Season Review – Sydney FC
The Mastermind:
I think the term mastermind is incorrect here; Frank Farina certainly isn’t one of them. There was much criticism from the beginning of his contract renewal, after failing to reach the finals, many Sydney FC fans wondered why he was given another season to take the reins at Sydney FC.
Before the start of the season, in the pre-season members forum, Farina and Pignata promised Sydney FC fans attacking football, playing from the back, pressing from the front, “domineering” football they called it, but it quickly unravelled as soon as the season begun and it made them sound as if they just watched a bunch of Bayern and Barcelona games and said “hey look, there’s attractive football played by the best teams in the world, let’s try and imitate that”.
From the get-go, Farina made tactical error after tactical error; even during the pre-season games (I watched most of them).
Pre-season
- Tried to get Nicky Carle playing deep, out of the window, Carle’s attributes never matched that of a defensive midfielder, a defensive midfielder has to be able to read the game brilliantly, make crucial interceptions using slide tackles/standing tackles, be strong both on the ground and in the air and more. Only thing I ever saw Carle do was make some good standing tackles, his main attributes that made him a great attacking midfielder (such as passing and shooting) were underutilised and that’s why this tactic didn’t work.
- Our pre-season 4-3-3 formation relied on attacking full-backs, exposed when Bojic and Grant got injured at the start of the season, and Marc Warren being crap. The tactic might’ve worked if we moved Abbas at LB earlier in the season and had a younger version of Brett Emerton, or maybe even a fit Rhyan Grant but we didn’t so this tactic failed
During the season
- After Grant and Bojic got injured. We played Abbas at LB and Ryall at RB for a while playing a 4-4-2 diamond formation, I thought this worked pretty well but once again Farina changed tactics and we went back to a 4-3-3 but this time it was more conventional and defensive, so we needed a better player at the back, Abbas was moved into the midfield trio and Jurman was played at LB until the end of the season. Only problem is playing a 4-3-3 required us to have wingers in the squad which we didn’t have, thus requiring Farina to force every attacker at the club (Chianese, Gameiro, Uresevski, Malia) to play on the wing, because we don’t actually have any proper out-and-out wingers in the squad bar Abbas, and even he is more of an outside midfielder/LB
- After Carle’s protest in training after the Adelaide game, he was absolutely nowhere to be seen.
- As the season went on, Farina’s reliance on Delps was getting more and more obvious, his attacking output remained constant and good throughout the season but it was his defensive contribution that was lacking and declining as the season progressed to the point where he became a liability and Farina shifted him out to Left-wing when Sydney lost possession in order to “hide” him.
- Aside from the formation and tactical changes, the worst one that Farina underwent was his mentality. From the pre-season positivity of playing attacking, dominating football everyone wants to watch, to “possession is not nine-tenths of the law” in an attempt to excuse his terrible tactics and poor coaching, after berating and criticising his players for most of the season for poor control or poor passing, and settling with a counter-attacking style of play just because we couldn’t get more than 50% possession in almost all of our games.
The biggest reason for Farina’s downfall was complacency and being a poor man manager, it’s no surprise he got sacked a week after Sydney were knocked out of the finals.
Best player:
Best player for Sydney FC was a difficult one, because we had so many patches of brilliance than down periods and different stars shown in each period, in our early 4 game winning streak it was Delps, later on it was Petkovic and Abbas, but for me throughout the season the best player was by far the goalkeeper, Vedran Janjetovic, although in my opinion his form has dipped from last season, he’s still been the most consistent player, pulling save after save every game and keeping Sydney FC’s season alive right until the very end. Who could ever forget his brilliant mind trick for the Mark Bridge penalty save for the third Sydney derby?
Vedran slowly walks to the left of the goal locking eyes with Mark Bridge who plants the ball down on the spot.
“Hey Mark, shoot over here, I swear I won’t go here”
Nek minnit, Vedran dives to the left and saves the penalty.
His leadership and influence has also improved and shown on the pitch and on TV when organising his back 4 and signed a 2 year contract extension so hopefully he’ll be Sydney’s number 1 for many seasons to come.
Best and worst performance
Best:
The best game by far was the 5-0 win over Melbourne Victory on Australia day. I’ve never seen a Sydney FC performance like it, not even close to it, and probably never will again. We absolutely dominated Melbourne from the first minute to the last, the midfield trio of Dimitrijevic, Gligor and McFlynn all had 100% passing completion stats. It was a pity that Milos and McFlynn both got injured in the 2nd half but for the entirety of the game we were able to maintain pressure and be precise with our passing…
…and Frank says possession isn’t everything pfft.
Worst: Both our worst and best games this season happened away from home, our worst loss was the early round 2 4-0 defeat to Brisbane Roar. It was more about how we conceded the goals that make this game the worst, absolutely shambolic defending. The Roar was rampant and clinical but doesn’t mean we shouldn’t try. Strangely though either then that game we hardly lost by more than 2 goals.
Key departures:
This was a season where there were so many positive departures (including players that retired) of players who were simply not good enough to play in the sky blue jersey this season, Tiago Calvano left early in the season to the US and Brett Emerton retired realising his time was up. Yairo Yau suffered a near-career ending injury that forced him to go back to his home country, Panama, and lastly Sydney FC club legend Terry McFlynn and Italian Maestro Alessandro Del Piero announced their retirements. Oh I guess I should probably include coach Frank Farina here too… how about Nicky Carle?
What’s next?
If you’re a Sydney FC fan, you’ve been waiting for this question the whole season. Having been frustrated by Farina’s tactics and mentality most fans were already wondering by mid-season what will happen next, should we miss out on the top 6 again. Questions were asked at the Sydney forum and Pignata and Barlow confirmed that there was a top 4 quota that Farina had to meet and if he didn’t then he might not be coaching Sydney FC after the season ended. Sydney FC finished 5th and got knocked out in the first week of the finals and the rest is history.
So what IS next for the sky blues? Firstly, a whole new leadership group will need to be formed or come in as last season’s Vice-captains (McFlynn and Emerton), Captain (ADP) and coach (Farina) have all left or retired. So someone like Sebastian Ryall, Sasa Ognenovski, Nicky Carle or Nikola Petkovic will probably be given the captain’s armband for season 2014/15 and maybe a leadership group formed under him. As for the coach, see my potential Sydney FC coach for Season 2014/15 here:
https://www.fromthestandsal.com/2014/04/28/farina-gone-end-error-will-replace/
Editor’s note: ex – Central Coast Mariners coach Graham Arnold confirmed to be Sydney FC coach for Season 2014/15. Blog from FTS to come….
Also speaking of Sky Blue there will also be the debate/argument between Manchester City/Melbourne City over who will wear Sky Blue next season, will Manchester’s power and influence be too much for Sydney FC or will Sydney FC win because they had Sky Blue first? Or will they compromise and Melbourne City use Sky Blue only for home games? Is there room in the A-league for 2 teams in Sky Blue? Who knows?
Final Verdict:
In what has been a roller-coaster season from the highs of the early 4 game win streak (the best streak in the clubs young history), to losing consecutive Sydney derbies and being beaten by the Mariners 3 times this season (they won’t let me forget it), to beating Melbourne Victory 5-0 (we won’t let them forget it) and then losing to them in the first round of the finals in extra time (they probably won’t let us forget that), Sydney FC’s 5th place finish and Elimination final knock-out was probably a fair reflection on their season in the end as the club went from turmoil to success in the matter of weeks, (in particular from Sydney FC vs Adelaide 3-0 where the Cove had a protest and left at Half time to beating Perth 2-1 the following week and then Newcastle 2-0 after that). We finished with equal 2nd most number of wins (12 wins equal with Mariners) yet had the second most number of losses with 12 (though the 3 bottom teams had 13 losses) just highlights how crazy it has been to follow this club and the A-league this season. Who knows what will happen next season?
At a glance:
Results: 12 wins, 3 draws, 12 losses – 5th place regular season, knocked out in Elimination final vs Melbourne Victory
Top Goal Scorer: 10 – Alessandro Del Piero
Most Appearances: 28 – Ali Abbas, Nikola Petkovic, Vedran Janjetovic
Most bookings: 6 – Sebastian Ryall and Ali Abbas
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