Round 13 - Sydney FC vs Adelaide - 13/1/19

The Cove
141

Yeah that’s true. Kurz obviously thought it was a pen and that the SdJ FK was harsh. FWIW Corica said he thought Blackwood “made a meal of it”.

Watch it again though, he definitely very unnaturally hangs his own left leg mid-air to mimic contact before going down. If the pen was for arms / pulling, it’s soft but ok. If it’s for a trip then it’s a cast iron dive, Calver is nowhere near contact at the point Blackwood falls over.

142

I had assumed this is what it was for. I don’t think it was that soft either tbh.

143

Yeah I thought it was definitely clumsy w.r.t. arms, but no real contact with feet.
With the free kick, I was sitting down the other end, but at a great angle to see a pretty vigorous challenge through the player to get the ball. Levels of magnitude more a foul than the pen.

144

I thought the penalty was a case of the ref evening-up for the mistaken free-kick that led to the first goal. It was a soft penalty and, I too, cannot see any contact that would cause Blackwood to fall over but the De Jong master class in free kick taking should also never have taken place because Milos was fairly tackled.

So it all evened out unlike for the wanderers. Losing a game due to refereeing mistakes. Sucks to be a wanderer right now.

145

I think it’s a soft penalty to give, but they’re often given. I noticed blackwood’s leg in the air as well and thought it looked unnatural. I think he was hoping for a trip that didn’t come, but then decided that the contact that Calver had made earlier might be enough so he went down. From memory there was a fair amount of time between the last contact from calver and the part where Blackwood starts to fall. The falling was definitely not the result of being pushed, it was a result of a decision to go down because he realised that enough contact may have already been made. He gambled and it paid off. It’s a part of the game that I don’t like, and Brosque does it a fair bit so I’m not whinging about us being robbed or anything.

Calver needs to be more careful. Blackwood would never have scored from there anyway.

2 Likes
146

Fwiw this week’s VAR report suggests it was for pulling:

Adelaide United were awarded a penalty after Aaron Calver held back George Blackwood in the penalty area.

The way I saw it, Calver initiated contact with his arm but got unlucky that it kind of got tangled up with Blackwood’s when he pushed back, which made it look like a tug that VAR would never overturn.

147

If Blackwood didn’t blatantly dive it wouldn’t have been a pen in a million years. Calver didn’t do anything that doesn’t happen dozens of times, inside the box even, in every game of football.

1 Like
148

I’ve got the front page match report up and as always the more interesting stuff to those here is copied below:

You can view the match highlights here:

https://www.a-league.com.au/video/full-time-highlights-sydney-fc-v-adelaide-united-1

3 things we learned

  • Jacob Tratt is our clear second choice right back. If there’s one thing that everyone can seem to agree on, it is that Tratt had a superb game. He was regularly getting forward to put in decent crosses and his height and physical presence allowed him to dominate in defence. This is in contrast to Paulo Retre ’s performance at right back in the previous game and indicates that Tratt is the club’s clear second choice in that position. This is good to know with the ACL campaign coming up, meaning that we may need to give Tratt minutes to sub-in for Rhyan Grant .
  • Playing De Jong more centrally greatly benefited our play. The decision to start Siem De Jong up front as Adam Le Fondre ’s partner was a huge benefit to us. Rather than attacking with the flat 4-4-2 we have been using, De Jong was able to sit deeper and operate as a more traditional playmaker. This allowed us to move the ball around a fair bit better and gave the midfielders options. This also had the benefit of allowing us to use Daniel De Silva out wide, injecting some pace and width to our play which was lacking when we were playing De Jong in that position. I hope to see us operate like this a bit more so that we can get it to gel.
  • Tired legs were obvious this game. Unsurprisingly, given the weather and the fixture congestion, there were some tired legs out there. There were times where our players, particularly the defenders, were just happy to hoof the ball long or out of play rather than trying to play around Adelaide’s press. While we are hardly the only team with these problems, it does give some indication of what we might expect when the ACL comes around and we are playing twice in a week and travelling long distances.

Post-match Statistics

  • Sydney FC have scored in each of their last 19 competitive games (going back to the Semi Final last season). This is a new club record.
  • Aaron Calver made his 50th appearance for the club (38 league, 5 FFA Cup, 7 ACL). He is the 41st player to reach 50 competitive games for the club.
  • The winner from Jacob Tratt was our 40th goal this season. Jacob Tratt has a 100% win record with Sydney FC after 5 appearances.
  • Adelaide coach Marco Kurz has not beaten Sydney FC in a league game. He has faced Sydney FC 5 times in the league.

Note: Appearances and goals only include league games, finals, FFA Cup, OFC and AFC Champions League and Club World Cup.

1 Like
149

Cheers for that Rowdy. Fair enough then, it’s still softish and yeah may not have been given had he not gone down, but there’s probably enough contact there to have put Blackwood off balance. No real complaints.

150

My issue was two-fold - terrible to get beaten like he did (especially given he had Tratt coming back to help out), and then to raise his arms once Blackwood got in front was just silly. It’s definitely soft, and he went down purely to win it, but I feel like that sort of thing is going to get given more often than not.
Just really poor game awareness, especially given we’d gone up 2-0 only a minute or two earlier.

2 Likes
151

This. I like Aaron and he’s a promising younger player that should improve, but he ran the wrong line, allowing Blackwood to get goalside and then he tried to make up by raising his arms when he was past him. It was soft, but any forward in that situation would have looked for the slightest contact when they realised they were getting too wide to shoot - similar dumb penalty as given away by Jop to Honda.

1 Like
152

Would we rather Aaron who will improve with experience of these situations or Jop who will only slow down as he ages and continue with his bad habbits learned through his plentiful years of Dutch top flight experience?

153

Warland is the other option and he is still young and can develop.

154

Just got around to posting videos of both goals:

1 Like