Wanderers Shinji Ono, left, and Joey Gibbs, right, celebrate with Mark Bridge after the latter scored the first goal. Picture: Gregg Porteous Source: The Daily Telegraph
THE firsts keep coming thick and fast for Western Sydney Wanderers.
A week after grabbing their initial win, the new boys of the A-League added a couple more notable achievements after a 2-1 win over Melbourne Heart last night in a feisty match that failed to reach any great heights at Parramatta Stadium.
On another landmark night, the Wanderers scored two goals in a match and won their first game at home -- and they have won successive matches.
Importantly, however, the club that had been tipped to be wooden spooners jumped from eighth to fourth spot, the first time it had been in the top six since the season kicked off five weeks ago.
But, if you think coach Tony Popovic was about to be shouting out to the rooftops about where his team is at right now, guess again. He didn't even realise it had broken into the top four until told by The Weekend Australian.
"Nah, really?" Popovic, never one to get excited, said with a genuinely surprised look on his face. But that epitomises what the national competition's newest franchise is all about as well.
The Wanderers go about their job with a minimum of fuss, much like their football.
It's about being well organised, especially in defence. It may not be exciting, but it is effective.
"Tonight was very pleasing," Popovic said. "We worked hard and we carried on the good work from last week's win against Brisbane.
"We opened up the play a bit more and I thought we created good chances."
If there was a criticism, Popovic felt his side sat back too early to try to defend a two-goal lead.
Mark Bridge scored for the second time in as many games to make it 1-0 after 28 minutes before the home side went two-up in the 51st minute when Heart defender Patrick Gerhardt put the ball in the back of his own net.
But Western Sydney seemed to relax after that and was punished when Josip Tadic scored in the 57th minute with a brilliantly taken first-time volley.
The win gave Popovic bragging rights over his former Socceroos teammate and Melbourne Heart coach John Aloisi. The two, who are in their first season as A-League coaches, played alongside each other many times, including in the 2006 World Cup finals.
Aloisi was disappointed, saying his side created enough chances to get a result.
However, his biggest disappointment was the failure of the referee to send off Wanderers marquee player Shinji Ono for a terrible tackle in the first half.
"He came with studs up over the ball," Aloisi said. "From my angle, it was a bad tackle."
Despite all the talk during the week that Popovic would make changes, he stuck with the same starting side as last week.
However, the Wanderers didn't play with the sort of energy and pressure they did against the Roar and it took them a while to find their rhythm.
The sides felt each other out in the very early stages before the Ono tackle after only eight minutes sparked things.
Ono reacted badly after Heart's Jason Hoffman was involved in a tackle on Jerome Polenz.
The referee saw nothing wrong with it but the Japanese star decided to take matters into his own hands, bringing Hoffman down with a challenge from behind that earned him a yellow card.
That seemed to ignite the home side and with Aaron Mooy controlling the midfield it started to grow in confidence.
Western Sydney was eventually rewarded when Bridge scored in the 28th minute, though there was an element of luck to it.
There did not appear to be too much danger when Mooy put a pass across the face of goal which Joey Gibbs couldn't quite control. However, the ball fell nicely in the path of Bridge, who slotted home from about 10m.
Western Sydney started the second half strongly and found itself 2-0 on 51 minutes when man of the match Youssef Hersi raced down the right flank and put in a cross that Gerhardt put into his own net for one of the worst and most embarrassing own goals in the A-League.
Western Sydney 2
Melbourne Heart 1
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