A late Adelaide United equaliser has denied Western Sydney Wanderers coach Josep Gombau an A-League win over his former club at Spotless Stadium.
Both goals in the 1-1 draw came from first-time A-League scorers, though it took one many more games than the other.
The Wanderers looked set for a third straight win until substitute Apostolos Stamatelopoulos scored from close range following a cut back from Ryan Strain.
It was a first goal in just his third appearance for the 18-year-old, who had only been on the field a few minutes.
Wanderers full-back Jack Clisby gave his side a 52nd-minute lead with a maiden A-League goal that came after six and a half seasons and 90 games.
Clisby finished off from close range at the far post after a perfect cross from Roly Bonevacia.
Adelaide pressed for a winner in the dying stages but had to settle for a point.
That lifted them into outright fourth and kept the Wanderers down in sixth.
A share of the spoils was a fair reflection of a game in which both sides had several chances.
Adelaide had the early opportunities, with Baba Diawara and Ryan Kitto both failing to capitalise.
The Wanderers then carved out some decent chances. Oriol Riera hit a post and Steven Lustica had a follow-up attempt cleared off the line by Jordan Elsey while Mark Bridge went close on a couple of occasions.
Gomabu made all three of his substitutions before the last 10 minutes but denied the changes had affected his team’s stability and that fatigue had forced his hand.
“If you want to find it’s my mistake then write this, but I don’t have this feeling,” said Gombau, who coached Adelaide from 2013-15 and took over at the Wanderers last November.
“I think honestly we deserved to win.
“In the first half we had three good chances to go into the changing room at halftime winning.”
Adelaide coach Marco Kurz had a different take on the game and was pleased with the way his changed side had performed with just one training session together beforehand.
“I think in the last 30 minutes we had more chances but when I saw the whole 90 minutes I think the draw, the result was correct for both sides,” he said.
Nemesis
Guest
WSW v AUFC Attendance: 10,771 This is the best website for all ALeague information - Starting XI, subs, when goals were scored, who was the referee, crowds, etc. - for every match since Day 1: http://www.ultimatealeague.com/fixtures.php
j,binnie
Guest
Buddy - Do you know what the actual crowd figure was?. It hasn't been reported in any of the press reports on the game and as of today has still not been shown on the official FFA site that normally states these figures. Cheers jb.
Franko
Guest
Spot on, that's what I saw as an AU supporter also. Sad to see Josep sacrifice his integrity for results. Next year will be different.
Kangajets
Guest
Fmd. I love family guy. Which episode was it ?
Grobbelaar
Roar Guru
A very tight contest, managed to get above average ratings for this time of year of 41k, beating Family Guy into 6th position of the most watched shows on Fox last night, a fraction below the Real Housewives of Beverley Hills and Paw Patrol.
Kangajets
Guest
Buddy That is an excellent summary of the game that I watch on Fox The Phoenix v victory game was enjoyable also . It was a great round of midweek football imo .
Buddy
Guest
Most of the reports I saw on the way home from the game appeared to talk about an Adelaide fightback or comeback in the game, almost Lazarus like. Well that wasn’t the game I watched along with 10700 other folk at ANZ. From the outset we saw two contrasting methods of attacking the opposition goal and after a few minutes of hand in mouth stuff whilst WSW tried to play out from the back using the fullbacks and always the second pass to a well marked Bonevcia that just put Wanderers under pressure, things settled into a more predictible pattern. Adelaide used their fast pace attackers to carve out numerous openings by reaching the by-line and cutting back towards the edge of the goal area annd if the side possessed any players with a real eye for goal, they could have converted 3 or 4 of those chances and killed off the game inside 45 minutes. At the other end, the attacks were more measurered with a more precise plan that saw the ball often reach Riera or Bridge, then laid back with a second incisive pass open up the defence for shots at goal. Bridge had a couple of excellent chances to score what would have been fairly spectacular goals and the Adelaide keeper made a few good stops. Adelaide looked dangerous everytime they used pace to attack and the only consolation was the knowledge that their accuracy with shots was not good, combined with a scrambling defence very reminiscent of the early days of Beecham and NTS. When Wanderers scored it was the high line that Adelaide were keeping that brought them undone as the ball was fed to Bonevacia who was probably the only Wanderers player that seriously threatened Adelaide with pace and was clearly onside before managing to get ahead of the defence and placing his measured low cross Just outside the goal area for Clisby and Bridge to convert. The game was nowhere near won and Wanderers were never in control in the second half and even though the clock was winding down, Adelaide always had a goal in them even with their conversion rate not looking pretty. The corner that they scored from was poorly defended which contrasted to earlier ones that had been controlled by Cornthwaite and co and nobody was really surprised at the equalizer - at least not in the bays where I was sitting. The last few minutes including 4 mins of added time saw Adelaide as determined as ever to get forward whereas WSW did not seem too sure of the plan and on one occasion when Santalab and Lachlan Scott were opening up down the right side, the attack ground to a halt with several backward passesthat bore the hallmarks of a playbook that said “this is what we do, and don’t improvise”. A draw was a very fair result from a pretty exciting game....two good games on consecutive nights....I can live with that!