Adelaide United 2-0 North Queensland Fury
______________________________
Second-placed Adelaide United moved to within 4 points of A-League leaders Brisbane Roar when they beat bottom-side North Queensland Fury at Hindmarsh Stadium in Adelaide tonight.
It was Adelaide’s seventh home win in a row.
Marcos Flores opened the scoring in the 5th minute following a cross from the right by Paul Reid. The Argentinian latched on to the cross and beat Justin Pasfield with a low, right-footed shot from 7 metres.
Sergio Van Dijk headed Adelaide’s second in the 16th minute from a perfect left-wing cross from Cassio.
It was Van Dijk’s 8th goal of the season and he joins Jean Carlos Solorzano of Brisbane Roar and Melbourne Victory’s Robbie Kruse as the A-League’s leading marksmen.
Van Dijk almost grabbed a second with a fine shot in the 33rd minute, but Pasfield produced a timely save.
The second half was an anti-climax and Adelaide were happy to settle for the 3 points.
The Fury were far from full strength, with even coach Franz Straka absent. He had the ‘flu and was confined to bed back in Townsville.
Captain Ufuk Talay was suspended for this match, while Chris Payne (hamstring), Isaka Cernak (knee), Eric Akoto (knee), Chris Grossman (knee) and Adam Casey (ankle) were all injured.
Adelaide captain Travis Dodd took his place in the team after the match review panel rescinded his red card issued last week in the match against Wellington Phoenix, where the referee had sent him off after what he thought was a deliberate kick to the head of Vince Lia.
________________________________
Adelaide United: Galekovic - Barbiero, Fyfe, Cornthwaite (Mullen 78), Cassio - Hughes, Flores (Keenan 83), Reid - Dodd, Van Dijk, Pantelis (Ramsay 63) (Sub not used: Birighitti)
Goals: Flores 5, Van Dijk 16
North Queensland Fury: Pasfield - Tavsancioglu (Spagnuolo 46), Hughes, Malik, Storey (Studman 75) - Nikas, Kilian, Edds - Hingert (McDonald 46), Daal, Williams (Sub not used: Usai)
Booked: Nikas
Att: 8,786
Ref: M Gillett
3 comments:
KLEBERSON SAYS:
I thought Adelaide had been lucky on a few occasions this season. They played some decent football last night.
Fury have been disadvantaged by injuries to experienced players.
This is my honest opinion.
Competing with conviction when everything is going your way is not that hard, but playing and giving 100% when everything is against you is the sign of a good player.
This is what all NQF players should try to do. If the club is going to be out of A-league, this is the only way to show to coaches of other clubs that NQF players are good enough to be picked up by others for next season.
Today NQF showed us that this group of players is not good enough when times are hard.
THE INFORMED ANALYST
ADELAIDE RED SAID.....
After a sparkling 25 minutes of football, news reached the Reds players that the new owners - in a hideous homage to Clive Palmer - has put a cap on goals allowed to be scored. At least that's the rumour. The only other explanation is that Adelaide played the second half like a bunch of asthmatic pensioners on Valium. Except Joe Keenan, who was MotM for his fifteen minutes of beautiful football. As for Travis having a "spirited" second half!!!!! Looked more like he'd sunk too many spirits at half-time. We should have won 4 or 5 nil. We cannot kill teams off.
I'm always happy with a win and I'll take the three points but we won because we played for a while against a team with very little hope or skill. I hope Rini is far less polite to the team behind closed doors than he was in his post-match words.
Post a Comment