{"id":13917,"date":"2014-04-18T23:20:32","date_gmt":"2014-04-18T13:20:32","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.thefatwebsite.com\/?p=13917"},"modified":"2014-04-25T23:22:49","modified_gmt":"2014-04-25T13:22:49","slug":"a-league-201314-elimination-finals","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.thefatwebsite.com\/?p=13917","title":{"rendered":"A-League 2013\/14 \u2013 Elimination Finals"},"content":{"rendered":"<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><a href=\"http:\/\/www.thefatwebsite.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/tagfootball.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone size-full wp-image-5928\" src=\"http:\/\/www.thefatwebsite.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/tagfootball.jpg\" alt=\"tagfootball\" width=\"600\" height=\"75\" srcset=\"http:\/\/www.thefatwebsite.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/tagfootball.jpg 600w, http:\/\/www.thefatwebsite.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/tagfootball-300x37.jpg 300w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 600px) 100vw, 600px\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" src=\"\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/JAsDIg9l9Kk\" width=\"629\" height=\"354\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen=\"allowfullscreen\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><span style=\"color: #3366ff;\"><strong>ELIMINATION FINAL<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><strong>MELBOURNE VICTORY 2 SYDNEY FC 1<\/strong><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><strong>CENTRAL COAST MARINERS 1 ADELAIDE UNITED 0<\/strong><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><span style=\"color: #3366ff;\"><strong>SEMI FINAL<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><strong>WESTERN SYDNEY WANDERERS v CENTRAL COAST MARINERS<\/strong><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><strong>BRISBANE ROAR v MELBOURNE VICTORY<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<h2>And then there were four<\/h2>\n<p>Melbourne Victory and Central Coast Mariners secured their semi final spots over the weekend with home wins over Sydney FC and Adelaide United respectively.\u00a0 The result means that the Final Four for this season are the same four teams as last year only this time they are playing different opponents.<\/p>\n<p>Melbourne Victory&#8217;s game against Sydney FC was an entertaining free-flowing affair that wasn&#8217;t particularly high on quality but delivered the goods when it came to pure entertainment.\u00a0 Both teams had swiss cheese defensive formations that offered up chance after chance for the strikers.\u00a0 Evergreen Archie Thompson put the Victory ahead after 20 minutes but the lead lasted just 15 minutes before Seb Ryall pulled one back for the visitors.\u00a0 Alessandro Del Piero, possibly playing his penultimate game for the Sky Blues, would then hit the woodwork shortly before the end of the half.\u00a0 The second half was a tighter, tenser affair and it took until the second minute of injury time for Gui Finkler to unlock the Sydney FC defense and send them crashing out of the competition.<\/p>\n<p>The loss for Sydney ends a rollercoaster season that had some soaring highs (a 5-0 away win over Victory) and terrible lows (the home crowd turning on the team when they lost to Adelaide).\u00a0 The board&#8217;s expectation of Farina was that he lead the club to a top four finish.\u00a0 They finished one short, in fifth.\u00a0 ADP has also been coy about his future at the club.\u00a0 He seems keen to stay on but age has rapidly caught up with Del Piero.\u00a0 He is still capable of scoring goals but lacks the fitness to offer <em>anything<\/em> in defense and was basically at fault in the lead up to the Archie Thompson goal.\u00a0 Half the starting squad for Sydney come out of contract at the end of the season too so everyone from the manager, to the marquee player to half the squad are subject to change before the start of the next season.<\/p>\n<p>I didn&#8217;t catch the Mariners vs Adelaide game but by all accounts I didn&#8217;t miss much.\u00a0 The game had the prospect to be a barn burner but for whatever reason, Adelaide United opted to play a conservative and cagey style of football that yielded just two shots on goal.\u00a0 Bernie Ibini&#8217;s second half strike was enough to seperate the two teams and set up a grand final rematch next week against Western Sydney Wanderers.\u00a0 You get the feeling though that Adelaide only need to tweak one or two positions to be a real threat next season.<\/p>\n<p>When assessing the results, the Roar are well placed to advance to a third grand final.\u00a0 They have had the measure of Melbourne Victory for several years now and are the only team out of the four that won&#8217;t be playing a midweek Asian Champions League fixture.\u00a0 Considering the home field advantage, the track record of the last five years against Victory and the freshness of the squad, surely a home final beckons.\u00a0 As I&#8217;ve mentioned time and again in the past month, all eyes are on Besart Berisha.\u00a0 Berisha is moving to Victory next season and through injury or suspension, has actually managed to not participate in any of the three games against Victory this season.\u00a0 Which Berisha turns up for the semi final is anyone&#8217;s guess.<\/p>\n<p><strong>My Tips To Advance To The Grand Final:\u00a0 <\/strong><em>Brisbane Roar and Central Coast Mariners<\/em><\/p>\n<h2>News and Notes<\/h2>\n<ul>\n<li>The Roar are rumoured to have signed Adelaide United defender Daniel Bowles for next season.\u00a0 He only played five games for Adelaide and I have no real opinion on him.<\/li>\n<li>Its kinda fun watching Manchester United flounder #moyesin<\/li>\n<li>The actual leaking of news stories about Moyes&#8217; dismissal is rather unsavoury.\u00a0 Poor guy.\u00a0 Who would want to be a top flight football manager?<\/li>\n<li>On the opposite end of the spectrum, it looks like Perth Glory will stick with Kenny Lowe after being unsuccessful in their pursuit of Graham Arnold.\u00a0 Doesn&#8217;t particularly bode well for their chances next season.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Melbourne Victory and Central Coast Mariners advance to the semis<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":12905,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[15],"tags":[218,1867],"class_list":["post-13917","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-blog","tag-a-league","tag-elimination-finals"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.thefatwebsite.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13917","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.thefatwebsite.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.thefatwebsite.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.thefatwebsite.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/6"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.thefatwebsite.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=13917"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/www.thefatwebsite.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13917\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":13918,"href":"http:\/\/www.thefatwebsite.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13917\/revisions\/13918"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.thefatwebsite.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/12905"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.thefatwebsite.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=13917"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.thefatwebsite.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=13917"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.thefatwebsite.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=13917"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}