When your football team is in free fall and the current season is slipping away from you, what do football fans look forward to?
Well, we all stand by our clubs thick and thin, and as things aren’t so dire as to find ourselves at the bottom of the ladder, we City fans at least have a tasty match-up to look forward to as we face the Macarthur Bulls on Friday night.
It’s shaping up to be a high-scoring affair (famous last words; scoreless draw incoming etc.) and there are selection headaches and plentiful drama to colour the affair so let’s get into it:
Tolgay Arslan Returns
One of our only bright sparks of the season so far has been Tolgay Arslan – he’s arguably one of the most talented players to grace the pitch for our club. And so it was greatly disappointing that despite the turbulent season we’ve faced already, with massive off-season changes, devastating injuries, and a change of manager, Arslan decided to add to the instability and get himself banned for a couple of weeks by talking shit to a ref after the whistle had already been blown. It’s indicative of the frustration that is evident among those of the squad who are clearly pulling their hair out as we continue to fail to put together decent team performances, but it was still bloody disappointing and oh-so unnecessary.
Now his return to availability poses many questions, first of all to our midfield. We’ve been unable to settle in the middle of the park all season, having briefly found stability only to be thrown into turmoil by Hamza Sakhi’s bewildering exit – yep that one still hurts. But now with Jeggo in the squad and Leckie fit, caretaker manager Aurelio Vidmar faces the most perplexing selection decision of his tenure with the club. Arslan is too good to sit on the bench, but Leckie makes things happen and adds a drive to our side that we’ve sorely lacked in his absence. So that means Vidmar either has to shift Arslan deeper into the midfield, or the dilemma has to spill out onto the wing with Leckie taking the place of the recently returned Nabbout or loanee Tilio.
While it would be tragic for Nabbout to shift to the bench after his miraculous recovery, well Tilio…
Tilio Time
The return of our favourite son has seen almost immediate results.
After injury troubles and a logjam of wingers at Celtic, Marco is finding his feet again and even if his parent club would let us bench him, any manager would be crazy to do so after his spectacular goal (not to mention the initial touch and dribbling that led up to it) against Sydney FC last weekend. Even when he was still raw against the Victory, you could tell how much we had missed players like Tils who are unafraid to run at players and attack space. We can expect the 22-year-old to exploit Macarthur’s shaky defence with his trademark speed and trickery, no doubt leading to some havoc, and maybe even an absolute worldie.
Chaos Loading
Macarthur are a high-scoring team, currently sitting equal first in the league with Perth Glory on 35 goals and their dangerman Valére Germain is tied for fourth-most goals in the league with a total of eleven, with a handy five assists also under his belt. The Bulls don’t necessarily get a lot of shots on goal but their conversion rate is excellent, and we know our high defensive line is bound to present them with a few opportunities. On the flip side, Macarthur have their own struggles defensively as they sit in the bottom half of the ladder for goals conceded with a measly three clean sheets to show for it and an xG conceded of a league-high 38.1.
This all adds up for a potential goal fest, and with a whole host of attacking options once again available we should have no trouble breaking down Macarthur’s defence.
One comment
Like other teams in the league who are struggling ie Roar, city has had too many interruptions to settle into a rhythm & build momentum, not sure if vidmar is the man to motivate a very talented squad so next few games are his chance to prove me wrong