Can the Roar plug the gaps?
For all the talk of Besart Berisha’s off-season move to Melbourne Victory and what effect this would have on the Brisbane Roar’s strike power (and ability to irritate opponents and rival supporters alike) it is defensive frailty that has seen the defending champions lose their opening two matches. In 27 regular season games last year Brisbane conceded just 25 goals. So far this time around, they’ve conceded five: two against Adelaide, and three against Perth. Not once last year did they concede three or more goals. Brisbane, it seems, are still adjusting to the loss of right-back Ivan Franjic (now with Torpedo Moscow) while James Donachie is understandably taking time to settle into his new role. At the same time, Brisbane were without stalwart midfielder Matt McKay last week and he’ll be unavailable again on Friday night against Sydney FC as he’s serving the second of a two-match ban. Brisbane will no doubt enjoy returning to Lang Park after their trip to Perth, but they’ll need to do more to plug their defence, especially against a Sydney team that have not only shown a nose for goal, but that the aimless wanderings under Frank Farina are a thing of the past. Sydney will miss the suspended Nikola Petkovic but they’ll be pleased to have Sasa Ognenovski on deck after the FFA Cup match against Adelaide on Wednesday night allowed him to serve his one-match ban (for failing to resist the temptation to slap the head of Wanderers’ Vitor Saba in last week’s derby). Sydney will be full of confidence but Brisbane, surely, won’t lose three on the trot.
The tale of two strikers
One of the surprise packets of the season so far has been Perth Glory. After two wins (the same number Perth had over their final 13 games of last season), Glory are sitting pretty, despite all the purple, atop the A-League ladder. Last week, Kenny Lowe’s team did as promised and smashed and grabbed against the Brisbane Roar. Ensuring their counter-attacking bore fruit was 28-year-old Dubliner Andy Keogh, a journeyman with 10 previous clubs and 30 caps for Ireland. After scoring the winner against Wellington in round one, Keogh added a hat-trick (including another winner) against the defending champions, delivering himself and Perth a start they wouldn’t have dared dream of. But can they keep it up, bearing in mind most pundits are waiting for a reversion to the mean? Their opponents on Sunday evening will be the in-form Adelaide United who were unlucky not to take all three points against Victory last week before beating Sydney FC 3-1 in a controversial FFA Cup midweek clash. Scoring twice in that latter game, to go with his cracking goal in Adelaide’s opening win against Brisbane, was Bruce Djite whose pace, work rate and muscular directness are proving a nice foil to the trickier wiles of his team-mates. Given the dearth of strikers in the Socceroos squad more goals could put him in the frame with the Asian Cup on the horizon.
City’s route to goal
On Thursday it was revealed that despite all the talk and fanfare behind his 10-match guest stint, David Villa will be heading back to New York in two weeks and that he is not guaranteed (or contractually compelled) to return. As we ponder whether any star-struck City fans will feel cheated by the news, we can be sure it will ensure Villa is treated especially nicely over the next fortnight by everyone at the club (“You like my shirt? Here, have it. What about my pants? You can have them too… please come back…”). On the other hand, Villa’s imminent departure will also hasten the need for City to find another route to goal. Admittedly two games is not much of a sample size but for all their enterprising play over 180 minutes, all City have to show for it are two points courtesy of two well-taken goals by their Spanish star. Against Newcastle last week, City dominated the opening half but created few clear chances, an echo of the club when they were known as Heart. Villa, playing as a left-side attacker, rescued them a point with his late equaliser but when he’s gone (sooner or later) who’ll give City the reward for their endeavour —an endeavour that owes much to the work of Damien Duff on the right and Massimo Murdocca and Aaron Mooy in the middle?
Mate Dugandzic and Iain Ramsay may chip in here and there, as might Robert Koren once the reinjured marquee actually gets on the pitch, but much of the responsibility will rest on the shoulders of David Williams, who made his first A-League start of the season against the Jets. Playing as the centre-man in a front three, Williams looked sharp and had some lovely touches on the ball but he snatched at a couple of good chances, blazing the best of them over the bar from inside the box (but not as far over the bar as a second-half speculator from Erik Paartalu; that ball is surely now passing the International Space Station). Against a Melbourne Victory side that has tightened up at the back (in a good way) Williams will be hoping to recapture the kind of form and confidence he showed at the tail end of last season when he scored eight goals in the final 11 matches. That’s just the kind of output City will need from him when Villa officially becomes a most pleasant memory.
McGlinchey last week, Burns this one?
It took Wellington 11 matches to register their first win last season, so to reach the same point after two games could be seen as significant progress. All the same, the Phoenix haven’t quite put things together as yet, and they’ve been guilty of fading out of games, which cost them a point in their opener against Perth. Yet as coach Ernie Merrick noted, they improved in their away win last week against the Central Coast Mariners, especially since they were forced to recover from going behind through a Tom Doyle own-goal. Ex-Mariner Michael McGlinchey surprised no one by scoring the Phoenix’s equaliser, but Merrick found particular pleasure in Nathan Burns’ winner and after the game he spoke of his desire to see Burns and McGlinchey converting more regularly: “Burns and McGlinchey are going to be great midfielders, great attacking players and very good goalscorers this year.” As McGlinchey did last week, Burns will now get a chance to face his old team when the Jets travel to Wellington for Sunday evening’s match. Given the Phoenix’s coming schedule – matches against the Victory, the Wanderers and Adelaide – a win against a rebuilt Newcastle team looks a must if the Phoenix are to stay in touch with the leaders. But the Jets will be buoyed by an encouraging performance against Melbourne City last week. After being outplayed in the first half they had the balance of power in the second and new signing Edson Montano will have done his confidence no harm at all by getting off the mark.
Meanwhile, at Wanderland…
Notwithstanding the difficulty of their fixtures, consecutive losses are not quite what the Western Sydney Wanderers would have been expecting from their opening two matches of the new season. Considering their pre-season included pointy end Asian Champions League fixtures, there was an expectation that Tony Popovic’s team would be a few yards ahead by the time the smoke cleared from the A-League starter’s pistol. That the Wanderers have been sluggish (and it’s not just the losses, it’s the performances; one meek, the other – for all the theatre of the occasions – disjointed) has us pondering why. Has the off-season loss of Jerome Polenz and Youssouf Hersi and the hitherto unavailability of the influential Matthew Spiranovic hobbled them? Has the rest of the league (or at least Victory and Sydney) hauled the Wanderers in? And have the Wanderers been distracted by the two-leg ACL final they’ll be contesting with Saudi Arabia’s Al-Hilal over the next two weekends?
On this third point Popovic has assured us they haven’t been, but it must have been difficult for the Wanderers to keep their entire focus on Victory and Sydney without glancing at Al-Hilal, lurking in their consciousness, pulling faces and banging on the glass. The ACL final is a big deal – for the Wanderers and Australian football – as Popovich himself said this week: “At the moment I just feel proud and honoured, first and foremost of this club, but secondly of a club that is in an ACL final. We’re representing our country, Australian football and we’re certainly very determined to have no regrets at the end of these two weeks. We feel if we can do that, we well and truly could be the first [Australian] club to hold up that trophy.” Win or lose, the Wanderers’ A-league season – currently on hiatus – will not truly start until the ACL final is done.
