Hard to say how much this means, but interesting nonetheless
Shanghai’s woes in Australia
It’s fair to say that since their AFC Champions League debut in 2016, Shanghai SIPG’s home form has been the reason behind their runs to the latter stages of the tournament; indeed, in 15 matches in front of their own fans, they have yet to taste defeat.
In contrast, they have tended to struggle on the road and the 1-0 loss to Ulsan Hyundai on Matchday Two means they have lost 11 of their 16 away games since their tournament debut. With an away date at Sydney FC on Wednesday, they now need to reverse a miserable run in Australia.
In 2016, Shanghai lost their first-ever game in the competition 2-1 away at Melbourne Victory, before Western Sydney Wanderers and, again, Melbourne claimed wins in the 2017 and 2018 group stages to mean the Chinese side have lost three from three in Australia.
In fairness to Shanghai, the latter two losses proved inconsequential as qualification to the last 16 had already been secured, but Wednesday’s game is vital and defeat could leave them bottom of the Group H standings. Vitor Pereira’s side will consider themselves title contenders, but they will surely need to address away results, starting in Sydney.
Trying to win all competitions by not flogging the same 11 to death is something all “big” clubs do… but if we’re not doing that (and we haven’t) then I think it’s fair to prioritise.
The sight of a clearly tired O’Neill losing Antonis (who’d only played half a season) in that game last season was a result of Arnie doing this same inflexible approach as Corica. Additionally, it’s made us shit at home in the ACL because more tactically savvy opponents can have prepared for us in detail before their season even started.
I recon we’ll score - we seem a bit more dynamic than we were a few weeks ago, and having De Jong in the squad helps. Shanghai SIPG have also been leaking goals of late. Not confident we’ll win it though.
Because DEjong is precious,a good 25-35 minute session from him will probably yield a goal and/or an assist.I’d have Danny going flat chat for 60-65mins,then introduce the class of a seasoned international.
Yep. We’d have a minimum of 5 goals scored against us with that partnership if SIPG really tried.
Really, though, every single game in our group so far have been very tight arm-wrestles. Nobody has scored more than one goal in any of the four games in our group so far. We need to adopt the same mentality as Kashima did against us last week. The last 30 minutes are really going to matter, so we need to make sure we have attacking weapons who can come on and make a difference. The last couple of league games for us should prove really instructive for Corica in the value of keeping quality on the bench if at all possible. To this end, maybe we won’t see De Jong start. Gucci will surely start but Brosque can still do a job for 20-25 minutes. Retre is a strong utility option off the bench for the moment.