Sydney are wisely recasting their attack

Over the course of the off-season, teams have to tread a fine line between deathly inaction, and damaging flux.

Too much change can cause problems – my West Ham are a fine example of that, having only just picked up their first win five games into the Premier League season.

Too little change, and other teams can surge past; standing still can often feel like going backwards. 

Having said that, a winning formula – like the one Sydney FC have devised and implemented over the last two seasons – should also remain largely unaltered so long as its still winning.

In football, dominant teams are all eventually worked out, sooner or later, and effective counter-schemes end up hoisting them high on a pike, usurped. 

Sydney are yet to be hoisted but – in a manoeuvre no doubt expedited by Bobo and Adrian Mierzejewski’s departures – have decided to recast themselves, just a little.

Having lost two of their three most important attackers, Steve Corica has snapped on a new attacking module; last season, the 4-2-3-1 that was used in almost every match, looked like this.

This was an extremely effective system, especially when its second phase initiated, and Milos Ninkovic and Adrian Mierzejewski tucked inside into deeper interior areas to collect the ball and dictate the midfield tempo, allowing for the full backs to push forward.

But what it lacked was pace, or at least the threat of it. Alex Brosque is no slouch, sure, but his 34 years and slightly recessed starting position meant he was rarely a consistent threat of running in behind.

Bobo was never a speedy striker, more a highly polished finisher with excellent positioning and wily body control.

Ninkovic and Mierzejewski’s natural inclinations to go towards the ball meant the only players with a real threat of running in behind in early phases of possession were the full backs.

Invariably, their runs took them out to less dangerous, wider areas, neutering their immediate threat on goal. Jordy Buijs’s trademark diagonal passes out of defence were almost always just that, aimed diagonally out to the flanks because there were no runners piercing through the middle.

This has changed. Now, in Trent Buhagiar and Adam Le Fondre, Sydney have two players for whom a defender’s shoulder is their natural springboard.

Buhagiar’s pace makes him an extremely dangerous off-the-ball threat, blessed with enough speed to even mitigate overhit or waywardly aimed passes. His ability to time his runs, of course, is a more important factor, but the early chance he missed against Avondale in Wednesday’s FFA Cup quarter final victory was evidence that, even with rat-a-tat passing rapping around behind him, his sense of when to jet is well-tuned.

Jop van der Linden, although he’s apparently said he’s a different player to Buijs, is Dutch, is blonde and balding, is a centre back, does take free kicks and corners, and seems to have been tasked with hitting longer balls like these, one of many straight line drives he attempted in the Avondale win. 

Matt Simon and David Carney, two departed attackers for whom Buhagiar represents a replacement of sorts, were both veritable tortoises compared to him.

Before them, Filip Holosko wasn’t a speedster either, and Bernie Ibini – a very quick player indeed – only once played more than 45 minutes in a league game that season.

Buhagiar, and to a slightly lesser extent Daniel De Silva, offer a dimension Sydney have not really had these last two years. 

The other factor is Le Fondre, and although his pace isn’t as electric as Buhagiar’s, Le Fondre’s appetite and instinct for playing off-the-shoulder is approaching dog-with-a-bone levels.

(Photo by Scott Barbour/Getty Images)

In the quarter final against Avondale, Le Fondre started, scored, and assisted two goals, and was found offside five times in the match, literally more times than the rest of the players – for both teams – on the pitch managed combined.

When he set up Sydney’s opening goal, he’d been caught offside a couple of times already, but had persisted with his darts into the final third.

Le Fondre, it seems, will be edging down that tightrope for the season, a dalliance with the offside skirt for the full 90 minutes, and his value may well be in quantity rather than quality; as evidenced against Avondale, five offsides are more than tolerable provided the runs-to-offsides ratio is balanced.

His goal was another scamper into space, latching onto Josh Brillante’s lofted pass late in the game, Le Fondre busy until the very end.

Sydney’s sluggish second half against Avondale, in which they allowed the Victorian NPL grand finalists to come roaring back from two goals down, continued their slightly streaky FFA Cup campaign; against Rockdale and Cairns in their previous two rounds, Sydney went a goal behind, before eventually winning.

They needed two extra-time goals to win this one; it’s clear they’re still shaking off the rust of the off-season.

Siem de Jong is also still feeling his way into the team – he was substituted just after the hour mark, and had drifted through the match in a fairly listless fashion. 

Still, it feels as though Sydney have done the right thing here; like-for-like replacements – like van der Linden for Buijs – help in maintaining continuity, but adding new weapons to the arsenal keeps the league on edge.

Sydney are probably still favourites for the title at the moment, and so theirs is still the head the other contenders are gunning for, to mount above their mantles. It’s important, then, to keep evolving.