Uzbekistan 0 - 1 Australia

In a game which opened with freak stoppages to avoid injury to a small black-and-white bird which decided to stroll into the path of a pass by Lucas Neill, the Socceroos have done enough to earn 3 points at the start of our final World Cup Qualifying stage.

It’s the freak incidents that keep things interesting in football, and play was eventually stopped to allow a member of the Australia technical staff to try and remove the bird from the pitch. Along with that, this video shows a promising start to the match by the Socceroos:

A freak stomach bug kept Jason Culina out of the Roos starting lineup, and Pim made a tactical decision not to start Kennedy. Burns came in for Culina, and Valeri retained his position as a Grella replacement. The lineup, therefore, looked like this:

- - - - - - - Schwarzer - - - - - - - - - -
Wilkshire - Neill - Coyne - Chipperfield
Emerton - Burns - - Valeri - Bresciano
- - - - - Kewell - Holman - - - - - - - -

That’s right, there were two strikers in the lineup and neither of them was a striker. Holman, in my opinion, is a hole player like Carle who plays in behind the strikers, while Kewell is a left winger who also makes a decent playmaker. But it didn’t work out badly, the two of them inclined to make runs in behind the Uzbek defence, and with the Aussie midfield controlling things in the first half it was only 26 minutes before Chipperfield made a run into the box while passing to Valeri on his right. Valeri sent it on to Wilkshire, who played a one-two with Kewell before putting in a brilliant touchline cross for Chipperfield to nod into the corner to put Australia a goal up. If you’d like to see it, here it is:

From then on, Australia had a few more chances, the pick being a Bresciano 1 vs 1 in the dying moments of the first half, which he hit wide. The Uzbeks brought in some substitutes in the second half and tried to take the game to Australia, but the defence was solid and the team held on well for a 1-0 away win.

To be honest, I’d almost forgotten what I liked about Chipperfield and Wilkshire, and these last two games have been an excellent reminder of what a good pair of full backs can do going forward. Wilkshire has provided two excellent assists in two games, and Chipperfield a goal. From what I’ve seen, Chipperfield’s return to the team could be a very good thing for our qualifying campaign (though I confess Carney had slowly started to grow on me at left-back.) Whether Craig Moore can do the same thing is extremely unlikely remains to be seen.

The substitutions for Australia, if you’re interested, were Carney on for Bresciano in the 72nd minute, Sterjovski on for the apparently impressive Holman in the 77th, and Djite on for Kewell in the 89th.

It’s good away results like this that give me positivity for our campaign, and my faith in the Pim is growing steadily. Lets hope they can keep it up in the next rounds against Qatar and Bahrain.

The table as nabbed from Wikipedia now looks like this:

Team Pld W D L GF GA GD Pts  Qatar 2 1 1 0 4 1 +3 4  Japan 1 1 0 0 3 2 +1 3  Australia 1 1 0 0 1 0 +1 3  Bahrain 2 0 1 1 3 4 −1 1  Uzbekistan 2 0 0 2 0 4 −4 0

Comments are, as usual, welcome. The more discussion we can have here, the better.