The NRMA Insurance Western Sydney Wanderers have tonight defeated the Bankstown City Lions 3-nil at Jensen Oval, Sefton.
The NRMA Insurance Western Sydney Wanderers have tonight defeated the Bankstown City Lions 3-nil at Jensen Oval, Sefton.
In what was the Wanderers final hit-out of the pre-season they will now turn their focus to their first match in the Hyundai A-League against the Central Coast Mariners at Parramatta Stadium.
Forward Labinot Haliti is happy with how the pre-season has finished and is looking forward to what lies ahead.
“It was a good finish to the pre-season for us tonight,” Haliti said. “We-re happy with what we-ve done so far but this is only the start.
“We need to take that into the season proper now, everyone is really excited and I know the boys are going out there to do a good job.”
It took just five minutes for the Wanderers to open the scoring through Haliti. It was from a set piece where local junior Aaron Mooy put in a quality ball but it was the movement from Haliti that got him into open space and a left footed volley rocketed into the back of the net.
The remainder of the half was spent with both sides attempting to work the ball forward but the Wanderers had the better of the field position. Some ill-discipline from the Lions gave the Wanderers three opportunities from set pieces and it was Mooy again who had his eye on goal but was unable to convert.
It wasn-t until the 43rd minute where the Wanderers were able to extend their lead through Jason Trifiro. It was great lead-up work with Tahj Minniecon making a promising move down the right. After exchanging the ball with Mooy a number of times it was Mooy who layed it off to Trifiro and he managed to put it past the Goal Keeper to put the Wanderers 2-nil up.
The half-time break saw Popovic make 10 changes to his line-up with only Haliti remaining on the pitch.
It didn-t take long for the Wanderers to show their dominance with a third goal just two minutes after the restart. It was Kwabena Appiah-Kubi who created the opportunity with a dominant run down the right. With just the one man to beat the Parramatta junior cut the ball back for Youth League player Nicholas Olsen who just had to pass the ball into the goal.
Appiah-Kubi continued to show his supremacy throughout the second stanza with a number of probing runs down the right flank.
As the match came to a close the Wanderers managed to keep a clean sheet and take out the match 3-nil.
