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The Western Sydney Wanderers bade farewell to Nikolai Topor-Stanley this week, leaving one foundation player – Shannon Cole – on the playing roster.
The granite-chested centre back is the fifteenth player to leave the Wanderers this transfer period. As far as player turnover goes, huge flux is the norm for most A-League clubs, but when the best part of full matchday squad’s worth of players depart, with nearly as many arriving to replace them, the fitfulness on show provokes a sense of unease.
It seems as though Tony Popovic enjoys forcing a plough through his squad, aerating the earth, turning what was a highly successful team last season into a loamy, fecund plot, aromatic and rich with potential.
But, as easily as new, silken crops can sprout from such a place, right now it looks like a disturbed patch of dirt, and when it was a fine, shimmering meadow that was upturned, it all seems a little unnecessary. Certainly, Federico Piovaccari was a huge disappointment last season, and was rightfully moved on.
Romeo Castelen, well, he was flighty, streaky, but at times highly potent. Dario Vidosic – sold to Chinese club Liaoning Whowin F.C. – was a substitute in a third of his league games last season, and played the full 90 minutes just three times. Popovic, we must assume, nurses reasons that he thinks justify the exits of all of the outgoing players.
But there is a dissonance here. Popovic, the foundation manager, has been a pillar of permanence at the club, leading it to glorious heights, and through some harrowing lows.(Click to Tweet) He has lived on a velvet cushion of support plumped and brushed off by the club hierarchy; his last contract extension was signed following the conclusion of the 2014-15 season, a very disappointing campaign indeed. Why, one asks, does a manager as comfortable and settled as Popovic feel the need to rejuvenate his squad so drastically, almost every off-season?
Perhaps this explains why Western Sydney have won just four of fourteen matches available in their opening three league rounds each season since they came into existence. Their fourth win came last night, in highly contentious circumstances, as defending champions Adelaide United were sunk in stoppage time by a second goal from Brendon Santalab – the league’s most effective super-sub – who might easily have been bathing in anguish minutes earlier following what was a red card challenge on James Holland.
Santalab was asked about the tackle after the game: “I’ll have to have a look at it after” he said, as if he wasn’t there at the time. The Wanderers were lucky to snatch that result, not just because Santalab was the scorer; Adelaide squandered multiple chances to go 2-0 up, and were robbed of their maestro Sergio Cirio early in the contest, injured primarily by a stern Jack Clisby foul.
It is clear, though, that Popovic is more than capable of integrating a horde of new faces into his squad. The Wanderers were very fluid at times, passing coherently, particularly through the middle, with Jumpei Kusukami and Mitch Nichols slippery and keenly applying a gleaming lubricant to the Red obstacles milling around in the central corridor. The manner in which they combined for the Wanderers’ winner was immaculate; a one-two interchange, where both players’ poise and instincts aligned perfectly, like two hand-cut sprockets interlocking inside a Swiss watch.
More often than not, Popovic’s recruitment has meant the mass cullings haven’t hindered the team hugely after the first few rounds, and it appears as though this season won’t end with the Wanderers in ninth place, like they did in 2014-15. But it doesn’t seem coincidental that Santalab – who has by now gathered what seems like a blanket of dust entering his third season in Western Sydney – proved markedly more effective than recently returned Kerem Bulut had for the majority of the match.
Bulut – whose eye-catching appearance doesn’t help disguise his subdued performances – was flimsy and frazzled, out-of-focus and disconnected; very much the manner one expects a new player to suffer under.
Robbie Cornthwaite was asked after the match about the fact that four different centre backs have played for Western Sydney in the last two games, and his response flipped back and forth between stating that his manager has broadcast the impression that “everyone can play”, and then what sounded more like his own views, saying “you want to form a partnership and get a good understanding” with a defensive partner.
Cornthwaite certainly looks equipped to fill the leadership void Topor-Stanley’s departure will leave, even if he did drift away from Henrique, allowing him the space to swivel and shoot in the opening goal.
It’s a curiosity, if nothing else. It’s difficult to say whether or not Western Sydney would have achieved more had Popovic made more of an effort to construct a lasting, continuous skeleton to his squad, one that would carry the club year after year.
It’s exciting, to be sure, seeing all these new players, and wondering what thrilling futures they might carve out in this smouldering cove of football fanaticism. But is it necessary?