Adam Le Fondre, Kosta Barbarouses on target as Sydney FC edge out Newcastle Jets
It’s no wonder that strikers with pedigree and form remain football’s most prized commodity. Sydney’s buoyant front pair stole the show again and gave Newcastle a valuable lesson in how to convert chances .
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The heat and the smoke can’t stop them, nor it seems any A-League opponent.
Sydney FC are now 12 points clear at the top of the ladder thanks to an efficient 2-1 win at Newcastle on Friday night.
Hardly a vintage display, playing in 30C+ temperatures and a bushfire haze for the second game in a row, it still produced their ninth win in 10 games.
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Goals for Adam Le Fondre – his 13th of the season – and Kosta Barbarouses mean the Sky Blues now have twice as many points or more than any side outside the top four. Much more and it will be a procession.
Sydney’s deadly duo
It’s no wonder that strikers with pedigree and form remain football’s most prized commodity.
Both the Jets and Sydney manufactured gilt-edged chances, but it was Sydney’s buoyant front pair who showed how to convert.
Both goals were elegantly crafted, both were deftly finished from close range, and both showed Sydney’s ability to go through the gears in a manner few opponents can counter.
Le Fondre’s came first in just the 15th minute, a goal begun by Joel King’s tackle on the halfway line and continued by the runs of Milos Ninkovic and Anthony Caceres. The latter’s low cross was sidefooted in by the competition’s leading scorer.
His partner in crime’s total is climbing, too, and the same trio of King, Caceres and Ninkovic were involved in creating Barbarouses’s goal, too. This time it was Ninkovic who waited for the prime moment and crossed low for Barbarouses to flick home.
Arroyo’s anguish
Compare those two finishes with the chances spurned by Abdiel Arroyo, whose rustiness was forgivable after weeks out with injury.
Just four minutes in he headed into the ground rather than into the net from Matt Miller’s juicy cross, and early in the second half the ball bounced invitingly for a powerful shot from a few metres that cannoned off the bar.
You could argue that such margins are fine, but a career club scoring ratio of less than one goal every four games for Arroyo indicates it’s not unusual for him to miss such chances.
It took a moment out of the blue for the Jets to get on the scoresheet, Steven Ugarkovic lashing home from the edge of the box to earn Newcastle brief parity.
Corica’s climb
By a statistical quirk, this was a meeting of the two most successful coaches in the A-League in terms of wins – though Craig Deans’ record of 66.7 per cent came from two wins in the three games he was previously caretaker.
Steve Corica, though, is just a fraction of a percentage point behind from a rather more convincing 44 games, and the Sky Blues team he has remodelled is apparently sailing towards the Premier’s Plate.
Originally published as Adam Le Fondre, Kosta Barbarouses on target as Sydney FC edge out Newcastle Jets