Western Sydney’s masterclass in wide play

It was hinted at earlier that perhaps A-League opposition may have figured out Graham Arnold’s team – this belief was reinforced after watching this iteration of the Sydney Derby, as Western Sydney adopted and extended a tactic successfully employed by Melbourne Victory in round one.

Victory’s Mitch Austin vacating space for Jason Geria to attack.

As shown above, Victory’s use of combination play in central areas, combined with Mitch Austin leaving his wide position to move more centrally, opened space on the right-side of the pitch for Jason Geria to run into.

This caused havoc for Sydney FC, with multiple opportunities stemming from this side of the pitch, with Geria’s often poor final ball leading to a lack of proportionately created goal-scoring opportunities.

Sydney FC’s weakness was exposed again during the derby, with Michael Zullo having a hard time to cope with the space left behind by the more central Ninkovic, a feat which was made even more difficult during transition.

Cejudo vacating space, pulling Zullo out of position and allowing Risdon to overlap.

A slight variation in Western Sydney’s execution of the strategy was that instead of quick combinations in the final third, Cejudo moved inside a lot earlier in build-up, completely vacating the space on the right-hand side of the pitch.

This allowed Josh Risdon to overlap and exploit the space left behind, often unmarked as Zullo tracked the movement of Cejudo. This approach paid dividends quickly – so quickly in fact, that Oriol Riera scored Western Sydney’s third-quickest goal in the history of the club, heading past Redmayne after a pinpoint cross from Risdon.

The principle of vacating space for a teammate to rotate into is not a new one, stemming originally from Cryuff’s Total Football and being extended in many different ways since then, with possession-based teams often relying upon it as a way to displace opposition and create space to receive the ball.