Melbourne City hosted the Wanderers on a Saturday night clash in Melbourne to close out November, Nicolas Milanovic opened the scoring with a penalty he earned and scored & Marcus Antonsson closing the game as a contest with his late goal to complete a comfortable 2-0 win.
Wanderers manager Alen Stajcic once again elected to leave marquee signing Juan Mata on the bench, a move that will continue to put pressure on his tenure at the club if the losses keep mounting up. The defensive unit required a reshuffle due to an injury to foreign loan signing Jeong Tae-Wook, leaving Stajcic to use the very young central defensive duo of Alex Bonetig and Anthony Pantazopoulos. Melbourne City returned Aziz Behich to the starting 11, their injury woes seeing 17 year old Medin Memti leading their attacking line.
The game kicked off in torrential rain, the teams soaked to the bone. City fashioned an attack in the 2nd minute where Yonatan Cohen and Steven Ugarkovic collided at the cruical moment but managed to knock the ball into a defender for a corner. That corner almost ended in the first goal of the game, an in-swinging corner that was flicked on toward the back post, turned back inside where a shot along the ground was kept out by Thomas, and the rebound going pinball with Thomas again blocking the path to allow his defence to clear it away, just as the rain began to clear also.
Milanovic had a pop from halfway trying to catch Patrick Beach off his line, the shot was too high and wide. The remainder of the opening half-hour had neither team making a clear cut chance or dominating possession for any stretches of time. Milanovic had a shot in the 34th minute where he cut back on Behich, fired through the defenders legs and almost caught Beach short at the near post, hitting it and it going out for a goal kick.
Nathaniel Atkinson & Brandon Borrello both had similar glorious chances one after the other. For City the Austrian attacker Andreas Kuen dribbled to the byline and delivered a cut back, with Lawrence Thomas covering the near post Atkinson had an acre of open net to aim for but blasted his shot over the bar. Borrello was found with a low through ball cross but he was possibly offside and similarly kicked it into the stands as well.
3 minutes before half-time the Wanderers were sent to the spot when Milanovic dribbled past Behich, knocked the ball into Callum Talbot before being smashed to the turf by the defender. It was a clear penalty, and after winning the penalty he scored it, sending the keeper the wrong way with a stutter step and placing it into the net to take the lead in the game and for Milanovic, in the Golden Boot race with his 5th of the A-League season. The final act of the half was Thomas palming the ball away from an attempt to score directly from a corner. Milanovic's penalty the key moment of a half that was otherwise quite dire.
The game ambled to the hour mark, City introducing Harry Politidis off the bench with the penalty causing Talbot withdrawn. The Wanderers made their own sub not longer after, Antonsson coming on for Sapsford. There was a brief break as Thomas recieved treatment after being hit in the shoulder by an onrushing City attacker. Jimmy Jeggo came on as well as a sub for Zane Schrieber. With City starting to hold the ball for longer and longer periods as the Wanderers camping on their penalty area, Stajcic summoned a double sub to retake the momentum of the game. Aydan Hammond on for Borrello, and Mata on for Bozhidar Kraev. The starting striker duo had worked hard but had lacked a killer ball or finding enough space up front. To start the final 10, newly introduced Kavian Rahmani made his first impact on the game with a poor tackle on Dylan Scicluna that was punished with a yellow card.
Momentum shifted again in the 81st minute, Gabriel Cleur doing some excellent work in the midfield to close down and steal the ball away from Behich and he ran at the defence, turning them backward and scrambling. Unable to stop the fullback he produced a wonderful through ball to Antonsson who made a great run to open up his left foot and turned it past the onrushing goalkeeper to make it 2-0.
The final subs of the game came as stoppage time began, Scicluna and Pantazopoulos off for Oscar Preistman & Dean Pelekanos. City had a shot bounce up over the bar for a corner, and claims for a penalty waved away when Souprayen went down under at most an extremely light contact from Cleur. Thomas continued his good game by denying Kai Trewin's snapshot on the turn, the second corner coming off Jeggo and well over. The 4 minutes of stoppage time expired and full time sounded to give the Wanderers their first away win against Melbourne City at AAMI Park since 2015.
Three points and their 2nd win of the season, the 7 points not enough to enter the top 6 but at least providing them with some space from the bottom of the ladder as the team go into their first Bye round.
The Wanderers next game is against Brisbane Roar, at Parramatta on Saturday the 14th of December with kick-off at 7:35pm. The Wanderers have the bye on the weekend of the 6th to 8th of December.
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