Melbourne City and Sydney FC will be looking to re-ignite their respective A-League campaigns on Saturday night as the pair face off at AAMI Park.
Recent form suggests that the task in getting either side back to winning ways is not an enviable one. Graham Arnold and John van’t Schip’s respective teams have earned seven points in the last five fixtures apiece (Melbourne City, four – Sydney FC, three). That is 23 potential competition points wasted between the two clubs in this damaging sequence.
A loss for Sydney at AAMI Park will give further strength to the growing thought that Perth Glory will take the two-time A-League champions’ place in the top six. However, if a positive result can be mustered by Arnold’s squad, those question marks may well be posed in City’s direction, who only lead the seventh placed Westerners by four solitary points and have only won once in the last five matches.
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Key Battle – Aaron Mooy vs Milos Dimitrijevic
This pair make up a huge part of the core at their respective clubs. The Serbian midfielder made his mark on Wednesday night, scoring the decisive goal against Ghangzhou Evergrande to breathe life into Sydney’s Asian Champions League campaign, and could achieve the same feat for his side’s A-League campaign with a strong display here.
While Dimitrijevic’s impact has not come as consistently as last season, the same cannot be said about City’s star man, Aaron Mooy.
CrownBet match odds at time of publishing
The 25-year-old has 10 goals and 17 assists to his name, and has been singled out for praise from Socceroos boss Ange Postecoglou this week.
Team News
Harry Novillo’s club imposed two match suspension is complete and he is expected to add firepower to what has been a rather tame attacking play by City’s lofty standards in recent matches. While the attack is bolstered with the return of Novillo, young defender Connor Chapman has been named in the squad and may have a big part to play in the title run in, if either of Patrick Kisnorbo or Alex Wilkinson go down.
For the visitors, a stacked playing schedule has coincided with a horrible run with injuries and suspensions for Arnold’s side. These include Sebastian Ryall (suspended – 1 week), Alex Brosque (hamstring – indefinite), David Carney (suspended – 1 week), Jacques Faty (suspended – 1 week) and Rhyan Grant (suspended – 1 week)
In comes Zac Anderson, Andrew Hoole, Christopher Naumoff, Ali Abbas, George Blackwood, Mikael Tavares and Alex Mullen to the squad to face City.
Depth is expected to be utilised after an extremely tough meeting with Guangzhou on Wednesday, while the Victorians have enjoyed an eight-day break since the disappointing 2-1 loss in Wellington.
Head-to-head
This has been a rather even fixture, with City just edging the results tally with five wins to Sydney’s four. To further illustrate how well matched these teams have been historically, there has been eight draws in the 17 previous encounters between the two sides.
Previous Meeting
A Milos Ninkovic brace ensured Sydney left with a pointfrom AAMI Park in the round 14 clash which ended 2-2. The Serbian equalised twice after City went ahead in either half, firstly through Aaron Hughes then Bruno Fornaroli.
It was a game in which the visitors largely controlled, while City were without Ivan Franjic, Mooy and the now-departed Eric Paartalu.
Shane Smeltz had the opportunity to snatch all three points for his side at the death, but scooped his effort over the bar with the goal gaping.
Prediction
With the added distraction of the ACL and a poor run of form in the A-League, it’s hard to see an undermanned Sydney getting a result against what should be a highly motivated City outfit.
Melbourne City 2 Sydney FC 1
*CrownBet odds correct at time of publishing and subject to change.
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