City huff and they puff but they can't blow the Jets down.

Melbourne City had all the ball against the Newcastle Jets. They had almost double the shots and had more than three times the efforts on target. But goals eluded them, as does the top six.

Just over 51 minutes had been played at AAMI Park as Callum Talbot launched a ball down the right flank, bouncing it into the path of his Melbourne City teammate Marin Jakoliš. Meeting it just inside the penalty area, the Croatian winger knocked it, first time into the path of Max Caputo, whose volleyed effort then stung the palms of Ryan Scott. It was straight at the Newcastle keeper but it was nonetheless a strong save, lightning quick reactions needed to get his hands up and in the way. The danger, however, remained, as Steven Ugarkovic arrived at the penalty shot to drive home the rebound, only to somehow drag his effort wide of the goal. 

40 minutes later, the game would end Melbourne City nil, the Newcastle Jets nil. Perhaps this was what the pendulum swinging back in the opposite direction looked like. 

In their last game before the international break, City had run rampant, with what felt like everything they did produce yet another goal on the way to a 7-0 hammering of Western Sydney. Terry Antonis scored from the halfway line, for goodness sake. But on Saturday afternoon, In their return from the international adjournment, seemingly nothing went their way. 

Ugarkovic was unable to make proper contact with a shot in the seventh minute, sending the resulting effort wide. Caputo sent a 13th-minute header straight at Scott. Ugarkovic could find an avenue to cut the ball back to his striker in the 21st after stealing the ball from Mark Natta. After being found by a piercing ball from Jakoliš, Tolgay Arslan took a heavy touch and couldn’t get a shot away in the 35th with Ugarkovic doing likewise three minutes later. Nune Reis finally did have the ball in the back of the net in first-half stoppage time, only for it to be called back once replays showed he was offside enough to be in another postcode.  

66% of the ball in the opening half, leading to ten shots, six on target, compared to three Jets’ shots, with just a single one of those on the goal of Jamie Young. But only 0.50 expected goals to show from it, an average of 0.05 xG per shot, and no big chances created. They would end the game with 65% possession, 19 shots and nine efforts on target and 1.49 xG. Improved numbers. But you don’t get three points for that, nor beat an inspired Ryan Scott in the Jets’ goal.

It wasn’t a big crowd in the house, in the contemporary A-League Men, short of a major derby, it never is for City, but those in attendance were getting restless. With only six games remaining on their season, the defending premiers could have moved back into the top six with a win over what has been a freefalling Jets side winless in their last nine but, instead, will remain on the outside looking in at the playoff places. The prospect of watching the finals from the couch for the first time since the 2013-14 season, when they were still called Melbourne Heart, continues to hover, menacingly, overhead. 

These were feelings matched on the pitch in the 73rd minute when push and shove broke out following an altercation first between Léo Natel and Callum Timmins and then Natel and Kosta Gorzos, with the latter pair booked and the Brazilian winger surviving a VAR review of a potential headbutt. 

And amidst it all, City remained unable to erode the Jets’ cliff face, Samuel Souprayen blasting over a minute into the second stanza to set the tone and Jakoliš doing similar just moments before the double-barrel chance for Caputo and Ugarkovic went begging. Arslan tried his luck from range five minutes after that only to send the ball over the bar and, increasingly showing it was one of those days for the hosts, Phillip Cancar escaped a VAR review for handball in the 58th. Ugarkovic sent a cross just behind Jamie Maclaren, coming off the bench for the third game in a row, in the 87th minute. With less than 60 seconds to go, Maclaren would try his luck with a header on an acute angle, only for Scott to clear it away. In the dugout, Raffaele Napoli, filling in for a sick Aurelio Vidmar, couldn’t believe it.

Importantly for the Jets, they weren’t passive bystanders across the second stanza and fashioned a few chances of their own, more than doubling their shots total to finish with ten. In fact, given the way the narrative of the game looked to be going, it almost felt like if anyone was going to score it would be them. Reno Piscopo put a ball across the face of the goal that Socceroo hopeful Apostolos Stamatelopoulos just couldn’t reach in the 49th. Stamatelopoulos then turned provider in the 66th minute when he set up Timmins at the top of the box, only for the shot to sail over the bar. Daniel Wilmering almost caught Young napping in the 82nd minute with a fizzing long-range effort, only for the keeper to recover and top the ball out for a corner. 

But when referee Daniel Cook blew his whistle to signal full-time, neither Young nor Scott had been beaten. At least not from an onside position. An opportunity gone begging for City and, given all the controversy surrounding them off the field, perhaps an endorsement of the character and resoluteness of Rob Stanton’s Jets.