Last Gasp: Wrapping up Week 4 of the A-League | Thebigtip

As you can tell from the title of the wrap-up, I was about 30 seconds away from writing a very different tale for the round. It was all set about how both Melbourne teams won on the same day, how history was made, etc, etc. Now I have...well, nothing – actually apart from one point; what is it with debuting referees and dodgy penalties?

Brisbane 1 defeated Wellington 0

In my preview, I mentioned that I had absolutely no idea who to tip and that a draw was the safe bet. I don’t think anyone would have seen that performance from Brisbane coming, even taking into account their early season form. To be able to come out and completely neutralise Wellington right from the outset is a credit to the way they’re playing, and it showed that they have a very good defensive side. To have their fullbacks pushing up so high and not to be caught out of position on the counter is something that’s rarely been seen in the A-League. Credit for that has to go to Paartalu who’s playing his screening role to absolute perfection.

Now, time for my first theory of the weekend to be thrown out: Mitch Nichols is some sort of distant relative to Brett Holman’s pre-World Cup self. Nichols gets into all the right positions, he plays all the right passes – then he gets into position for the killer pass/shot and he decides to give the fan in Row G a souvenir from the night’s play. My recollections of his first few games are about as clear as a hungover brain after two hours sleep, but I know ever since that preliminary final against Adelaide in Season 4 – when he had roughly 19 shots on goal and missed all of them - he’s been borderline incompetent in front of goal. It will come in time though as he’s still only 21, but I think my theory has some merit to it. I guess if it does get proven true, Nichols will be scoring goals for fun at Brazil in 2014.

As for the Barbarouses goal (which I mentioned as a possibility by the way), I’ve seen some feedback claiming Durante was at fault for it because he was dragged out of position. He had no other choice though, because if he hadn’t attempted to charge down McKay on the edge of the box it would have been McKay sauntering inside the box unopposed to tap the ball in. Overall, it was just a lack of awareness from everyone, because as Durante charged out, Sigmund should have been reading the play enough to slide over and mark Barbarouses. It’ll be interesting to see if Herbert switches to a back three next week if North is fit and ready in time, or stays with a back four and drops Sigmund back to the bench.

Not often is a match where the losing goalkeeper is the clear MOTM, but Paston was definitely that. I’ve never seen a goalkeeper so clearly hobbled yet able to produce so many quality saves. You can almost hear his thoughts – ‘If I let Vukovic in, I might not get my spot back’. Paston could barely move, yet he somehow managed to charge off his line repeatedly for those incredible one-on-one saves. Vukovic was probably sitting on the bench wondering why he didn’t wait an extra few days to see what other offers were around.

North Queensland 2 defeated by Adelaide 3

I’m writing the wrap-up for this match on Sunday morning, so about 15-16 hours after this match finished. It’s been that long, and I’ve only just come to terms with the fact Adelaide have scored three goals two matches in a row.

First off, the incredible goal from Flores. Already that’s at least of one the top three goals of the season – tell me with a straight face that there’ll be three goals better than that for the rest of the season. Here’s the video of it, from the 1:30 mark onwards:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aGrLeV9btrc

As much as it’s a cliché, that goal completely changed the course of the match. Before that the Fury looked comfortable and solid at the back, but after that goal the absence of Akoto started to shine through as there was no presence alongside Hughes to shut down the repeated United attacks. That shone through at the corner where Mullen headed home Adelaide’s third. Akoto and Hughes made sure that the Fury didn’t concede last week from the Victory’s 5,312 corners, and yet Adelaide score from their fourth corner of the game.

The way Adelaide are pushing more men forward is great to see after the way Vidmar had them playing in the last couple of seasons. Coolen seems to have realised that he has a talented squad at his disposal if he gets them to play the right way – the last two weeks are a reflection of that. As long as Barbiero and Dodd come back into their proper positions (i.e. midfield) Adelaide won’t be the bottom two side that many were predicting.

Sydney 1 drew with Central Coast 1

Well, for about 60 minutes my prediction of this being the dourest match of the season so far was ringing true. Then the introduction of Perez turned everything on its head. Notice how the first week I don’t mention him in my preview is the week he makes an appearance?

The obvious talking point is the penalty ...or more to the point, ‘penalty’. Clearly wasn’t a spot kick and just another example of Breeze making another wrong decision. You can try to analyse it more in-depth, but that’s really all there is to it. It was taken very well by Perez though; he showed excellent composure after the long delay to slot it right into the bottom left corner.

People will look at the penalty and claim that the Mariners pinched an undeserved point-  not true at all. The home team wasn’t creating anything, save from a Ryall shot from outside the box that hit the left goalpost, and let’s be honest – you can’t point to that as evidence of a goal being deserved. It looked like a 0-0 match until Grant scored off a horrible error from the debutant goalkeeper Matthew Ryan.

I know it was only Ryan’s first game, but at no stage did he look comfortable. There was the laughable claim (apparently made by him) pre-game that he didn’t feel nerves. Complete and utter rubbish. If he keeps that level of performance up he’ll be replaced by Paul Henderson. Think about that for a second – he could be replaced by Paul Henderson.

The way Sydney imploded after the penalty by Perez was amazing. Once he’d calmed down from all the injustices in the world being heaped on Sydney, in the commentary box Andy Harper made an excellent point. He said that last season Lavicka based his team around being disciplined, and that same discipline was nowhere to be seen in that last 20 minutes. Normally Breeze doesn’t need much of an excuse to hand out yellow cards like free meal tickets, but when Bridge, Jamieson and co decide to fly off the chain, the referee had no other choice.