Brendon Santalab helps Wanderers to draw with Perth Glory

Brendon Santalab has continued his rich form, helping Western Sydney score a well deserved 2-2 draw against Perth Glory.

Western Sydney’s Brendon Santalab controls the ball against Perth yesterday.

Brendon Santalab has continued his rich vein of goalscoring form, helping Western Sydney to fight back for a 2-2 draw against Perth Glory at NIB Stadium last night.

The Wanderers talisman bobbed up in the 67th minute to level the scores with his sixth goal in his past seven matches as both sides were left frustrated they could not conjure a winner.

Glory must be sick of the sight of Santalab, who has now scored in his past four games against the West Australians.

The match started in sensational fashion when Wanderers import Nicolas Martinez scored after just 30 seconds — the quickest goal in Wanderers history, but short of the all-time A-League record which stands at 10 seconds.

Despite the draw, Perth moved up to fourth spot on the table — still six behind runaway leaders Sydney FC.

The Wanderers, who have now drawn three of their five games this season, also moved up a spot, from seventh to sixth.

Both sides made three changes to last week’s line-ups with Milan Smilijanic, Joseph Mills and Brandon Wilson replacing Rhys Will­iams, Marc Warren and Rostyn Griffiths for Perth. Wanderers coach Tony Popovic brought in Jonathan Aspropotamitis for Robbie Cornthwaite, Bruno Pinatares for Kearyn Baccus and Jaushua Sotirio for Jumpei Kusukami.

But, there was still no place in the squad for controversial striker Kerem Bulut.

The game started in frenetic style with the Wanderers’ early goal stunning the home side. Martinez showed his class, collecting the ball 30m from goal before cutting inside past two players and placing a shot inside the right post.

But, Glory were quick to hit back. Diego Castro fired in a free kick from the right, the Wanderers defence failed to deal with it and Alex Grant capitalised to head home and make it 1-1.

Western Sydney probably had the better of the rest of the first 45 minutes. They pressed very high up the park, making things difficult for Glory to get out and forcing them into mistakes.

Martinez and Mitch Nichols were in the thick of the action for the visitors and causing problems every time they pushed forward.

Glory couldn’t find any rhythm though they did cause some problems for the Wanderers defence, especially when Castro got involved. The Spaniard should have scored on 10 minutes when he was put one-on-one with the goalkeeper after a great backheel from Andy Keogh, but he placed his shot wide of the right post.

The Wanderers also tested the Glory goals with several long-range efforts from Martinez and Nichols.

Castro had another great chance after 32 minutes when he produced some lovely skills in the box to swivel past several defenders before his sliding shot was cleared off the line.

But the visitors had the last say of the half when Santalab found his way into the box and fired a low, hard shot that went straight into the arms of Liam Reddy.

The home side took the lead just six minutes into the second half after some great work from Chris Harold, who chased down a pass to the byline before putting the ball across goal. Goalkeeper Andrew Redmayne could only parry the ball into the path of Keogh, who clamly slotted it into the net.