WHO'S the most skilled of our crew? Who’s a friend to me and you? Very nice, good looking too. Daniel, yay Daniel!

Yes, I have been watching Cool Runnings too much recently, but one of the topics de jour in Wellington is how Ricki Herbert should best utilise the talents of the world’s newest Kiwi footballer.

Regardless of the fact he has been carrying a slight injury the last couple of weeks, and was supposedly a huge risk last Friday night, it has to be asked why he has been on the bench for almost every game this season.

Ricki obviously feels Daniel is best used as an ‘impact’ player, but he often hasn’t been on the pitch long enough to make that impact. He has often come on in the last ten minutes and not been able to really get into the game; whereas with twenty minutes to play with in Round 15 he tore Perth apart, his superior technical skill showing up every other player on the park, setting up our goal and going a long way to setting up other spurned chances as we went in search of the winner.

For me, he should be starting every match; alongside Felipe he was a huge creative force for us last season when we were one of the highest scoring teams. I don’t know if anyone else sees it (RH obviously doesn’t), but no Daniel seems to equal no creativity.

While there are doubts about his desire to track back and defend, if this is what is keeping him out of the side then I hope Herbert is working rather hard with him to sort it out. Because even though Troy Hearfield is a talented young player, I’d rather see our most skilled and creative player starting games, with Bertos on the other wing and Ferrante in the middle going forward; the 4-2-3-1 we almost won the pre-season cup with and have hardly used since.

If he doesn’t start against CCM after his top-drawer performance against Perth, I’ll be disappointed. If he doesn’t get at least 25 minutes, I’ll be just a little bit annoyed. We can’t keep the 6th best A-League import on the bench for long, he got rated so highly for a reason.

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Sadly Fred is gone for the rest of his guest stint according to yesterday’s Dominion Post, but wants to come back next season, possibly even as a full squad member (his MLS contract runs out this coming November).

He gave the side that creative spark we have missed without the Felipe/Daniel combination and with two strikers ahead of him, two of Bertos, Daniel, and Hearfield on the wings and McKain next to him, we could just have a lethal attack again.

In terms of strikers, there’s been a bit of chat on yellowfever.co.nz about the possibility of the club chasing Dadi. My opinion is that he is too old to be a first-choice striker for a club that wants to be chasing the top-four, if Perth don’t want him he could be a handy pickup with Coveny, Draper, and Kwasnik all appearing to be on the way out come April.

Jonas Salley is also being speculated. Since he almost signed for the Nix for last season and RH is a fan, I’d suggest watching this space.