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.
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.
(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.
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.
(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.
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.
Arto
Guest
Whilst I stand to be corrected, I seem to detect an anti-SFC bias within your recent work. Maybe I'm just being a sensitive SFC-fan, but then again, maybe you don't like the Sky Blues.
Arto
Guest
That could probably be said about most teams at this point in the season, Stuart. With only 17 players registered so far, it goes without saying that the team will be quite different come the start of the season - not to mention come the back-end of it when ACL participation kicks in. For example, at present SFC have ONE (out-&-out) striker who is 21 years old with 7 A-League appearances (none as a starter) for a grand total of 39mins & ZERO goals to his name. Playing Brosque & Buhagiar up front is no long-term solution either (everyone knows that) so obviously a new striker will be recruited and most likely a marquee one at that. Given that there are also 3 more visa-spots available, we could quite well see a new version of Bobo in Sky Blue soon. As a SFC fan, I'm not actually too worried right now about the way the squad is shaping up as the club is on record as saying they are waiting for the European transfer windows to close before finalising recruiting as that can have a major influence on who is available and at what price - something which sounds very sensible, IMO. Couple with that a good recent track record with visa-spot signings and I'm reasonably confident we'll be a Top-4 side this season & able to defend the FFA Cup sucessfully too.
Nemesis
Guest
Many Euro leagues also have a 4-6 week break mid-season. ALeague is currently 10 teams with a 27 match duration. Most Euro leagues are 18-20 teams & play an additional 7-11 matches in the league. So, it's no surprise our competition runs for 7-11 weeks less than the Euro leagues. I'd expect we'll eventually get to a season where we play 32 weeks of ALeague/FFA Cup/League Cup, spread over 9-10 months when we factor in stoppages for internationals & probably a mid-season break. No rush. It will happen. It's only Yr 14 of ALeague.
MQ
Guest
Yes, you're right, but still seems a long way away, especially when you consider that all the major European leagues start late August, early to mid Sept. I've been told so many times that our season goes over the Summer to align with the European leagues, so I can't understand why we too can't be starting late August or early to mid Sept. In fact, if you look back to the early years of the A-League, in particular, the 3rd season, 2007-08, which had the highest average attendance in the history of the A-League, we actually started in late August. That's the best possible indicator you could have that that's when we should be starting the league.
Mahler
Guest
Where do you get 4 months from? Season starts Oct 19. That's less than 3 months isn't it?
Stevo
Roar Rookie
Corica, 'decorated' player, youth team success but can he bring that to the senior team? Seems like he has work to do to bolster the side to the level of the Arnie years. It will be fascinating to watch and I wish him well because the HAL needs to develop a good pool of talented local coaches/managers.
Paul
Guest
Most VAR calls in games against Sydney went the smurfs way. It will be interesting to see if the referees give Sydney FC the rub of the green under Corica like they did with Arnold. I hope not. I expect Rhyan Grant to get suspended twice on cumulative yellows and at least once due to a red card.
Stuart Thomas
Expert
A nice summation Evan. Whilst four months sounds like a long time, I think Sydney will be under some pressure to make another key signing fairly soon. Personally, I don't think the side they will send on the pitch for FFA Cup action this week has much of a chance of doing anything significant in the league in its current form. two things spring to mind. a) The money at their disposal could see something significant happen quite late in the piece. b) Are there ducks and drakes being played? I agree with your comments on De Silva. A promising player yet within Sydney's structure of last season, I'm not sure what he will do. Corica is going to have a baptism of fire unless some significant signings are made. The fans will expect more of the same and it won't be happening at this stage.
Arto
Guest
Great comment, Nemesis! And notice all others that he didn't once mention anything about fouls, refs, FFA or bias/conspiracy! I agree with Evan about the rebuilding job being a big one & I have my doubts as to whether we can do it, TBH. I think we'll be a Top 4 team still, but it'll take something really special to win the Premiership again IMO. PG look ominous, NJ will be strong again and of course every team will be starting a new season with high expectations so some teams will disappoint. My hopes for the coming season: (realistically) - Go back-to-back in tge FFA Cup, - Top 4 in League - Semi-finalist & hopefully another GF so that we can have another crack at the ACL after this season too.
Paul
Guest
The Smurfs got the VAR calls too. As to yellow cards, they average 0.5 per game whereas nearly all the other teams were between 1 to 2 yell W cards per game.
MQ
Guest
SFC has just signed the Dutch defender Jop van der LInden. This is what I have been able to glean about his last few seasons: Van der Linden tekende in mei 2015 een contract tot medio 2019 bij AZ, dat hem daarmee per 1 juli transfervrij overnam. Hier kwam hij voor de tweede keer onder coach Van den Brom te spelen. In het seizoen 2016/17 speelde Van der Linden alleen competitiewedstrijden mee bij Jong AZ. Met dit team wist hij dat seizoen de titel te pakken van de Tweede divisie. AZ verhuurde Van der Linden gedurende het seizoen 2017/18 aan Willem II.
MQ
Guest
Paul Although the fact remains that even with all of that "assistance", SFC was not able to make the grand final.
Cousin Claudio
Roar Guru
Give it a rest Pip, its only July and they haven't even played a game yet. There's no evidence Sydney FC were favoured by the referees and in fact Victory got the 50/50 calls in the semi final. If it was a conspiracy for SFC to make the grand final, it failed miserably. Why don't you blame the VAR instead.
Chump
Guest
Agreed - the amount of cynical fouls that sydney committed under arnold that were just let go when every other team (except victory) would be pinged became a running joke last season.
Paul
Guest
the refs refused to card or give fouls to Sydney players when they should have. There were intimidated by Angry Arnie or was it the backlash from Gallop if they didn't allow the smurfs to win.
Cousin Claudio
Roar Guru
"Sydney only scored 64 total goals in the league last season". That was 14 goals more that their nearest rival and 44 more goals than the Mariners. What does that say for the rest of the A-League? Season kickoff still 2 months away and the Sydney FC bagging has started already. Melbourne Victory - now there's a team you should be putting the boot into. Average team who cheated their way to victory to claim another Golden Toilet Seat.
Nemesis
Guest
The reason Sydney were so far ahead of the competition last season was due to their uncanny ability to win matches even when they didn't play better than the opposition. And, they usually won these matches by more than 1 goal. Simply, Sydney were clinical finishers. Something we are not used to seeing in Australia - at club level & definitely never see at international level. Adrian & Ninkovic were keys, but lots of clubs in ALeague have reasonable keys to unlock defences, but the they still fumble putting the key in the lock, or, after putting the key in the lock they stumble before they get through the door. Sydney's defence & midfield might be just as strong this season. But, can they finish with the precision & regularity of Bobo? City could not when Fornaroli as out. MVFC could not when Berhisa got older. Time for new talent to step up across the ALeague. Have they been watching Bobo, Berisha, Fornaroli & learning? Or, have then been happy just sitting on the bench banking a cheque & spending their ALeague seasons drinking coffee every day.