Sunday, September 30, 2007

Juninho 1 v Jardel 0

Juninho showed last night what you need from a marquee player. His perfect, look the other way, pass to release Brosque won the game for Sydney.

The first step for a marquee is that they must be the best player on your team. Then they need to, at least, offset the best player on the other team. Unfortunately, too many teams have been suckered into buying players who they think will bring in a crowd. At least Jardel is doing that for Newcastle.

However, the problem for Sydney is that even with Juninho they could only attract 13,755 fans.

This factor, together with Sydney playing Melbourne, the spirited CCM v Newcastle derby and most importantly absolutely must win games for the Roar and Perth, make next round, the last of the first of the 3 sets, the round of the season.

In this round we will know if the success factors for version 3, and perhaps the A-League in general, are hit:

- Sydney must regain its crowd anything less than 20,000 will be unacceptable and Melbourne is the team to bring it out (expect this to happen)
- the Roar must win at home and it must set itself up with a credible chance of making the top 4 (yes I expect this to happen)
- Perth must win at home (yep I think Perth can win)

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