The City boys have returned from our bogey state victorious, escaping Western Australia with the vital three points that sees us improve our view from the top of the A-League ladder.
City went behind midway through the first half thanks to a Chris Ikonomidis thunderbastard that nearly tore through the back of the net, but the boys fought back well, equalising with an own-goal before Jamie Maclaren made it his night, breaking a host of records with his brace either side of the break and making sure to remind his old side of what could have been.
Here’s what we learned from the 3-1 win away from home:
We’re good, we’re good, we’re pretty f****** good!
Chris Ikonomidis’ 31st-minute goal probably sent an ominous chill through the collective spines of City fans watching on from home last night, but the boys’ subsequent recovery and dominance of the contest further confirmed that this is a team no longer prone to ‘Hearting it’.
It started with Erick Mombaerts in 2019/20, when the Frenchman implemented a slick, new playing style that identified us as subscribers to the City Football ideology, whilst also developing some much-needed resilience and mental fortitude over the course of that campaign.
Now with Patrick Kisnorbo at the helm, this current City outfit has fulfilled the potential promised since the takeover in 2014, and this couldn’t be better exemplified than by last night’s performance after the own-goal.
Between the one-touch passing interchanges that culminated in Maclaren’s second and the movement and positional fluency that allowed the likes of Scott Galloway of all people to have a starring role from right-back, this City side is playing some of the best football the A-League has seen for quite some time.
So Tilio’s a star… now what?
Marco Tilio’s bright start and constant involvement in attacking proceedings throughout last night’s game should be of surprise to absolutely nobody.
It seems like the City fanbase has had massive wraps on the youngster for a while and shares a general belief in his abilities, but last night’s performance only went to confirm these suspicions.
The issue is, with Tilio proving he has what it takes to start for City and Andrew Nabbout receding from his exhilarating best over the past few weeks, what happens when the more senior winger returns to full fitness?
We think Tilio would be pretty hard done by to be benched after such a positive performance, but it’s hard to ignore the quality that Nabbout brings and the way he transformed our attacking play when he returned from injury earlier in the year, so let us know who you’d like to see start on Sunday in the comments of our social pages.
The Georgievski decision only gets more curious…
Coming into the season, we already knew we had comfortably the best full-back depth in the league; between Scott Jamieson, Nathaniel Atkinson, Scott Galloway and Ben Garuccio, you’ve got four starting-quality defenders competing for two spots – a great dilemma to have.
So when Daniel Georgievski was announced recently as an injury replacement signing for Nathaniel Atkinson, the news seemed to catch everybody totally off-guard, both in regards to the lack of rumour preceding the announcement and the fact that we already had contracted backup players waiting in the wings.
After Galloway’s starring performance in last night’s win, it seems highly unlikely that Georgievski displaces him on reputation alone, with the 33-year-old more likely to be spending a whole lot of time as an overqualified backup over the coming weeks.
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