Away Day Glory

By: Ben | September 25th, 2009

Glory have broken the away hoodoo bigtime. Successive away victories in Brisbane and Newcastle have us suddenly joint top of the A-League table. Geez that says alot about the standard of domestic football in Australia.

Anyway, yesterdays 1-0 win at Newcastle was pretty lucky. I watched the whole match on the box, with my old skool Glory shirt on and I’ve gotta say, we got lucky.

By all reports last week’s 4-2 win at Brisbane Roar was rather fortuitous (I didnt see it as I was at the WAFL Grand Final, Im a Subi boy thru and thru so couldnt miss it).

But the recent results havent been flash performances, yet the boys return home with 6 points in the bag. Better than expected.

Against the Jets last night, we played reasonably in the first-half and created a few chances. Down the right was the most promising with some neat interplay, involving Jamie Coyne, Adriano Pellegrino and Victor Sikora occasionally. But no goals to speak of. 0-0 at half-time.

Into the second-half, I’m not sure what the problem is. But the lads just run out of gas. There was no energy and for some reason (I’m still not sure why) Dave Mitchell put Mile Sterjovski alone up front.

Perhaps he was expecting us to lose our energy (we have all season) hoping he could hold the ball up or use his speed (like he did for the penalty) but I thought the tactic was really really poor. It allowed the Jets so much more possession, but thankfully they are a typical A-League club who just aren’t very clinical and can’t execute that final ball. Although I was impressed by Patafta and Song.

Anyway, I’m not a fan of Mitchell. Eugene Dadi would have been ideal in the role of holding the ball up after the break, yet he refuses to use him.

So we got out of jail. Sikora decided to do something constructive in midfield, got angry, got the nut and took on a few players before playing nicely weighted ball in for Sterj who was terribly brought down by Jets stopper Ben Kennedy near the death.

I gotta say as harsh as it is, the Jets will never go anywhere with a keeper like Kennedy. Sterj was gonna struggle to get a decent shot away in this situation with defenders closing on him, yet Kennedy came out and was always arriving late, before taking Sterj for the penalty. Apparently Kennedy did something similar last week. Pretty average.

Anyway Sterj took the penalty and struck it in off the crossbar. 1-0 and the Jets were done.

Still a long long way to go for Perth, but points on the road are a dime a dozen. Great result, poor performance. Im concerned about Mitchell as coach, I just dont understand his tactics or moves sometimes. If sh1t turns bad, my advice to Tony Sage would be spend your money more wisely next time, on a proper coach.