An early red card to Wanderers Captain Nikolai Topor-Stanley put his team on the backfoot and they were subsequently soundly beaten 2-0 by a rampant Adelaide United.
The key moments coming mere minutes apart, Topor's first yellow coming in the 14th minute after getting caught high up the park only to chop down Marcelo Carrusca after the Reds playmaker had clearly beaten him. 130 seconds later he was off, given his marching orders after handling the ball in an effort to prevent Bruce Djite from getting in behind the Wanderers defence.
Western Sydney resisted the quick short passing of Adelaide for another 20 minutes before the seemingly inevitable breakthrough came. After a challenge from ersatz fullback Jaushua Sotirio against winger Craig Goodwin saw the ball land fortunately at the fleet of the Reds flyer, Goodwin laid the ball off to Sergio Cirio who easily got around Brendan Hamill before cutting back to Carrusca who sidefooted past the helpless Ante Covic.
The game was over as a contest on 54 minutes. Fabio Ferreira worked a one-two with Carrusca, neatly returning the ball to Ferreira with a dink over the static Wanderers defence, the finish a chip into the side netting with Covic once again left stranded.
So complete was the Adelaide domination of the match that Western Sydney had all of two chances on the ball. The first a snapshot from Tomi Juric that went wide, the second a through ball to Nikita Rukavytsya that saw him in on goal but incorrectly called back for an 'offside' despite two Adelaide defenders playing him on.
The statistics bore out this domination, Adelaide having 74% of the possession, the Wanderers managing just one shot, off target to their opponents 26, Adelaide strung together 675 passes with an 89% accuracy to Western Sydney's woeful 136 at only 62% accuracy, 46 crosses to 2, 13 corners to 0.
It was a truly abysmal performance even considering the Wanderers went down to 10 men, and questions will be asked of the mental state of captain Topor-Stanley to allow two schoolboy errors to have occurred in such a short space of time. Adelaide could easily have scored 3, 4 or even more goals had their finishing matched their build-up but in the end they didn't even need that second goal to claim all three points. A massive trip to Morocco looms against the CONCACAF champions Cruz Azul and if they are not to be embarrassed on the world stage Tony Popovic will need to drastically improve his side in just a few short days.
The Wanderers next match is against Cruz Azul in the FIFA Club World Cup on the 13th of December 2014 in Rabat, Morocco. Sydney kick-off time is Sunday 14th of December at 6:30am AEDT.
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