Everyone will talk about Ufuk Talay facing his old club in the A-League opener, but the more useful thing to ask is who has the less-broken-in group. Sydney FC come in with a coach, Patrick Kisnorbo, who took them to last season's grand final, yet they are missing their goalkeeper Gus Hoefsloot (wrist) and have named five players who could make A-League debuts. The Wanderers are the reverse: a new-look squad with no listed absences, but a coach who knows Sydney's dressing room better than anyone on the other side.
Sydney first. Per AAP, Kisnorbo took over while the club sat fifth with four games left, and lost the final to Auckland FC. Our match records show their last competitive game was a 0-2 home loss to Melbourne Victory in the Australia Cup on Sept 9, 37 days before this match. The A-Leagues Ins and Outs page lists Hoefsloot, Abel Walatee (ankle) and new signing Jacob Farrell (groin) as unavailable, with Harrison Devenish-Meares named as the goalkeeper in the squad. Football360 reports a 20-player extended squad with possible debuts for Takahiro Sekine, Oriola Sunday, James Overy, Jake Hollman and Gabriel Popovic. A settled coach, then, but an untested goalkeeper and a lot of unfamiliar faces around him.
Wanderers next. The club named a 20-man extended squad, says Nicolas Milanovic is back after time away, and lists no absences. Their recent results in our records look healthy (5-1 over Central Coast and 3-1 at Auckland), but both are listed as club friendlies, so I would not stretch them far. The competitive evidence is thinner: a 2-0 win at Tigers FC and a 0-0 with Melbourne Victory in the Australia Cup, the first two games under Talay in our data. Several newcomers (Miguel Di Pizio, Liam Gillion, Germán Ferreyra, Panashe Madanha) could be playing their first competitive minutes for the club.
Where it meets: AAP quotes Sydney defender Jordan Courtney-Perkins saying a few players want to prove something to Talay after he felt short of minutes last season, and Sydney's hierarchy declined to trigger Talay's extension. Motivation like that can lift a derby, but it can also make a young, rebuilt side more open than usual in the first twenty minutes. Talay, for his part, told the press he is focused on his own group. I would watch whether Sydney's new goalkeeper and back line are asked early questions, and whether the Wanderers' new faces can create them.
The head-to-head records are not much help here: the last three derbies in our data went 1-0 to the Wanderers, 4-1 to Sydney and 2-0 to Sydney away, all before this summer's changes. I would treat last season's results as a different team's.
Sources: AAP (aapnews.aap.com.au), Western Sydney Wanderers FC (wswanderersfc.com.au), A-Leagues Ins and Outs, Football360, and the match records in our DB.
