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Sluggish Newcastle thrashed at home by Melbourne City

Ernie Merrick of the Newcastle Jets (Photo by Nigel Owen/Action Plus via Getty Images)
Expert
1st April, 2018
4

It was Riley McGree who offered most of the early attacking sparkle for Newcastle, a young player happily back in the A-League – if only on loan – and who appeared to be going tit-for-tat with Melbourne City’s own impressive starlet, Daniel Arzani.

Both youngsters were sharing a wing, illuminating it with neat touches and sudden dashes into the final third, a very pleasing micro-contest within this slightly heavy-eyed late-season skirmish.

Arzani set up Stefan Mauk and Bruno Fornaroli with two superb final passes, but his teammates couldn’t consolidate his work by scoring.

McGree was sidling inside from the left, providing fewer moments of acute incision than Arzani, but more steel, as well as valuable, sensible passing.

Arzani was hard to look away from. Having just earned a booking, with 24 minutes gone, sliding in on a prone Jack Duncan, he then got Nikolai Topor-Stanley booked as well, scything through the defence from the right, with Topor-Stanley forced to body-check the jet-heeled winger.

Arzani’s ability to shuffle the ball from foot to foot while haring through defenders at top speed is remarkable; even I, who have urged for reservedness as far as Arzani’s Socceroos candidacy is concerned, am finding it hard to resist the mania. 

Buoyed by Arzani’s propellant threat, City were on top. Fornaroli nearly scrambled the ball over for the first goal, after a terrific Oli Bozanic cross from the left.

The ball, with both Duncan and Fornaroli thrashing horizontally toward it, had to be hacked clear at the last second. Luke Brattan, meanwhile, was controlling the midfield, and Bart Schenkeveld was typically bullish at centre back. 

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Still, as they have been all season, Newcastle always have a glint when the ball is turned over, and so are never completely blunted, even when pressed back as firmly as they were here.

The suddenness with which they spring on the break will rattle any defence; there’s a reason why they’ve scored in every single round.

But City were passing methodically and with a measured sense of aggression. The majority of attacks ended with a City corner or a Newcastle goal kick, allowing the away team to maintain the pressure, or reset. Eventually, with three minutes left in the first half, that pressure told, and Newcastle were perforated.

Fornaroli, having just slammed a scissor kick onto the crossbar, then punched home a goal from close range, converting neat knockdown from the corner his spectacular earlier effort had forced.

Melbourne City tall

(Photo by Quinn Rooney/Getty Images)

It was a deserved reward for a half of near-constant pressure; City enjoyed almost 60 per cent of possession, and took more than double the shots Newcastle did.

City had third place on the table in their sights; the Jets, with first place now mathematically Sydney’s, and second-place mathematically theirs, were playing with the sort of disinterested tone you’d expect. 

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The twin returns from injury, Vargas to the Jets and Fornaroli to City, have added two spritzes of fizz into the finals cocktail, and will go far in making up for the flatness caused by the twin departures of Andrew Nabbout and Ross McCormack.

The last few weeks have also reshaped the foggy predictions going into the post-season; yes, these past few dawdling results for Sydney and Newcastle can’t be taken as concrete indicators of how they’ll perform in the finals, but equally we can’t dismiss the resurgent Victory – four wins in their last five fixtures – a surging Adelaide – on a three-match win streak – or indeed the rare attacking confidence that coursed through City here. 

Newcastle emerged from the sheds with more vigour, and tore into the second half with the kind of vertical aggression with which they’ve prospered so this season.

Off-the-ball runs on the wings disguised sudden piercing passes down the middle to Roy O’Donovan, or vice-versa. But their energy was soon punctured, this time direct from a corner, when Dario Vidosic – a fine header of the ball – nodded in a second goal for City.

Vidosic rose in a powerful, flexed and upright posture, and his finish here was super, although he did use his marker as a pommel horse. 

So the Jets, who had been sniffing for an equaliser, were suddenly sniffing the smelling salts, stunned as they were by the set-piece counter-punch.

City resumed their keep-ball, with Arzani notching up nutmegs by the footfull. Newcastle brought on Pato Rodriguez to spark something in attack, with half an hour remaining.

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Rodriguez instantly did just that, twisting and turning in the box then spearing a pass to Steven Ugarkovic, whose snap shot was saved by Dean Bouzanis. 

Dimi Petratos, save for a floated shot and a saved free kick, hadn’t really affected the game, far from his usual barrel-chested, urgent self.

He was, though, the fulcrum for a sweeping counter-attack, a sequence that was activated by his controlling touch, was escalated by O’Donovan’s through-ball, but sputtered out with Rodriguez’s wayward, curling shot.

O’Donovan was then inches away from turning home a wicked Ivan Vujica cross, tumbling as he dangled out a leg, kicking up turf and dirt as he careered across the face of goal. Newcastle, with less than a quarter of the game left, had woken up with clear eyes now. 

It took a few seconds before they were knocked senseless again, by Vidosic for the second time, and again from a set piece. A free kick, situated lazily out on the left, was struck sweetly by Vidosic, and it curled by the wall and flew inside Duncan’s right-hand post.

That was the final blow, and although Newcastle fought admirably to preserve their scoring record, their effort was made in vain. 

Opening the evening with a wonderful extended fanfare, City controlled the first half, and that fanfare formed the dominant theme for the evening, restricting Newcastle to the barest, glimmering leitmotifs that barely needed addressing.

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Then, in the second act, when Newcastle asked a little more voluminously, City answered with emphatic response leitmotifs of their own, perfectly timed and potent ripostes that crushed the burgeoning counter-theme.

It truly was a symphony of football from City, with Schenkeveld et al providing the swelling defensive body to sustain Arzani’s twirling melodies and Vidosic’s punchy staccato interventions.

Newcastle, to a certain extent, just lay there and listened to the music; their own performance begins on April 28, and they’d better have tuned up and rehearsed by the time the opening night of the finals arrives. 

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