ALM Preview: Newcastle v City

Your City boys are finally back in action! Saturday afternoon sees us travel to Newcastle to kick off the 2024/25 A-League Men’s season.

After a disappointing exit in an Australia Cup Round of 32 goal fest away to Perth Glory, it’s now been over two months since City took to the pitch for our only competitive fixture of the season.

Since then, we’ve taken on a handful of ALM opposition in pre-season friendlies with mixed results coming as Aurelio Vidmar’s team fine-tuned preparations for the new campaign.

Here’s how things are shaping up ahead of our season opener!

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THE FORM LINE

The pre-season friendlies delivered inconsistent scorelines, but as we’ve seen in previous seasons—particularly in 2022/23 when we lost four out of five matches to A-League teams before ultimately winning the Premiers Plate— you can’t read much into those results.

Our standout performance was a 3-1 victory over Auckland FC, with goals from Andrew Nabbout, Medin Memeti, and Callum Talbot. Marco Tilio was also a key contributor, assisting on the latter two goals.

At the City Football Academy, Jimmy Jeggo was the sole City player to find the back of the net against Western United. A week later, a late goal from Adelaide saw them claim the win in our final pre-season match.

Similarly, Newcastle’s had some inconsistent pre-season form, a recent 3-2 loss to Sydney FC coming after splitting two games against Perth Glory, winning one and losing the other.

WHO MAKES THE STARTING XI CUT?

There are plenty of questions going into the new campaign, and none are more fascinating than how the lineup will look for our Round 1 clash.

James Nieuwenhuizen was preferred in goal for the Australia Cup Round of 32 fixture but is far from certain to start the ALM season, with Jamie Young – who played every minute of last season’s campaign – and Patrick Beach fighting for the spot.

Kai Trewin seems set to step straight into the XI in the heart of defence and is likely to be paired with one of Samuel Souprayen or Germán Ferreyra.

Andreas Kuen is an exciting new face we could see in midfield, along with the likes of Jimmy Jeggo, Steven Ugarkovic and Zane Schreiber all returning for another season.

Further up the pitch, the biggest question is who gets the first crack at being our starting striker following Max Caputo’s pre-season ankle injury.

Should Vidmar look to his experienced heads, Andrew Nabbout has shown capabilities of performing the role for Club and country in the past, while new signing Yonatan Cohen could also be deployed there.

If he elects to go with a specialist striker though, it would mean an A-League Men’s debut for either Arion Sulemani (19 years old) or Medin Memeti (17) – both coming in with strong form at VPL1 level and featuring off the bench in our sole Cup fixture.

STARTING ON A STRONG NOTE

It’s a tricky start to the season ahead for City, with a Melbourne Derby awaiting at AAMI Park for our first home game of the season in a week’s time.

Another cross-town rivalry follows against Western United, before we make the trip west to face Perth Glory in our final match before the international break.

With this tough run to start the season, every three points we can pick up will be gold – especially on the road for matches like we have ahead this weekend against the Jets.

Although there may be a few key contributors sidelined for the early stages of the season, Vidmar will be confident his squad has the quality and depth required to get off to a good start this campaign.