Adelaide falling into a dangerous slump

Adelaide’s loss tonight was their third consecutive defeat, the previous two against the much weaker opponents of Central Coast Mariners and Western Sydney Wanderers.

Although Sydney raised the bar, United rarely looked like they were every going to match them. The defence was opened with far too much ease and Michael Jakobsen, usually rock solid at the back, was far too eccentric and was lucky he didn’t cost his team more with some of his missed challenges.

To their credit, they did create opportunities from set pieces and the free-kick that led to Riley McGree’s goal, as well as a missed chance from Jordan Elsey from point blank range. Still, after the first twenty minutes where Adelaide did look threatening in attack, there was a significant drop in the performance.

The concern for Gertjan Verbeek will now be on how to arrest this slide just when Adelaide were starting to look like genuine contenders for the top four if not the Premiership.

The defeat to the best side in the league is an easy enough explanation, but the two prior raise a cause for concern.

Granted, this is a reactionary response and it does not feel like United are bad enough to miss out on the top six, but should Verbeek fail to steer them the right way in the coming weeks, heads will begin to drop and he could potentially even find himself in the firing line.