Roar Streak Reaches 31

Berisha celebrates an influential performance

It was no walk in the park for Brisbane Roar at Suncorp Stadium last night, but the reigning champions notched their stretched their unbeaten run to 31 games with victory over arch rivals Gold Coast United.  Forced to work hard by the visitors, Roar weathered a first half storm before running over the top of their opponents to post a 3:0 win.

Pre-match, Fox Sports granted Gold Coast coach Miron Bleiberg special airtime to conduct a whiteboard session to unveil his master-plan to beat the Roar.  His less than earth shattering approach was to pressure Roar to stop them playing out from the back, constrict space in the midfield and hit them on the counter attack.  WOW, what a fucking master plan that was.  It's the same rubbish that's been getting trotted out by every coach, pundit, journalist and armchair warrior forumite across the country.  Unsurprisingly yet again it failed to work.  Gold Coast pressured the arse off us for the first half but still went to the break to the break a goal down.  Ten minutes into the second half and they started running out of legs and the introduction of Massimo Murdocca and Kofi Danning by Ange Postecoglou signalled the 'tercio de muerte' as Roar's fitness told and they tore apart their opponents with two cracking goals.

Gold Coast constricted Roar for time and space in the first half but their inability to replicate this pressure at set pieces cost them dearly with Roar grabbing an early lead courtesy of an Erik Paartalu header from Thomas Broich's free kick.  United only have themselves to blame for the woeful marking that left Paartalu unmarked, with alarm bells surely sounding earlier when a similarly unmarked Matt Smith headed wide.  Obviously the lesson fell on truly deaf ears as both Paartalu and Matt Jurman saw latter chances fly wide amid similarly lax defending.  But in general play the going was much harder for Roar who looked well short of the usually polished outfit in the first half.

As I say though United quickly ran out of legs and when Murdocca delivered a well weighted through ball for Besart Berisha the Roar put the game beyond doubt.  The Albanian took the ball around a sprawling Glen Moss, held off Michael Thwaite and fired home from an acute angle to virtually seal the deal.  Roar added the final nail to the cough thanks to a woeful turnover by Robson who clinically picked out Berisha who released Mitch Nichols into the box and the Olyroo star fired home a missile of a shot to beat Moss on near post.  The scoreline could have ballooned out much more with Paartalu hitting the woodwork and Moss saving a strike from Murducca.  United also managed to escape without a penalty after a handball in the box.  Despite this Mad Miron Bleiberg declared post match that his side had been robbed by the referee.  Yeah right wanker.

Anyway another win and Roar are sitting good at the top of the table.  The performance itself could improve quite a lot and it looks like we will have to deal with this pressuring tactic week in, week out now.  But if teams want to pursue this approach they may want to put more value in keeping the ball once they have.  Otherwise they will spend the night chasing us around the park just like Sydney and Gold Coast did.  Next week's challenge against Adelaide should be our toughest of the season so far.