We took plenty out of the contest on Thursday night. See the five things we learned from our win over Newcastle
The Special One
He is well and truly the special one.
The records continue to tumble for Bruno Fornaroli, notching 30 goals from 35 games in the A-League, the fastest in league history. His brace against the Jets was what you expect from the Uruguayan these days with a striker’s finish for his first and a wonderfully executed volley for the second.
What’s next for Bruno? Who knows but we have definitely seen it’s sky’s the limit for our captain and it doesn’t look like he’s taking the foot off the pedal in 2016/17!
Practice makes perfect
John van’t Schip admitted it was back to the drawing board this week after our Round 5 loss to Brisbane and a solid week on the track looks to have been exactly what the doctor ordered.
We were only able to get away one shot in our loss to the Roar after their tight defensive display stopped our free-flowing attacking game. The call from the Head Coach was to change things up in the way we enter the penalty area and that we did.
The early crosses in the opening minutes from Ivan Franjic opened the door to another avenue on goal, setting the tone in the early stages and reflecting what the boys had been working on during the week. That said, both goals came from early crosses into the penalty area and that was a glowing positive.
The WLWL trend continues
Our recent win-loss-win trend continues in the league and although that might have been a positive on Thursday night, we will need to get rid of that trend against the Wanderers on Friday.
As we’ve found out in the past years of the league, stringing wins together – back-to-back – is vitally important in gaining momentum ahead of a tilt towards the Premiership or Championship.
This Friday night is the time to record our first back-to-back wins of the season in the league when we take on a Western Sydney side who have struggled over the 90 minutes. With the Westfield FFA Cup looming, now’s the best time to start putting the foot on the gas and motoring on in the league.
Tough opposition
Thursday night showed that there is not going to be an easy game in the league this season.
Newcastle were impressive from start to finish, bravely bringing the game to City and almost taking something out of it. Although the Jets haven’t had the most ideal start to the season and have been ravaged by injury, there is no doubt that the next time we play them in January, they’ll be a tough nut to crack
‘Games like that we would have dropped points’
It was a sentiment echoed on social media that games like Thursday night would have been the type of matches we would have dropped points in the past.
So what’s changed? The attitude, mentality and depth of the squad has played roles in us having the determination and grit to not only go ahead in the match, but grind out and keep the ball when we are ahead to tie up the three points.
There will be no doubt this will be tested throughout the season time and time again but when we have lead so far this season, we have gone on to win every game and this will be very important with the talent we have up front.
