There could also be a special coach within the dugout however the identical outdated issues are costing Western Sydney Wanderers. That a lot was made abundantly clear on Friday evening as Melbourne Metropolis capitalised on a disaster-class of defending to maneuver to the highest of the A-League Males ladder with a breezy 3-1 win.
Metropolis needed to climate an early storm from the Wanderers however as soon as they did, they’d all of it their very own approach at CommBank Stadium, with a brace from Socceroo Mathew Leckie and a pearler from Florin Berenguer sufficient to comfortably seal the three factors.
It was a second straight defeat for Western Sydney in new coach Mark Rudan’s third recreation in cost – and he’s fortunate this one wasn’t even heavier, with Jamie Maclaren pulling a penalty kick broad within the 66th minute after Mark Natta needlessly chopped down Aiden O’Neill within the field.
The Wanderers have been even gifted a late comfort purpose, which gave the scoreboard a contact of unjustified respectability. It was scored from the spot by Dimi Petratos within the eightieth minute, after a fortuitous penalty name through which Petratos flicked the ball up into the hand of Metropolis’s Curtis Good, who had barely any time to react whereas standing on the sting of the realm.
Rudan’s predecessor, Carl Robinson, may by no means adequately handle the Wanderers’ repeated failures whereas defending set items – a fault which now seems to be deeply embedded within the squad itself on this proof, with each of Leckie’s first-half targets coming from dead-ball conditions and amid virtually zero stress.
The Wanderers had partly cleared the hazard from a Thirty sixth-minute nook kick when Aiden O’Neill despatched a speculative sky ball again into the realm. An unmarked Leckie tracked all of it the way in which, ready patiently for it to fall to him earlier than contorting his physique to generate sufficient energy on his header to get it previous goalkeeper Tomas Meijas.
Seven minutes later, Leckie accomplished his brace with a glancing header from one other nook simply earlier than the break. On each events, the Western Sydney defence was discovered utterly wanting.
Berenguer made them look foolish once more within the sixty fourth minute, dancing previous two defenders on the sting of the field earlier than curling in a fantastic shot to place Metropolis in cruise management, three targets to the nice.
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The irony was Western Sydney’s capitulation got here after an extremely vibrant opening interval for the hosts, who chopped up the reigning A-League champions at will for the primary half-hour however didn’t make their early dominance depend on the scoreboard. Their greatest probability got here in simply the third minute after a fantastic flowing transfer ended with Dimi Petratos pulling the set off, however his effort was comfortably saved by Metropolis’s Tom Glover.
Just a few thousand individuals turned as much as watch at Parramatta – one other reminder to chairman Paul Lederer, if he wanted one, that merely altering the staff’s coach received’t be anyplace close to sufficient to carry again the various hundreds who used to observe the Wanderers of their heyday. And doesn’t that really feel like an terrible very long time in the past.