Melbourne City cruise to victory after another Western Sydney Wanderers disaster-class

There may be a different coach in the dugout but the same old problems are costing Western Sydney Wanderers. That much was made abundantly clear on Friday night as Melbourne City capitalised on a disaster-class of defending to move to the top of the A-League Men ladder with a breezy 3-1 win.

City had to weather an early storm from the Wanderers but once they did, they had it all their own way at CommBank Stadium, with a brace from Socceroo Mathew Leckie and a pearler from Florin Berenguer enough to comfortably seal the three points.

It was a second straight defeat for Western Sydney in new coach Mark Rudan’s third game in charge – and he’s lucky this one wasn’t even heavier, with Jamie Maclaren pulling a penalty kick wide in the 66th minute after Mark Natta needlessly chopped down Aiden O’Neill in the box.

The Wanderers were even gifted a late consolation goal, which gave the scoreboard a touch of unjustified respectability. It was scored from the spot by Dimi Petratos in the 80th minute, after a fortuitous penalty call in which Petratos flicked the ball up into the hand of City’s Curtis Good, who had barely any time to react while standing on the edge of the area.

Rudan’s predecessor, Carl Robinson, could never adequately address the Wanderers’ repeated failures while defending set pieces – a fault which now appears to be deeply embedded in the squad itself on this evidence, with both of Leckie’s first-half goals coming from dead-ball situations and amid almost zero pressure.

The Wanderers had partly cleared the danger from a 36th-minute corner kick when Aiden O’Neill sent a speculative sky ball back into the area. An unmarked Leckie tracked it all the way, waiting patiently for it to fall to him before contorting his body to generate enough power on his header to get it past goalkeeper Tomas Meijas.

Seven minutes later, Leckie completed his brace with a glancing header from another corner just before the break. On both occasions, the Western Sydney defence was found completely wanting.

“We are changing certain behaviours and habits. We’ve been working on a lot of things. It was just set piece, second-phase set piece – we were pushing out, we don’t pick up, it’s a little bit of naivety,” Rudan said.

“Mark Natta is a young kid but he’s going to keep growing and learning from those things, our goalkeeper should have been pushed up a little bit more as well. And you’re talking about Mathew Leckie who’s got almost 100 caps for the Socceroos – that’s the difference right now.