City remain predictably unpredictable
Melbourne City are surely the league’s most erratic team, a point underlined by their unlikely 1-0 win at Sydney FC on Friday. Had it been a boxing bout the home side would have been declared clear winners but, to paraphrase the late great Aussie football missionary Johnny Warren, “football, like life, isn’t always fair”. Heading into the weekend Sydney had won six of their last seven A-League games, scoring 25 goals in the process – a competition record for a seven-match run. City, in contrast, were winless in five away games, failing to score in four of those. Even City coach John van ’t Schip lost his Euro-cool as James Brown netted the winner. No doubt Van ’t Schip was equally delighted with his tactical plan coming to fruition, as much as the raw emotion of seeing the net ripple.
Surely a failure to make the finals will result in a change of coach at the ambitious Melbourne club. The numerous changes to their line-ups over the course of the season is a mitigating factor, albeit one partly of their own doing. Friday’s against-the-odds victory will provide confidence should they make the finals. But even then it will be a matter of which City turn up on the day. This, after all, is a team that in the past five matches has beaten Sydney and Adelaide United, yet lost to Western Sydney and Central Coast Mariners.
Adelaide burdened by lack of a Melbourne victory
Adelaide collected a valuable and well deserved point on Saturday at an adrenaline-fuelled Hindmarsh, but will their lack of a win over their cross-border rivals become a psychological millstone come finals time? Six matches against the Victory during the Josep Gombau-era have failed to render a win for the Reds. Not for the first time this season, Adelaide failed to turn some significant periods of domination into goals. To a degree it has become a theme, with Adelaide’s goal return not as high as the sheer quantity of chances they created. But above all the 2-2 draw was high-quality entertainment and a sparkling advert for the A-League. Make sure to set aside a couple of hours in the calendar if these two meet again in May’s finals series, where Adelaide’s winning drought against Victory will be a major sub-plot. Fair chance a certain grand final meeting will also receive an airing.
The difficult third season
Can it get any worse for Western Sydney? A loss against Newcastle Jets on Saturday was further evidence that the Wanderers well and truly used up their large dose of good fortune during their storied Asian Champions League campaign. Confirmation that the football gods are frowning upon the Wanderers came with a loss to arguably the most dysfunctional club in A-League history, although New Zealand Knights perhaps still shade the Jets in that area. Yet, it could have been even worse for the Wanderers. The defeat came despite – in a season of high profile match refereeing errors – what was surely the worst match officials’ decision of the season as Edson Montano was denied a goal for offside. Normally it’s possible to imagine why an incorrect decision was been reached, but this was truly incomprehensible. For a moment it was like travelling in a DeLorean back to the days of referees thrust into running the line on an improvised basis at the World Cup.
There are of course mitigating circumstances for the Wanderers. Playing their ninth match in just 29 days, Tony Popovic decided to gamble in the potential wooden-spoon decider. The Wanderers lined up with virtually a Youth League XI, with six teenagers starting. It was the youngest outfield side fielded in the A-League leaving aside Gold Coast United who – in one of their many bizarre moments under Clive Palmer and his nobody-tells-me-what to-do reign – fielded some left-field line-ups during the club’s dying days. The Wanderers will probably ultimately overhaul the Jets, who face the league’s leading sides in their run-in, but it is still hard to believe this is the same club crowned Asia’s best earlier this season.
Mariners set sail in a new direction
These are strange days at Central Coast Mariners. Traditionally the league’s most stable outfit, the Gosford outfit are very much a club in flux. The Mariners were the last of the A-League’s foundation clubs to dismiss a coach, but Phil Moss’s recent axing has been followed by this week’s announcement that the services of crowd-favourite Matt Simon will no longer be required. The dispensing of Simon is perhaps a metaphor for the changing culture at the Mariners. Very much a community-focussed club, news that the one-time East Gosford tradie is surplus to requirements is, on the surface at least, hugely surprising. Sure his rustic battering ram style may not be in keeping with a ‘vision’ of the new management, but surely Simon could offer value in some capacity. So too, it is easy to imagine Simon accepting reduced financial incentive if it meant staying at the Mariners. A regional club needs as many local products as it can find, and currently there are few for the Mariners. On the positive side the club, following several years of a rumoured departure from the area, are in advanced stages of negotiations which will confirm a minimum 12 matches a year at their traditional home. Sunday’s 1-1 draw with Perth Glory was relatively inconsequential in the grand scheme of things, but it did mark the soon-to-retire John Hutchinson playing his 223rd match, and taking a temporary hold of the competition’s most-matches record. Ironically, the Morwell-born Malta international claimed sole control of the record after Glory goalkeeper and former Mariners shotstopper Danny Vukovic was a late omission for the match through injury. For Perth, a failure to win at the Mariners was yet another sign of their recent malaise. Incredibly they still have a share of second despite a ninth successive match without victory.
Phoenix rise further but Asia ceiling remains
It’s hard not to like Wellington Phoenix. From their phlegmatic coach who refuses to follow fashion by berating fourth officials to their dynamic and multi-cultured forward line, the Phoenix have something for every discerning old-school neutral. And for perhaps the first time in the club’s history, they are dominating matches and opponents with regularity. Few teams control Brisbane Roar on their own patch in the possession stakes, but that is what the Phoenix did on Sunday. Nathan Burns’s Messi-esque dribble into the box to set up Michael McGlinchey’s goal was a delight. Most teams in the league would love to have attacking players such as Burns, Roy Krishna and Roly Bonevacia. A late monsoonal downpour meant the match was abandoned in the 73rd minute, but competition regulations leaves the Phoenix with all three points. The only top-five team to win this weekend means the Phoenix have stretched their advantage at the summit to four points. With five rounds remaining they are closing on a hitherto unthinkable premiership. Normally that would mean qualification for the Asian Champions League, but the AFC have previously ruled the Phoenix are ineligible due to being domiciled in a different confederation. It is a vexed scenario certainly. On one level it is hard to reason that the club can be in the A-League but not the Champions League, but the boffins in Kuala Lumpur have an equally strong case.
