Conquering China took a small break for various reasons, but now it's back with the team being typically inconsistent and achieving...
Conquering China took a small break for various reasons, but now it's back with the team being typically inconsistent and achieving our best result to date.
May was a mercifully shorter month this season, with just
the three games to play around an international break. International call-ups
tend not to affect us too much, with Steve and Helio being our only
international players. This time, Gligorov would also go away on international
duty with the Australian U20 side at the U20 World Cup.
This was one of those rare occasions where we didn’t have to
face off against a high quality foreign player in the opposition attack that
would almost certainly make a mockery of our wimpy home-grown defence. That
defence held out well for most of the game, helped by our newly honed ability
to circulate the ball in midfield in a way that could only be described as
“passenaccio”. At this level retaining possession isn’t all that difficult to
achieve, but ensuring that possession isn’t sterile is an altogether more
difficult challenge.
Our closest chance arrived after Roorda stuck a lazy boot
through a dead ball and nonchalantly struck the cross bar. The busy and lively
Seung-Dae scurried past the unmoving Shandong defenders to latch onto the
rebound, but somehow failed to put the ball in. Neither half saw much in the
way of real goal-mouth action, and the game was set-up perfectly for a Shandong
punt down the field to soar over the heads of our defenders and fall precisely
at the feet of Cheng Yuan, who blasted it home.
1-0 to
the visitors, and it would stay that way.
Off the back of a defeat isn’t how I’d want to be travelling
to Guangzhou who, despite an uncharacteristically poor start to their season,
still possessed a team that scared the crap out of me. But as always with these
games, there’s not a lot to lose by having a go, and not much to gain from
simply bending over and taking it. And who knows – maybe we could take
advantage of their current turmoil and come away with something.
The first half was a welcomingly drab affair. Guangzhou
played without any urgency or cohesion, and Jackson Martinez cut a forlorn
figure up front trying to escape the attentions of Helio and Petkovic. We kept
hold the ball a lot better than we did in last year’s visit, and as the half we
went on we cautiously stepped up the pitch and dared to pry open their
backline. Besides a half-chance here or there, though, there wasn’t much to
talk about.
Still, it was a pleasing half, and a good platform for a
long second half. Guangzhou spurned an excellent opportunity early on. Around
the hour mark, we earned a rare corner. Chunyu swept the corner in with a
precision he’ll probably never repeat, and Helio rose above everyone to glance
a header in at the near post. This was actually happening.
Serenaded by boos and whistles, Guangzhou mustered up little
in the way of a response. Their attempts to get back into the game were token
at best, which made our usually rickety backline look rock solid. With much
more ease than I was expected, we saw out the game, and secured a famous
victory.
So sitting second in the table, with a number of players
performing well, and with another transfer window looming ominously in the
distance, it was inevitable that a couple of our players would attract interest
from China’s biggest and richest. News broke that Beijing Guon were after our
star midfielder, Sun Jun. Uh oh.
The latest China squad was announced, and our star
midfielder Sun Jun was not included for unfathomable reasons. I’m sure if he
was playing for a bigger club like, say, Beijing Guon, he would have received a
call-up.
Our current form also earned me a new contract – same wage,
but with an extra year. Seems I’ll be staying in this remote corner of China
for a little longer.
After the scalp of Guangzhou, a home game against one of the
weaker sides in the division looked a simple task. But, just because we found
the answer to one puzzle didn’t mean we had the answer to this one. And boy was
it a frustrating puzzle.
Yifang were stubborn at the back and surprisingly efficient
going forward. They saw less of the ball but seemed to exploit the holes in our
team with a precision I would have expected from Guangzhou. Half hour in they
took a deserved lead. Meanwhile, our own attack failed to function at all.
Generously, I allowed young Cao Yuan and Gligorov (back from
an expectedly short U20 World Cup campaign) and extra 15 minutes to do
something worthwhile. When they didn’t, they were hauled off for Junhui and
Seung-Dae, the big guns I thought I could rest. Within moments of coming on the
two produced some fancy combination play that sliced open Yifang and drew us
level.
But individual brilliance aside, our lack of cohesion in
this game meant we failed produce any more chances of note, and had to settle
for a disappointing 1-1 draw.
So we’re about halfway through the season now, and the table
is looking very nice:
A title push looks like fantasy at this stage, but we’re
firmly in the race for continental football next season. Whether we get there
or not will depend on if we can maintain our current consistency, and how many
players I end up losing when the window opens.
