No backward steps as City prepare for Roar ALM showdown
Brisbane's robust reputation precedes them this ALM season, but in desperate need of a win, a Melbourne City side not afraid to get amongst it are welcoming, even relishing, the challenge.
After disappointing weekends, Melbourne City and Brisbane Roar’s A-League Men sides won’t have much time to reflect before they clash at AAMI Park on Tuesday evening. And while the visitor’s physical reputation not only precedes them but has perhaps become a self-fulfilling prophecy, the hosts don’t envision taking a backward step as they seek to build upon a performance against Sydney that had everything but the goal they so desperately needed.
After playing out a 0-0 draw at Lang Park earlier in the campaign, City and Roar’s rematch will take place with the pair seemingly heading down two divergent paths. Though falling to a 3-0 defeat against Wellington on Saturday afternoon, Michael Valkanis’ side remains third on the table and, while it will come with the disclaimer that they’ll have played two more games than Auckland and Sydney, they can go top with a win. Winless in their last four league games, Aurelio Vidmar’s side will enter in eighth place on the table but, perhaps somewhat counter to the narrative, can jump into fifth – and move to within a point of the Roar – with a win of their own.
Though the adjectives one would use to describe it likely depend on one’s allegiances, the stats would suggest that Brisbane will head to town knowing they reliably force games to be played on their competitive terms: the 138 fouls they have committed the most in the competition and their 127 fouls drawn the third most in the league, trailing only Wellington and Macarthur. Furthermore, the 265 total stoppages for fouls, both for and against, are the most in the competition, which could perhaps suggest that referees are quick to exert control over their games. Continuing along with the theme of being direct and to the point, they also lead the league in accurate long balls per game across its opening eleven games, averaging 24.9 of them per 90 off a 40.6% success rate.
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Valkanis has talked about putting the Roar back into Brisbane this season, and, while the New Year’s Eve clash against Central Coast showed that this has perhaps become something of a double-edged sword, his side has demonstrated they won’t back down from anyone.
Their position on the table and equal-league best six clean sheets show it’s a style that has been bearing some obvious fruit even before one accounts for the desperately low bar that multiple years of abject disappointment had set for Valkanis heading into his first season in charge. But as a ten-man Wellington showed in their 3-0 win over the Roar in Redcliffe on Sunday, it’s not an approach without its vulnerabilities. And with their actual and expected goals (xG) figures, the second most miserly in the league, there are questions about firepower over the course of a full season.
Admittedly, their opponents on Tuesday evening aren’t exactly a goalscoring behemoth this season themselves, with their 11 goals scored across the campaign equaling the Roar in miserliness and their goalscoring woes seeing them score just a single goal from open play across their last five games.
But Vidmar’s side aren’t exactly shrinking violets, either: flying somewhat under the radar this year with the second most fouls in the competition – their 126 just 12 back of Brisbane. And while the nature of their infractions doesn’t draw the same level of ire, receiving just 19 yellow cards this season compared to the Roar’s 36, they also receive far less love from the officials themselves, with only Central Coast receiving fewer than their 86 free kicks this season.
“Every game is physical,” City defender Nathaniel Atkinson said. “Our last game was physical. Tuesday’s going to be physical. Football is a physical sport. I’m no stranger to that; I’ve played a lot of games in Scotland, and every game’s like that -- physical. If you’re not up for the fight, then there’s no point being a professional footballer. We’re looking forward to it. It’s another game and another game to put our foot forward.
“[Brisbane have] obviously turned their recent seasons around. They’re up there high on the ladder, and they play some good football. They play attacking football, they get a lot of goals, and then they defend well. They’re a lot different from past years. We experienced that early on in the season. And they’ve taken off since. We want to play the best, and they’re probably up there with one of the best in form at the moment.”
Held to a 0-0 draw with Sydney FC on Saturday, City will almost certainly be without the services of Takeshi Kanamori and Kavian Rahmani on Tuesday evening, with the former limping off with a groin injury against the Sky Blues and the latter suffering what is feared could be a serious knee injury in the final seconds.
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The defending champions will also need to banish the frustrations of a game in which they created a cavalcade of chances to take all three points but somehow failed to find the back of the net: sending in 23 shots to Sydney’s seven, having 30 touches in their opponent’s penalty area to ten, and fashioning 2.29 xG to 0.57, only to be forced to settle for a point.
“We created a lot of chances, had a lot of shots on goal,” Atkinson said. “Albeit, probably could have taken a lot more of the chances. But those chances are coming that probably weren’t coming in recent weeks.
“We sort of had to fine-tune a couple of things [after a 3-1 defeat to Perth]. But it probably came down a bit more to desire, to want to get to the ball, want, defensively, to be more aggressive, and then when we get the ball, then we’re in those positions to do the things that we do best.
“You could tell the boys were probably a bit fatigued coming into the last couple of weeks. We’ve taken this time to really freshen up, spend time around the boys and really just get the mind fresh. And I think it showed against Sydney that when we’re at our best, when we’re mentally fresh, the physical stuff comes after that. It was more of a mental thing. And we hit the nail on the head with that.
“We probably needed [the Glory 3-1 defeat] to wake ourselves up. It wasn’t good enough for us, up to our standards. We never want to perform like that again. That was definitely a wake-up call. As Viddy said, the video doesn’t lie. We didn’t really take it as a negative, that video, we took it as a positive of the stuff that we needed to fix, and I believe we’re on the right track to fix those things.”