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Ten talking points from A-League Rounds 15 and 16

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Roar Guru
27th January, 2019
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Another action-packed week of double round action, with mid-week games and a weekend’s worth of games. There is no time to waste, as we look at the talking points emerging from round 15 and 16.

Five is enough
A couple of weeks ago, on a lonely mid-week night, 15 January 2019, Melbourne Victory flexed their muscles in Brisbane to show the might and power of their team, in a 5-nil thrashing of the Brisbane Roar that should have left mental scars.

Melbourne Victory, to be sure, are an all-star team, and they were an all-star team even before you added Keisuke Honda and Ola Toivonen to the mix.

However, this season, the all-star performances have been scant on the ground.

It was poor Brisbane who felt the full force of the Victory machine, as five goals were blasted past a hapless Roar outfit.

The crazier thing was that it was only 1-nil at half-time.

Whatever Kevin Muscat said to his boys at half-time, he should re-visit, because since that win, they have gone back into the top two, and are in pole position for a preliminary final into the home stretch of the home and away season.

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All you need is luck
Tough loss for the Wanderers against Melbourne on Tuesday, and a loss like that you would think would be hard to top in terms of finding ways to drop a win.

The Wanderers would manage a new found way a mere three days later, but we will get to that shortly.

Having managed to take a remarkable 3-2 lead away to Melbourne City, coming back from 1-nil and 2-1 down, the Wanderers must have finally been thinking that their season was about to turn around.

Wrong.

What is it with struggling teams and red cards?

You’re up against a top-six opponent, you’ve scored three goals against a team that has rarely conceded more than once per game, so what do you do?

That’s right, you give your opposition a one-man advantage, and Keanu Baccus accordingly obliged to get sent off, and hand the momentum back to Melbourne City.

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So, the Wanderers delivered Melbourne the platform to finish off with a remarkable comeback of their own, and a famous 4-3 victory.

No doubt if Marcus Babbel had hair it would have been ripped out after the game.

Sydney showing there is still life left in the old legs
As fhard-foughts and hard fought wins go, the 1-nil win by Sydney FC over the Phoenix in Wellington during the week is up there this season.

Sydney, remember, had lost the reverse fixture to Wellington pretty convincingly at Jubilee Oval earlier this season, and with Wellington in red-hot form, Sydney were hardly favourites.

To travel over the ditch, hold the home side to nil (the Phoenix had easily put three past Melbourne Victory not so long ago), and take a vital three points back home to momentarily put Sydney into the top two, was a gargantuan effort by the sky blues.

Sydney are known for a lot of things: flashiness, glamour, a touch of glitz, and goals, but there is no doubt that one thing Steve Corica will take a lot of pride in is their grit and determination.

Wellington are no easy beats these days, and Sydney have lost a hint of their aura.

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Make no mistake, this was a big, big win for the Sky Blues, and the efforts in beating Wellington probably caught up with the Sydney-siders when they travelled to Melbourne a couple of days later.

Played poorly, still won
Newcastle are proving to be a bit of a basket case this year, not necessarily in terms of their ladder position compared to last season, but more in terms of their performances very rarely matching up with results.

After solid performances against Melbourne City, Sydney FC and Melbourne Victory handed them 1-goal losses, Newcastle then decided to try something different, and play badly to see if they could win.

Well, it worked.

Newcastle were roundly outplayed by the Mariners mid-week, and if not for the crossbar and several goal line clearances, the Jets were looking down the barrel of a two or three goal loss to their F3 rivals, sitting on the bottom of the ladder.

Even the winning goal by Newcastle had a hint of offside about it.

But again, you don’t get ladder points for style.

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You get points for results, and while Newcastle won fans for their style and bravery in losing to top four sides, a good performance with no reward against the one-team Mariners was certainly not going to win many fans or plaudits.

Play good and lose, or play bad and win.

It’s a bold strategy Cotton, and it was surprising to see it pay off for them.

Nil-all, the perfect football result
For two teams with championship aspirations, the nil-all result at Perth mid-week was likely an ideal outcome for both teams with somewhat bigger fish to fry (and slightly easier weekend fixtures coming up).

For Perth, they ran the risk of dropping important points at home against a team that has shown they know how to win away from hom.

For Adelaide, trying to stay in touch with the top four and a home final, didn’t want to come away from Perth with nothing, and make a rod for their back in chasing the pack.

If you ask any Italian, nil-all is the perfect football result, because it means that your defenders have done their jobs.

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For Marco Kurz and Tony Popovic, the shared points may not have represented their shared view on perfection, but you can’t argue that the draw was better for both sides than a loss.

Tony Popovic

(Photo by Ryan Pierse/Getty Images)

All you really need is luck
I will tell you this much, it is not easy being a Wanderers fan at the moment.

The Wanderers, routinely making the Mariners look like they are a standard bearer, are the only team I can think of that can out-do itself for incompetence in the space of three days.

And that is not necessarily because the Wanderers are playing particularly bad at the moment, but boy oh boy they are starting to reach Mariners-like depths of different ways to not win games of football.

And the manner of stealing a draw out of the jaws of victory on Friday night was even more startling, given that one Vedran Janjetovic has already made headlines for stupidity this season for his out of the box goal-saving acrobatics in the Sydney Derby.

And for readers of talking points, you will know that I love it when the A-League makes international headlines, so I applaud with even more accolade, Janjetovic’s efforts in making international website joe.uk for his stoppage time efforts in Brisbane.

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Oh dear, it breaks the heart.

I would imagine Marcus Babbel will start heading to Advanced Hair, simply so he actually can start pulling it out.

Nothing like scoring against your old team
David Williams has sort of become the forgotten man of Australian football.

The one-time wunderkind of Australian football, he looked like being on an upward trajectory at Melbourne City.

Then he found himself in Wellington.

Life really does move at you pretty fast sometimes.

Coming up against Melbourne City, Williams’ excellent form has been a key plank in the excellent run by Wellington that has seen them not just taking up a spot in the six, but asking if they can contend.

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It has been a funny couple of weeks for Melbourne, obviously not helped by that stunning loss to the Mariners.

But that loss, followed by a slow draw to Perth, and a lucky come from behind win over the Wanderers, this loss to Wellington now sees the team challenging for the top three now in a dog fight to hold onto top four.

Meanwhile, David Williams is loving life in Wellington, and you would not begrudge him taking some satisfaction in putting his old team away, and being a part of a run that knocks them out of hosting a final.

David Williams

(Photo by Hagen Hopkins/Getty Images)

Toivonen, take a bow
Breathtaking was the word that came to mind when Ola Toivonen’s strike strike the upright and slammed into the net.

The perfect arc with which the ball flew at the wall, then dipped appropriately over it to leave Andrew Redmayne clasping at straws, was a sight to behold in all of its footballing glory.

The A-League over the years has been truly blessed, from the first day of Dwight Yorke, to see some truly A-grade caliber marquee players take the field in this competition.

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The funny thing about Ola Toivonen was that he was the afterthought almost to the triumphal unveiling by the Victory of Keisuke Honda.

Yet Toivonen has toiled away up front, shooting up the golden boot leaderboard almost in stealth, an amazing effort considering he gave a head start to the rest of the competition with his own late start.

The irony being that had Honda been fit, he likely would have been taking the free kick against Sydney that was given when Troisi was fouled.

There is the argument that the free kick taking duties might remain with the Swede when the Japanese star returns.

Toivonen has the runs on the board.

Is good, is Isaias
Speaking of overlooked stars, Isaias is certainly not overlooked by all and sundry.

Afterall, he is the captain of a championship winning Adelaide team, their first, and he is generally at the centre of all the good, hoenst, hardwork that the Adelaide midfield goes through every round.

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But Isaias is neither flashy, nor is he seeking the spotlight, the newly received Australian citizen simply wants to do his job, and play his role for the team (although, as with Toivonen, as exhibited in the 2016 grand final, he is akin to curling free kicks over the wall and into the net).

It was with some real satisfaction that the Reds captain scored the equaliser for Adelaide in the second half against the Central Coast, in a game that Adelaide could ill-afford to lose, and up to that point, very much looked like doing.

And that was Isaias’ first for the season.

Isaias is yet another testament to the quality that is in the league.

He can control a match, he can defend like his life depends on it, he carries his team, and for a moment on Sunday, he stole the spotlight, to drag his team back into the contest, with that most important of footballing commodities: a goal.

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And don’t forget Diego either
In fact, the Perth Glory captain Diego Castro even further exemplifies the quality of Spanish players gracing the A-League.

The 36-year-old, in his fourth season with Perth, was out for the start of the season through injury, and when you are 36 and injured, the end is generally looking closer than you would care to imagine.

With the armband planted on Andy Keogh’s arm, and Perth sitting atop of the table, was it actually thinkable that the one-time Getafe star was on the way out of the Glory?

Nah.

Castro showed his class with his part in the opener against Newcastle, his touch and assist setting up a goal that any defence would have struggled to handle.

The good thing about great players is that no matter the situation, they look like they have more time than most people.

As Castro took his touch, and was one-on-one with the keeper, the Jets’ defence honing in on him, he could have blasted a hopeful shot, and wished for the best.

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Instead? A perfect lay-off, to ensure the go-ahead goal.

There’s a line about the temporary nature of form, and the permanence of class, that comes to mind.

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