always a big call."

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