Surging Sydney chalked up a club record fourth straight win, with new striker Ranko Despotovic again finding the net in a 2-0 A-League home victory over Newcastle.
The 30 year-old Serbian striker, who scored the match-winner against Wellington last week after making his debut off the bench, produced a longer super sub cameo on Saturday.
His match-clinching goal on the hour pushed Sydney up to second spot.
Despotovic entered the game at Allianz Stadium after 43 minutes, when skipper Alessandro Del Piero walked off with what appeared to be a hamstring issue.
Del Piero, who struggled to have any impact, was booked by referee Ben Williams for leaving the pitch before the officials were notified of any substitution.
Any frustration Sydney felt then dissipated two minutes later, when they took the lead on the stroke of halftime.
Joel Chianese, who scored the opening goal of the season against the Jets seven weeks earlier, again ended a scoreless stalemate.
He pounced on a fine cross from left back Ali Abbas, controlled the ball with his first touch and drilled it past goalkeeper Mark Birighitti with his second.
The match tilted decisively towards Sydney in a three-minute period early in the second half.
With Newcastle 1-0 down, an unmarked Nathan Burns blazed over from close range.
The Jets, who'd been undefeated after round one, were made to pay for his profligacy on the hour, as Despotovic brushed past Taylor Regan and beat Birighitti inside his near post.
Sydney had the edge in possession in a frenetic and tightly contested first half, but they also had the busier goalkeeper.
Vedran Janjetovic knocked down a stinging shot from in-from Jets striker Adam Taggart and he dealt comfortably with a weak effort from Scott Neville.
Sydney almost lost their lead in the first 30 seconds of the second half after midfielder Nick Carle lost possession in his own half.
Taggart, who had scored six goals in the Jets' last three games, was right through, but his attempted chip over Janjetovic, was acrobatically headed clear by the Sydney shot stopper.
Former England striker Emile Heskey, who was making his first start of the season for the Jets, was replaced in the 58th minute, and Taggart shot wide from close range just before the end.
Sydney coach Frank Farina downplayed the significance of the record streak.
"It's nice to get four in a row, but we're only eight rounds in so we've just got to keep going," Farina told reporters.
"I didn't think we started that well again, the effort was there, but we turned over too much possession in the first 25 minutes for my liking.
"But we bounced back well."
He wasn't sure of the extent of Del Piero's injury but hoped he would be right to play Central Coast in Gosford next Saturday.
"We don't know whether it's neural or he's done some damage but he said he had a tingling sensation," Farina said.
He revealed Despotovic was definitely getting closer to making his first start and it could happen next week.
Newcastle coach Gary van Egmond felt both of Sydney's goals came from Jets' errors and could have been prevented.
"It's not only that side of it, the flip side is we had enough chances to win the game," van Egmond said.
No comments:
Post a Comment