Wellington is set to lose five starting XI players for its Round One clash with Melbourne City on October 8. with the All Whites playing Mexico and the United States on October 8 and 11 in Nashville and Washington DC respectively.

The club applied to have the Round One match postponed which was rejected by Football Federation Australia.

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Merrick is also fuming about the condition his international players will be in for their Round Two clash away to Perth Glory given the travel from the United States.

Wellington is likely to face similar issues throughout the season with New Zealand along with Roy Krishna’s Fiji which is scheduled for its 2018 World Cup qualifiers in November and March.

Merrick said it could leave Wellington without up to nine players for its clashes with Central Coast (Nov 12), Western Sydney (Feb 4) and Newcastle Jets (March 26).

The Nix boss said Wellington were fully supportive of the All Whites’ World Cup campaign and called on the A-League to make changes.

“Where it does leave us, is in a very compromised position,” Merrick said

“That makes life very difficult for us but it also compromises the competition because there’s other teams will be saying ‘they played them when they were half a team and now we’ve got to play them when they’re a full team’.

“That’s going to happen four or five times this year because after the boys return from the USA they’ve got to fly to Perth and it’s the long way around.

“The next round of matches during the Fifa window it’ll be the Oceania qualifiers. I’m tipping that some European-based All Whites won’t be back for that game, so we could have eight maybe nine players out during the next Fifa window.

“That’s a big problem. I think if it’s going to be fixed, it has to be fixed now and it’d be postponed but we’re having no success with the FFA on that matter.”

Wellington could lose up to nine players to international duty

The FFA’s relationship with Fox Sports is believed to have been a factor in rejecting Wellington’s request.

Merrick acknowledged recognising Fifa windows might not be suitable for the A-League but said individual cases to postpone games could be a solution given the integrity of the contest is at risk.

The FFA previously rescheduled Wellington games during New Zealand’s successful 2010 World Cup qualifying campaign.

“In the days prior to the Fifa forcing clubs to acknowledge and respect Fifa international windows if you had two players out you had to play the game and if you had three players out the game was automatically postponed,” Merrick said.

“Maybe to bring back that type of rule might be a good idea.

“Whatever (the case), we’ve built a really good team and because we’re doing so well, there’s more players going to play for New Zealand and that’s going to be a penalty for producing such good quality All Whites players.”

Merrick wants two more players for the new season but said All Whites duty might affect which areas he bolsters, pinpointing a defender and a midfielder.

Fiji's Roy Krishna is likely to also miss Wellington games