Sydney prepare to calm the storm

By: Matt Collard | October 28th, 2009

The party in NZ won’t be over just yet. It’ll probably still be going on until Sunday. Well at least among the fans. But why wouldn’t you be partying when you beat the new glamour team 6-0? It was a romping. It puts Wellington high on confidence as they travel over to face the original glamour team – Sydney.

But will Wellington bring their exotic play over the Tasman and to Moore Park? Wellington have been held scoreless away from home twice, and struggle to find the net any more then once if they do score. So it poses the question, is this 6-0 win a sign of a new attacking Wellington to come, or was it just ‘there day’?

To be fair, Wellington is equal 5th in most goals scored – ahead of Newcastle, Adelaide, North Queensland and Central Coast. But they struggle to hold leads and score numerous goals, and lately Sydney have been prone to scoring at least 2 goals.

Inconsistency has raddled Sydney lately. They produced arguably the best performance out of any team this season in Melbourne, but it was duly followed up by one of Sydneys worst performances this season in Adelaide. A better performance saw us beat Brisbane 2-1 at home last weekend, but it could have been better. It’s hard to claim inconsistency against Wellington though after having a run of 6 straight draws before last week. Conceding late and blowing leads is just one of their consistent characteristics. Not necessarily a tag you want though.

But when these two meet on Sunday it could be a very similar affair to when they met earlier this season. On that occasion, Sydney won 2-0, but it was a hard fought match. With Sydney and Wellingtons attack both looking strong, we could expect a few more goals.

Sydney defeated Wellington 2-0 last time

But in saying that, it could be contradicted by the fact Sydney have the 2nd best defence and Wellington the 3rd best. Sydney have scored 16, Wellington 15. Sydney have conceded 10 goals, Wellington 11. You could make the argument that these two teams would cancel each other out, and a low scoring game would be the result. But I can’t help but think that it’s going to be a free flowing game.

If good weather permits, and both squads can field fairly strong, I think the final result will be Sydney 3-1.

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