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Sydney FC enjoy a yawning six point lead at the top of the A-League, unbeaten this season in the league. But Melbourne City are different prospect.
Sydney FC’s record certainly looks imposing. They have scored the most goals and conceded the fewest. Six of their nine matches have been clean sheets, and at least two of their players are pushing their cases for the Johnny Warren medal.
It’s been a season thus far of near flawlessness, with a wholly satisfying mixture of successful freshman additions and resurgent sophomores turning a team that ended the last campaign stained in harrowing failure into the 2016/17 A-League’s most dominant force.
There is, however, one smudge on this so-far report card: Sydney lost the FFA Cup ten days ago to Melbourne City, their nearest league rivals.
A game-plan of very little attacking ambition backfired, as Tim Cahill applied forehead to leather, with City emerging from the stodgy contest 1-0 winners.
It was a regretful tactical regression from manager Graham Arnold, as his team wore stifling caution and the reactive intent to spoil like an ill-fitting suit.
Melbourne City have been very good this season, but they haven’t been crushing teams like some richly armed attacking juggernaut; there was no need to batten down the hatches and eke something out in the cup final.
This Friday’s first league meeting between these team has been spritzed. A win for Sydney in the league won’t counter-balance a Cup final defeat, but the Sky Blues must at least aim to reassert their own talents against the team they aim to keep beneath them for the remainder of the season.
The way they can do this – as we’ve seen what negativity and reservedness has brought them – is to take full, confident strides in attack.
How they should do this is the question, and it’s one not easily answered.
Flying recklessly forward against a team as competent on the counter as City is hugely unwise, so Sydney must apply pressure in specific areas of the pitch. So much of Sydney’s attacking play has involved the fullbacks Michael Zullo and Rhyan Grant, something that was missing from the Cup.
As tempting as it might be to re-involve them in the rematch on Friday, that would be to ignore the threat City’s Bruce Kamau and Fernando Brandan pose on the flanks. These two player hugged the touchlines against Sydney in the cup final, and each have three assists so far this season, good enough for both to be tied second in the league for this stat.
Pairing this with the fact that Kamau and Brandan rank outside the top 50 for key passes made implies neither are really ball-players; their work is done by streaking in behind the defence, or by dribbling through them. They are the beneficiaries of the passes of others, delivering them the ball in promising positions, and as such must be tracked closely.
This is especially true of Kamau, and Arnold got this much correct in the cup; Zullo rarely ventured beyond the halfway line, and his average position was far deeper than he was a week later against Newcastle. Where Arnold went wrong was by not compensating for the loss of Zullo as an attacking force.
With Zullo and Grant, to a lesser extent, holding back in the Cup final, the midfield pairing – in addition to what must have been a defensive mandate – were simply too limited on the ball to make up for Sydney’s deficits in attack.
Starved of possession and too meek when he had the ball, Brandon O’Neil made just 19 passes in the cup final, created no chances and attempted no crosses. Together with midfield partner Joshua Brillante, their efforts tackling and intercepting the ball were considerable, but with superior individual talent on their side, City tore down the defensive foundation the Sydney duo had provided with one soaring Cahill header.
Here is where the adjustment should have been made. On Friday, Arnold must reassess the personnel in this area. In fact, he may have already tested out a possible solution against Newcastle last Sunday.
Against the Jets, Milos Dimitrijevic started his first game of the season alongside Brillante in midfield, and was a silken presence, floating liberally around the attacking half, passing smoothly and laying on an assist.
The extra defensive work that was heaped onto Brillante was carried with ease, although lowly Newcastle are obviously far less of a threat than City will be. Still, Sydney’s system was an effective one, that did a lot of its best work in the central corridor. Of the attacking unit, only David Carney lingered near the touchline, with Alex Brosque, George Blackwood and the excellent Milos Ninkovic all drifting toward the interior.
Dimitrijevic linked midfield to attack beautifully, operating, for the most part, ahead of the halfway line. Comparing Dimitrijevic’s work on Sunday to O’Neil’s in the cup final last Wednesday, you can see it was completed far in advance of O’Neil’s scuttling. Even in a game in which Sydney were dominant this season, say, the 4-1 win over Perth in November, O’Neil’s general positioning wasn’t as advanced as Dimitrijevic’s was against the Jets. Arnold would be wise to use the Serb against City in a similar role.
The Sydney attack was isolated in their first meeting with City, with Bobo floundering as long balls were launched up in his general direction. The presence of Dimitrijevic will go some way to preventing a similar disconnect between the midfield and the attack.
Additionally, it will be interesting to see how exactly the City midfielders Neil Kilkenny and Luke Brattan cope with a specialised creative presence flitting around in their territory. Neither are particularly highly placed when it comes to tackles or interceptions completed in the league this season, and are very much more at home on the ball than scrambling off it.
Both have suffered more fouls than they have committed – the emphatic inverse is true for the Sydney’s Brillante and O’Neil – and appear to be a potential point of collapse for City. If Dimitrijevic can link up with Brosque and Ninkovic, forming triangles around Kilkenny and Brattan, Sydney’s attack will hold far more promise than it did against City ten days ago.
Of course, there is some risk here, but bold tactical forays can’t be completely safe. Zullo and Grant will have to offer support in the attacking third at some point during Friday’s game, and so must pick and choose the right time to commit forward.
Naturally, the way to nullify the City wingers isn’t just to hang back and mark them; pinning them back in their own half, forcing them to track back, can also be part of the plan.
Brillante will have to cope when Bruno Fornaroli roams, and risks becoming swamped if Tim Cahill also drops – as he usually does – into Brillante’s space. It is a gamble relying on Dimitrijevic, who, before the Newcastle match, had played just a dozen minutes of football this season.
But Sydney are the best team in the league for a reason, and if they offer up another laboured attacking effort and lose to City, the gap between the teams will feel a little smaller than three points.