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Make or break for Butcher

Just looking at this week’s round 10 A-League fixtures it’s very hard to ignore that the most eye-catching one is probably the Sydney/Perth clash. For a start both teams lost their round 9 matches but more importantly for Sydney the winless run has now been going on for some time with only three matches won so far.

I think Terry Butcher would be the first one to admit that football is all about results and when you get results everybody is happy and when you don’t it’s a totally different scenario. In his case he is not getting the results and hence the pressure is on him.

To be fair to Butcher he hasn’t been fortunate with injuries and suspensions and also the Benito Carbone injury and the subsequent cancellation of the proposed long term contract didn’t help either.

Talking about injuries, against Victory, Sydney had the upper hand but when Mark Milligan and Steve Corica went out through injuries the team struggled to maintain the momentum of the first half and subsequently lost the match.

Against Perth Sydney simply has to win or maybe at the minimum draw otherwise the pressure will be unbearable. Sydney is at home for this match and under pressure sometimes that doesn’t help because the crowd expectation will just be great.

We all know what happened to Nick Theodorakopoulos at Newcastle. The team had a winless start to the season and the club thought it was the time to change the coach. Whether that decision was good or bad is something else but the decision had to be made that led to the coach's exit. I am not saying that will happen to Butcher but it could.

Looking at the other fixtures, the Queensland Roar versus Central Coast Mariners match should be an entertaining one and I can't just imagine that the Roar can lose two games in a row at home.

Adelaide should test Newcastle’s resurgence and I won't be surprised with a draw in this match.

Lastly but not least, I expect Victory to come out with something from their match against New Zealand Knights even if it means a draw. You just don’t know with Knights, against Adelaide in the second half they played quite well and yet in the first half of that match they were all but ordinary.

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