An entertaining 3-3 draw between our boys in blue and Adelaide United rounded out a weekend of A-Leagues Men action where chaos reigned supreme.
There were mishaps, goals galore, a broken leg, and a spirited comeback that fell just short of snatching the three points up for grabs.
Short-Term Thinking
The three goals we conceded today were preventable. More than that, two of them came from completely avoidable errors. The other was from a poorly marked free man that scored from a corner without his feet even leaving the ground. After a performance like that, questions have to be asked regarding our interim manager Rado Vidosic.
While it's clear City prefer to promote from within, it has never been clear whether or not Vidosic is here for good, but we're now about halfway through the season and it's getting late to find a replacement and if we want them settled in time for that all important season-end stretch. It's easy to say PK would never have allowed for those defensive errors to occur - and maybe it was just the unsettled backline with the full-backs switched and the forced substitution of Lam at half time - but it's hard to see how such schoolboy errors could occur under Kisnorbo's military-esque rigorous training.
If we're going to credit the manager with the bad, we have to credit him with the good as well. It's true that we still possessed the character to fight back twice and reduce a two-goal deficit, but when we get to the pointy end of the season, it's best we don't put ourselves in that position to begin with.
Rado has only lost one game out of the seven since taking over at the start of December, and a win percentage of just under 50% (not including the postponed derby) is a decent record for a new manager - even when considering that he's largely inherited the team infrastructure that Paddy Kisnorbo had implemented. Perhaps it's simply a case of a cycle repeating.
The Mid-Season Slump
City fans are no strangers to roller-coaster seasons. We've become all too familiar with positive starts to a season that are followed by a bad slew of results. Maybe it just takes teams time to figure us out, or maybe we get too far ahead of ourselves - whatever the reason - it appears we are currently in our 2023 funk. On a positive note, if this years iteration consists of draws instead of losses, that's an improvement on what we're used to.
Still, this match was another missed opportunity to really run away at the top of the ladder, so with three draws in a row, let's hope we return to winning ways soon. We might even have the solution to our creative woes waiting on the bench.
Berenguer s'il Vous Plaît
Valon Berisha played well today, very well even. Hell, he hasn't had a bad game yet. But the French maestro Florin Berenguer was excellent off the bench. In his half an hour of game time, his silky skills saw him beat players in dangerous areas and his creative spark brought about numerous defence-breaking opportunities against a team that had gone well into their shell.
Three draws in a row isn't the end of the world, but if we're to stop this slide we need a player that can produce the unexpected and throw off teams that think they have us figured out.
Next week at home against Macarthur - a team with their own coaching change - is the right game to switch things around.
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