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The Roar

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Sydney FC still have a lot of work to do

Can Sydney FC carry their preseason momentum all the way this time?. (Photo by Brett Hemmings/Getty Images)
Expert
27th July, 2018
17

Clarifying the specifics of Daniel De Silva’s loan arrangement, a multi-limb handshake between Roma, Central Coast, and Sydney – and if the conspiracy theorists are right, the FFA too – is like untangling a knotted extension cord. It’s daunting enough to forego the untangle job, and simply yank out the two ends, plug them in and hope things just work.

Much more starkly clear is the magnitude of the recruitment job still in front of the reigning premiers. De Silva’s signing is a good start, and certainly anyone not harbouring some partisan grudge against either party will hope the less-young-than-he-used-to-be youngster regains some career traction at Sydney and takes a stride back in the right direction. 

But De Silva, who was a largely active but ineffective attacking presence at Central Coast last season, has only replaced a smidge of the talent Sydney have lost. Along with their manager, Graham Arnold, Sydney have watched a combined 66 goals – scored over all competitions last season – walk out the door in Jordy Buijs, Luke Wilkshire, David Carney, Matt Simon, and most importantly, Adrian Mierzejewski and Bobo.

To be clear, Sydney only scored 64 total goals in the league last season. 

Obviously, a football team isn’t a balance sheet that can be added to and subtracted from with complete accuracy, but even so, this is an astonishing collection of players to lose, many of whom were nailed on starters, and two of whom where the best striker and best player in the division last season.

As teams around them add to their squads – most notably Perth and Wellington – Sydney have promoted Chris Zuvela and added De Silva and Trent Buhagiar. As of writing, they have Milos Ninkovic and no one else taking up their foreign player or marquee slots. 

So, one can view the current situation in two ways; with a new coach – albeit one who worked as a trusted lieutenant under the previous manager – the club now enjoy a vast amount of building room. Naturally, it’s hard to imagine Steve Corica wouldn’t have liked the Johnny Warren medallist as an available player in his first season, as well as the Golden Boot winner, but the fact they aren’t there leaves him a lot of room to construct a team that is entirely his own. 

The first game of the 2018/19 season isn’t for another four months, which is clearly plenty of time to fill these yawning gaps in the roster. We’ll see exactly how much faith the club have in Corica’s green-horned judgement over the coming weeks; he’s never stewarded a rebuild as large as this.

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Furthermore, he’s inherited a team currently on a winning run that’s largely unprecedented in the A-League, and to what degree the club’s expectations are adjusted for the rookie manager will be interesting to see. Sydney have lost four league games over the last two seasons, which is less than half the amount of losses they suffered in 2015/16 alone.

The club will surely want to continue the success in spite of Arnold’s departure and that of so many key players.

Graham Arnold

(AAP Image/David Moir)

The other way to look at this is much more pessimistic. Having struck gold in three consecutive seasons, signing Ninkovic, Bobo and Mierzejewski, Sydney fans will be fearing their gilded ability to discover and secure potent foreign signings may have run its course. The chances of finding a like-for-like striker, in terms of production, to replace Bobo are slim to none.

Similarly, Mierzejewski’s instant success was almost as rare; look at Alvaro Cejudo’s season for the Wanderers to see how easily a foreign playmaker can fail to launch in their maiden term. 

The way the few new signings fit into the Sydney tactical scheme is cause for some concern as well; assuming Corica continues playing the system that made Sydney the best team in the league, De Silva – outside of his ability in a vacuum – doesn’t fit the role Mierzejewski played in the tactical set up.

Key to Sydney’s ability to take control of games was the tactical switch they could make that saw Mierzejewski and Ninkovic drop back from their nominal starting winger’s slots into the interior of the pitch, collecting the ball in deeper areas and allowing the fullbacks to slide forward to offer width.

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The two central midfielders would shift to cover for the fullbacks and make room for the play-makers, Alex Brosque would drift into space between the opposition midfield and defence; it all clicked and whirred smoothly, and it was repeated in almost every game Sydney played.

Simply put, De Silva doesn’t have the passing quality or positional intelligence to emulate Mierzejewski’s role in this, which of course was crucial. He is far more at home out wide, dribbling wildly and driving past fullbacks, or streaking through off the ball to collect vertical passes.

Of course, because Central Coast were so bad last season, it wouldn’t be unreasonable to argue De Silva was dragged down by the quality of the team, and that with Sydney he might be a different player altogether. But the Mariners enjoyed the third-highest average share of possession last season and had more passes-per-goal and passes-per-shot than any other team.

Theirs was a system that was high-involvement, a frenzy of passing and touches, and De Silva started 20 of the 21 games he played in, racking up more than 1,000 possessions over the season. If he had the ability to control the game, to use possession well enough to be trusted to fill Mierzejewski’s vacated deeper role, we would have seen evidence of these skills last season.

Daniel De Silva

(AAP Image/Daniel Munoz)

This isn’t to say De Silva is a bad player, or won’t be an asset for Sydney, just that it seems unlikely he’ll be able to provide tactically what the team lost when Mierzejewski left.

Who knows, perhaps Corica will begin the new season with a totally revamped tactical approach, armed with a platoon of new players purpose-built to suit it. Perhaps he’ll sign a new striker that will take the league by the scruff of the neck, or maybe Charles Lokolingoy will make a gleaming ascent to the starting role up front, who knows.

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Perhaps Sydney will remain the league’s best team in 2018/19. This far out from the opening game against Adelaide, there is no need to panic. But it would be wise to reckon with the size of the task presently at hand.  

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