Game 4 - Sydney FC 1 vs Central Coast Mariners 1 - 28/8/2010

Sydney FC is a club in trouble, but the boss has again sounded the right notes of calm and reflection. Whether he meant to describe his players as "frustrated" and not "frustrating" is another question.

It is too early to abandon talk of a title defence but far too soon for players to lose their heads. Saturday’s (frankly disappointing) home crowd had bought the right to boo referee Matthew Breeze, but the amount of dissent on the field was understandable and not excusable. We pay to sing, cheer good play and occasionally boo bad football. The Sky Blues are paid to play football and should have gotten on with it.

Last season Sydney FC collectively dominated their opponent. Now they bitch and moan, often to each other, and did so long before Breeze’s latest bungle spoiled Saturday night’s emotional derby against Central Coast.

But before examining Sydney FC, let’s bag the ref. I am grateful to every person who becomes a referee, but as Jesse Fink so rightly put it, for the FFA to honour Breeze’s 100^th game after the final whistle was high farce. How the referee and linesmen combined to miss the Mariners’ handball, award the penalty and send off Liam Reddy must be explained. Obviously any keeper in that situation risks giving away a spotkick but Reddy was far from the last man, Perez was not heading “towards goal”, and it was demonstrably not a “clear goalscoring opportunity” after Perez kicked the ball away from goal and towards onrushing defenders.

To add acid to the wound Sydney will rightfully argue Nicky Carle should have won a penalty for a push in the back just minutes earlier.

The tragic fact is that this game underlined the saddest and most cast-iron convention in football: if you are fouled in the box, you must fall over or you will never win a penalty.

Forget video replays, forget retrospective punishments: give teams a chance to get a spotkick honestly and they might just stop falling over in disgraceful fashion.

Breeze said of his milestone: “Like a player, these achievements are nice at the time and I’m sure I will look back on moments like this with fondness.”

“Like a player”? We can liken Breeze to Clayton Zane, another Australian whose game went downhill after his first sniff of Confederations Cup glory.

As for Sydney: they were soporific. Last season Sydney kept the ball while simultaneously teasing the opposition out of position. This season they seem out of sync with each other, and the old warning bells were ringing as Stephen Keller dispatched numerous long balls to the least likely target on the field, the subdued Kofi Danning. Seb Ryall put in a solid performance and after Keller’s wastefulness on the ball and timidity off it when the Mariners played long, Lavicka must consider putting in Hayden Foxe to improve the side’s direction from the back.

Scott Jamieson looks a promising player but a natural left back and he and Byun are not yet gelling. While Danning looks destined to return to the bench, it will be interesting to see who loses their place to Terry McFlynn and (hopefully) Alex Brosque after Rhyan Grant’s impressive performance.

Stuart Musialik again coughed up the odd cataclysmic error, particularly early on, and though Sydney were not defensively poor and dominated the first half, they are a long way from the imperious performances of last season.

Sydney’s problems really appear when they have the ball. The Sky Blues are being harried and denied the space and confidence to play to their plan. The opening game against Melbourne game now seems to reveal the depths to which both squads have fallen, and not the heights which they will regularly achieve.

Nicky Carle, so dominant in that game, was sorely underused and no other Sydney player was willing to turn on the ball despite the space that was often available. Mark Bridge now seems more likely to score five goals a season than 15 and Lavicka must hope his new Brazilian can supply a bigger threat. Kofi Danning looked like anything but a striker and the Sydney midfield was again full of enterprise and short of ideas.

No Sky Blue seemed to think about testing the Mariners’ 18-year-old debutant keeper from range. No cross seemed likely to find a target or test the nerves of young Matthew Ryan, until Rhyan Grant’s goal, which was celebrated like a 30-yard match winner and not a barely-earned gift. Few passes were delivered with pace or invention and the red card robbed Lavicka of his chance to switch things up in the second half.

Give Graham Arnold his due. He compressed the Mariners around the centre circle and dared Sydney to release Danning’s pace with an incisive pass. When Sydney could not produce it, they took to the air in the second half and the Mariners were more than their match. Perez is undoubtedly an exciting prospect and Central Coast can take their place as a definite finals threat.

Sydney dominated the stats until the sending off, but their only goal was a gift and they threatened through deflections and errors more than purpose and poise.

One of the compensating pleasures for A League fans shorn of world class talent is to watch the game evolve season by season. It appears that this vintage of the A League has moved on markedly and Sydney FC is swinging in the breeze.

Lavicka’s men have been worked out. Their next challenge is: don’t panic.