Well, that was far from ideal.
Adelaide United defeated Perth Glory 2-1 at the newly renovated Hindmarsh Stadium and it’s fair to say, Glory were nowhere near good enough.
After a reasonably bright start by the away side, where there was a good sense of energy and confidence in the players, Adelaide were 2-0 up after 22 minutes.
The first goal came 18 minutes in, as a result of two Glory players in Johnny Koutroumbis and Mitch Oxborrow running into each other, as Ben Halloran was able to poke the ball through to Craig Goodwin who fired the ball past Liam Reddy.
A good delivery into the box was not dealt with four minutes later by Koutroumbis, as Ben Warland was able to get on the end of the cross and square it up to Hiroshi Ibuski, who had the most simple finish of his career to tap the ball home.
Fortunately for the Glory, an absolute thunderbolt from young gun Giordano Colli from a long way out reduced the deficit to one goal just before the break.
But following on into the second half, there weren’t many indicators from either side that they were going to get another goal.
Adelaide were spurring chances at their end while Perth failed to create meaningful chances for their forwards.
So when trying to analyse what went wrong for the Glory, it shows that we are a long way off from making finals.
I’ll admit, I was probably a little too premature after the win against Central Coast Mariners last week thinking we could make the finals.
But today, we saw similar problems that resulted in us losing games thus far this season.
I may sound like a broken record, but our ability to create meaningful chances in the final third is so poor.
Adelaide United looked more of a threat going forward and that was partly due to their effective decision-making in advanced areas.
We could see this with their 39% crossing accuracy following 23 attempted crosses.
As for the Glory, it was a very similar story to the game against Newcastle Jets. At half time, it was a carbon copy, as the crossing accuracy was 0% from 13 attempted crosses.
This did improve, albeit slightly, as in the second half 5 of our 17 crosses were accurate.
But the big issue is, we can’t create a large amount of clear-cut opportunities.
Take our Expected Goals (xG) from open play as an example. It was 0.28, compared to Adelaide who had an xG from open play of 2.23.
On a much broader scale, the overall xG for both sides paints a more grim picture from the Glory, as the home side had an xG of 3.31 while our xG was 0.42.
We were incredibly lucky to come away from the game today with a goal.
Now, before everyone loses their mind, firstly don’t.
This squad has a long way to go in terms of progression and development. We know that.
There were some clear standout players today as well, with Luke Bodnar, Salim Khelifi and Ryan Williams being my top performers.
But collectively, again, we’re a long way away.
Our processes in possession need to improve, which I’m sure will in due course, but we can see clear issues from the first four games.
Notably, we’re too slow on the ball, we don’t get our head up quickly, we don’t switch the ball enough, we don’t engage in one or two-touch combination play frequently and we’re incredibly predictable.
Paramount+ displayed an attacking thirds stat midway through the first half, where it was clear the Glory barely attacked the middle and opted for the wide areas instead, yet funnily enough two of our best opportunities in the first half came from attacking down the middle.
Heading into the next game against Melbourne City, which will be the last game before the World Cup break, it’s clear we may need to slightly change a few things.
Number one, Luke Bodnar has to start. He was absolutely instrumental when it came to moving the ball up the pitch and getting stuck in when necessary.
I also feel Mitch Oxborrow needs to have a spell on the bench. For me, I just feel he doesn’t offer us all that much and he was arguably at fault for the first goal.
Number two, perhaps we need to tweak the system. Khelifi and Williams looked electric today, but I feel they need to operate in more comfortable territory in advanced areas.
Perhaps moving them into the 10 roles behind Azubel and then introducing say Matt Hatch or Joseph Forde as the left wing-back and then Stefan Colakovski as the right wing-back would be the best way to go, in my opinion.
Either way, the performance wasn’t acceptable but it shouldn’t be all doom and gloom. Remember, we’ve had four away games in a row and we’re yet to field our best team.
The structures and processes will take time to implement and eventually perfect
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