Wanderers Scrape Past Blacktown Into Cup Semi-Final

Kudos to City, but Blacktown are at the end of their season, fully match fit, at their peak, motivated up to their eye balls. We are still in pre-season, played a sub strength squad, and were probably underestimating them.

Have the same game played in four weeks time with the same squads and it will be a different story.
Play the same game in four weeks time with the WSW at full strength and it will be a very different story.
Play the game in April when the WSW are at their peak, and Blacktown in pre season, and the gap between HAL and NPL will be very obvious.

It was a great cup tie and Blacktown played well, I guess at the end we can consider ourselves lucky but we should have finished it in the 1st half.

Jumpei's first half was not great but the best I've seen him play. I don't think we will see much of him during the season when the other players are fit.

1 minute ago, FCB said:

Kudos to City, but Blacktown are at the end of their season, fully match fit, at their peak, motivated up to their eye balls. We are still in pre-season, played a sub strength squad, and were probably underestimating them.

Have the same game played in four weeks time with the same squads and it will be a different story.
Play the same game in four weeks time with the WSW at full strength and it will be a very different story.
Play the game in April when the WSW are at their peak, and Blacktown in pre season, and the gap between HAL and NPL will be very obvious.

Heartily agree.

Game was also played on artificial grass so Popa protected a few veterans (Cornthwaite, Santalab and Herd) and didn't play some underdone players (Cejudo and Llorente). 

41 minutes ago, wswtragic said:

For $20 in Seven Hills you should have gotten both, and change.

You're getting preferential treatment somewhere?

12 minutes ago, FCB said:

Kudos to City, but Blacktown are at the end of their season, fully match fit, at their peak, motivated up to their eye balls. We are still in pre-season, played a sub strength squad, and were probably underestimating them.

Have the same game played in four weeks time with the same squads and it will be a different story.
Play the same game in four weeks time with the WSW at full strength and it will be a very different story.
Play the game in April when the WSW are at their peak, and Blacktown in pre season, and the gap between HAL and NPL will be very obvious.

This is why I am actually happier we are playing Adelaide United next rather than South Melbourne.

10 minutes ago, Zakman said:

This is why I am actually happier we are playing Adelaide United next rather than South Melbourne.

I agree. Adelaide at home is probably the best draw for us. A Sydney derby would have been too close to the A-League derby and South Melbourne away a huge banana skin. Sydney will not get an easy run down there.

as most are saying, frustrating night, but never the less an exciting match for the neutral fan and only furthers the case for a second division to be started asap.

Full credit to blacktown. And for us, either popa was testing his players or he was extremely reckless because there were players on the field that were out on their feet, and not only cost us a goal, they could quite easily have copped some soft tissue fatigue injuries.

Players like Roly were completely wasted and cramping.

my view on key personel

Riera - had a mixed bag. thought he was dangerous on crosses but made bad runs from good areas into traffic whenever a midfield player brought the ball forward, almost always inviting that player to shoot, instead he should look to make those runs he did for that cracking chance he hit the cross bar with. BUT, he is a breathe of fresh air.

Roly - he is still the man. Just looked tired after the first 30 minutes. pre-season would be at its peak right about now so players will be feeling the effects.

Bridge - only a short spell but he looks less mobile and stocky at the moment. Hoping its just pre-season cob webs

Midfield - Melling and Lustica way behind Herd and Baccus. Lustica definitely more of an AMC. 

Defence - Clisby, makes life hard for himself, always rushes in and over runs the mark. In attack his crossing was dangerous and still a good pass on him. But god do i hope the spaniard is an improvement defensively. 

Biggest worry is how prone we are still tactically to speedy counter attacks. Sydney will have a field day.

My thoughts more on the positives.  I was worried about the penalty shootout, but the choice on who went first either by the team, or by the coaching was spot on.  Bridge was the perfect person to do it, such a cool customer, every experienced, putting Scott up next was perfect considering they missed would have given him great confidence.  

Leaving Oriel to the back end was smart as well, he'd taken an earlier one if he stepped up first the Keeper had seen what he had and would have been more confident, at 3 down the advantage swung back to Oriel.

• Tidy first half, created a hatful of chances just a bit too profligate.  
• Playing on astro-turf is a different animal and we tired noticeably in the second half. 
• Oreo will score a record number for us this season. His movement is sharp if not yet fully in sync
• Sotirio is not making any progress. He is a squaddie at best unfortunately. 
• Great entertainment. Wonderful fillip for the game and this particular competition. 
• If it is a Sydney Derby final I hope they move to a weekend.

Ah. It's such a love/hate relationship sometimes, but I think it's that knife edge that keeps us loving this club. Sure, we really should have put them to the sword early, but the difference I saw was a side that handled the pressure when it counted the most. To me that's improvement.

12 hours ago, Unlimited said:

Very disappointed at our performance tonight and the lack of food options available

Only highlight was meeting up with the WSF scarf cool kids club

Finally, somebody talking about the real issues. 

Also to be fair to blacktown they haven't played competitively in a while as well.

Last game was the rnd16 ffa cup on the 29/8. So that's 3 weeks ago. 

Fences are designed to collapse to avoid a crowd crush.

Echoing the sentiments expressed on here - thought Clisby had a shocker (and I may have let one or two frustrated groans go his way everytime he lost possession louder than I meant too coz he gave me a filthy look at one stage) - generally I thought we became too slow as the game went on - our counter/on the break speed is still far too slow and as for finishing......

Still all credit to Blacktown - they really fought their way back into it and when they scored their second I honestly thought there was no way we were gonna go to penalties, but c'est la vie. And great to see Riera scoring off his noggan. ALL CORNERS TO BE TAKEN PROPERLY FROM NOW ON - NO MORE SHORT CORNERS!!!

And fantastic ad for the FFA Cup - loved being right on the fence (although got mobbed by Blacktown team and supporters after their first goal :)). Atmosphere was good and it was ten minutes from home! What's not to like? 

I don't think Baccus had a great game either. His passing was wayward. There were more than a few occasions he missed very simple short passes and let Blacktown start a counter. I get the feeling Popa is pushing him into a role he's not quite ready for as our first choice central midfield pendulum that links defence to attack. Hopefully having Herd alongside him will make things easier.

Well said Carns fantastic night out! 

We rocked up right on 730 and managed to get spots right behind the goal as a group moved away on KO. It was opposite you rbb fence destroying peeps so got to see the shootout from the keepers angle! My son loved it 

agree lack of alcohol probably cost them a good 50k in revenue, shame for them! 

Instead of talking about some of our struggles in 2nd half and extra time - let's be honest no one could deny Blacktown would have been deserving winners; an as such let's celebrate their performance - played their hearts at and made for epic contest 

from our side ageee - not with some others not sure roly as a 10 is going to work but happy to see what happens first few A-League games 

sotorio had the one moment of Messi skill and jumpei some good moments but yep I assume come season they are our bencies judo and bridge would be our starters in best 11 

Baccus has a tremendous engine and broke up play a lot, yeah he had some miscues passes but meh he's job is to get the ball get it to someone else 

Mack those so called 3 pens you said we could have had in your the game thread were soft Jumpei needs to toughen up 

we got the first one and it was the others weren't 

I haven't seen any complaints about the ref she was excellent give her a gig in the league 

definite upgrade on the clowns we have now 

28 minutes ago, mack said:

I don't think Baccus had a great game either. His passing was wayward. There were more than a few occasions he missed very simple short passes and let Blacktown start a counter. I get the feeling Popa is pushing him into a role he's not quite ready for as our first choice central midfield pendulum that links defence to attack. Hopefully having Herd alongside him will make things easier.

As someone already pointed out we tired badly in the second half.  I thought Baccus had an excellent first half but like the rest of the team got worse as the match wore on.  But having said that, I recall one particular instance when he looked like he was about to collapse from fatigue and then a moment later had to put in to win, retain and release the ball with a fair bit of tekkers thrown in.

At times I wonder about the team fitness/stamina.  We used to always outlast the opposition.  Last season we often failed to see out a match stamina wise.  And while it is still pre season, the same happened last night.

Sat behind the bench and was in clear hearing distance of most comments from popa. Jumpee was on his tongue for the entire first half. Sotirio and clisby were chastised the entire second half including extra time. I heard him tell Lustica you will have to run for all of them as they are all faaaarked. He did also shout out a lot in another lingo but i didnt have an interpreter with me.

Gave me a diiferent angle hearing this first hand.

My views Lustica was immense when he came on. Should have had two assists. One for bachus and the other a simple header for riera. Class penalty

Bonavacia was terrible and i cant beleive how most on here  did not see it.

Aspro cannot play out and cant defend.

Sotirio how does he get to start.

Melling gave away more passes than he made.

39 minutes ago, Golgol said:

Sat behind the bench and was in clear hearing distance of most comments from popa. Jumpee was on his tongue for the entire first half. Sotirio and clisby were chastised the entire second half including extra time. I heard him tell Lustica you will have to run for all of them as they are all faaaarked. He did also shout out a lot in another lingo but i didnt have an interpreter with me.

Gave me a diiferent angle hearing this first hand.

My views Lustica was immense when he came on. Should have had two assists. One for bachus and the other a simple header for riera. Class penalty

Bonavacia was terrible and i cant beleive how most on here  did not see it.

Aspro cannot play out and cant defend.

Sotirio how does he get to start.

Melling gave away more passes than he made.

 

 

 

My guess is the boys are deep in pre-season, so they are pretty ****ed after then and multiple friendlies / travel. Hopefully all this hard work will see them fitter come season start when the load relaxes.

Roly had a bad second half, first half was standard. Hes had great games in all previous, i do not understand people questioning his capacity in the amc role after 1 game where he didnt dazzle.

5 hours ago, 2549_1494053217 said:

We always been slow starters.

That was our 13th game of the pre-season .

Me thinks it's time we saw a confident & assured performance. 

1 hour ago, Golgol said:

Sat behind the bench and was in clear hearing distance of most comments from popa. Jumpee was on his tongue for the entire first half. Sotirio and clisby were chastised the entire second half including extra time. I heard him tell Lustica you will have to run for all of them as they are all faaaarked. He did also shout out a lot in another lingo but i didnt have an interpreter with me.

Gave me a diiferent angle hearing this first hand.

My views Lustica was immense when he came on. Should have had two assists. One for bachus and the other a simple header for riera. Class penalty

Bonavacia was terrible and i cant beleive how most on here  did not see it.

Aspro cannot play out and cant defend.

Sotirio how does he get to start.

Melling gave away more passes than he made.

 

 

 

Roly was sucking in big ones not long in to the first half, it looked like his first game back on the pitch for 6 months or more. He missed a good few chances and never looked settled or happy out there, easily his worst outing in a WSW jersey, but no dramas, he will be good for us. 

1 hour ago, DeeDee said:

My guess is the boys are deep in pre-season, so they are pretty ****ed after then and multiple friendlies / travel. Hopefully all this hard work will see them fitter come season start when the load relaxes.

 

Roly had a bad second half, first half was standard. Hes had great games in all previous, i do not understand people questioning his capacity in the amc role after 1 game where he didnt dazzle.

I don't think we should pick on Roly, the whole team had a bad second half.

This is what happens when the team shows up to an RBB launch. Probably ate too much.

Synthetic surface is completely different to grass & can quickly drain the strength from one's legs

8 minutes ago, Taurus said:

Synthetic surface is completely different to grass & can quickly drain the strength from one's legs

Hmmm possibly, certainly has an impact on bounce and speed of ball of course, which you have to adjust to. I have played on synthetic and normal, although admittedly not since high school but don't remember the physical impact being all that different other than adjusting your timing and so on.

It also may explain some of the crap touches and wayward passes later in the game. They could get by early on but once the legs got a bit heavy and the tiredness caused the concentration to drop they started making mistakes.

We're all bagging sotiro roly melling and aspro ffs wake up and blame that thing that scored an ordinary penalty and an easy as header **** if Santalab was on not only would he be up front not ******* around in the midfield some were but we were that dominant we should of been 5 up at half time watch we'll get smashed against Adelaide all because of Oreo 

5 minutes ago, Davo said:

It also may explain some of the crap touches and wayward passes later in the game. They could get by early on but once the legs got a bit heavy and the tiredness caused the concentration to drop they started making mistakes.

I agree. I intended to make that point earlier. It looked to me the team suffered that way all too often last season.

41 minutes ago, WSWBoro said:

Hmmm possibly, certainly has an impact on bounce and speed of ball of course, which you have to adjust to. I have played on synthetic and normal, although admittedly not since high school but don't remember the physical impact being all that different other than adjusting your timing and so on.

Well grass doesn't grow on Teesside right..

God I wish Lachlan Scott would hurry up and find he's niche at a league level I can't see us playing with ten men all season

honest feels like I'm preaching about Ange crappy new formation to Socceroos fans all over