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The A-League is blessed with two potentially fabulous clashes at the semi-final stage of the playoff series, but I’m tipping that at the end of it all we’ll have the teams that finished first and second in the regular season making the grand final again.
It happened in each of the first three seasons the current finals format was used and I can’t see enough reason to tip either of the visiting teams this weekend.
Brisbane Roar, who play Western Sydney Wanderers at Pirtek Stadium on Sunday, were a bit lucky to beat Melbourne Victory in an elimination final at Suncorp Stadium last weekend.
Victory, despite being away from home, outplayed Roar in the first half. They came at them and should have been up by at least one goal at the break.
Had they managed to get a goal, say, midway through the first half, they may have been able to temper their approach and save a bit of energy.
But, having gone into the match with a clear plan to take the game to the opposition, they were compelled to keep doing so and started to run out of gas in the second half.
Victory still managed to score first – and with just ten men by then – but Brisbane bombarded them in the dying minutes and forced a 2-1 win.
Brisbane got their goals from veterans Matt McKay and Thomas Broich, but they’re going to need more from striker Jamie Maclaren if they’re to be a chance of upsetting the Wanderers.
Maclaren wasn’t able to work his way into the game against Victory as he would have liked. He has been a key man more than once for Roar against Wanderers before and will need to make a big impact again.
Melbourne City, who play Adelaide United at Coopers Stadium on Friday, deservedly beat Perth Glory 2-0 at AAMI Park thanks to a brilliant double from Bruno Fornaroli, but the way Perth played suggested their run really had come to an end in their last-round loss to Sydney FC.
Don’t forget, the Sky Blues, who had previously scored just 32 goals in 26 games, managed to put four past Glory.
Diego Castro and Chris Harold both returned from injury for Perth against City, but it didn’t make much difference. They weren’t remotely the same team that had stormed through the second half of the regular season.
City as a team and Fornaroli as an individual will find it much harder to break down Adelaide’s defence.
Overall, United had clearly the best defence in the 27 rounds, conceding just 28 goals, and 14 of those came in a four-goal stretch through rounds three to six. Since Adelaide finally started winning, in Round 9, they have defended superbly.
Fornaroli faces his biggest challenge of the season in this game.
Wanderers found it harder to gather points in the second half of the season than the first half, but their grit allowed them to hang in there.
Coach Tony Popovic was prepared to make significant changes to try to get kick-starts when the engine appeared to have stalled a couple of times, including dropping Andrew Redmayne for Liam Reddy in goal and later going back to Redmayne.
But his decision to make striker Brendon Santalab, who had been so productive off the bench this season, a starter again when goals dried up for the team was his most important move.
It has worked so far, with Wanderers scoring six goals in the last rounds, which saw wins over Central Coast Mariners (4-1) and Wellington Phoenix (2-0) , and Santalab getting four of them.
Playing Brisbane obviously represents a much more difficult challenge than playing two non-finals teams, but Santalab will go in with a striker’s key weapon – confidence.
Popovic and his coaching staff have come up with some really good plans for specific games this season. It was Wanderers who virtually put an end to the 3-5-2 formation City were using when they exploited it in a 4-3 win in Round 17.
Wanderers will put a lot of pressure on Brisbane’s key men and make it very hard for Roar to settle as a team.
Brisbane haven’t won away since January 30. Their last four away games have resulted in three losses and a draw. The draw came in the last round, 0-0 against Victory, when a win over a side missing many rested stars would have clinched them the Premier’s Plate.
Hitting the road can’t be Roar’s favourite thing at the moment. This will most likely be where their season ends.
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