The Sydney Football Circus rolls back into town....

....if indeed it ever left

RIGHT now, Sydney FC are not only the laughing stock of the Australian football, they are up there with the West Coast Eagles as the laughing stock of Australian sport.

Sydney FC? Try Shambles FC, or Sydney Football Circus.

A third coach in less than two and half years has been given the flick, Branko Culina (and his assistant Aytec Genc) sacrificed in the power politics move that was meant to have been consigned to ‘Old Soccer’.

After all, how else can explain the club’s decision to part ways with a manager that has had only 15 games to get things right?

While Culina’s record in those games isn’t the greatest (won 4, drawn 6, lost 5), it isn’t a record to warrant such a knee-jerk reaction from a trigger happy club.

No doubt Culina hasn’t done everything right. Some of his signings have been poor to say the least, a prime example being the acquisition of his skipper and old mate Tony Popovic. In a squad already suffering from an imbalance between old and young, and chock full of central defenders, that money could have been better spent elsewhere, like in the wide areas of defence, or up front.

Nowhere was this more evident than on Saturday night, against Adelaide, when the defence, marshalled by Popovic at sweeper and missing Mark Milligan, looked slow and leaky, repeatedly carved up by the pace of United.

Elsewhere, with his hands have tied by the number of older players (the likes of Zdrilic, Rudan, Talay, Middleby and Corica) on long term and lucrative deals, signed back to season one, he has had little choice but to throw peanuts at a number of younger front players. Little wonder then that the likes of Adam Biddle, Brendan Santalab, Patrick and Ben Vidaic have hardly set the world on fire.

But all appear to have been hand-picked by Culina, either by first hand experience or, in the case of Patrick, via DVD, so he must shoulder some of the blame, despite the lack of salary cap space. And speaking of shoulder, the injury to his marquee man Juninho hasn’t helped, nor have the moments of ill-discipline that appear to run-rampant throughout the squad.

But when he joined the club in February, Culina went on the record saying there would be “no excuses”, no doubt a parting dig at his predecessor Terry Butcher, who made a habit of whinging about injuries, suspensions and almost everything else.

Yet I’ve almost lost count of the amount of times Culina has begged to be judged when he has his full list available. No doubt he's had more than his fair share of injuries, suspensions and international commitments, but some of comments haven't helped.

Whether all of this was enough to for him get sacked, so soon, is very debatable. Surely a bit of a common sense should have prevailed, Culina given fair time to mould his own squad.

Clearly there appear to be bigger games being played, and if the rumours are to be believed, the appointment of former Sydney City club captain John Kosmina (David Mitchell has also been linked by SBS, although he is on the record tonight, on Fox Sports News, as saying the job has “gone somewhere else I think”) as his replacement is imminent.

If so, it would be dangerous territory indeed for a club already being likened in chat-rooms to the old Hakoah, a foundation member of the National Soccer League with links to the Jewish community.

Certainly, if Kosmina is the man, there’s little doubt questions will be raised about his friendship with Frank Lowy and FC chairman Andrew Kemeny.

Lowy, when he came on board as the ‘white knight’ a few years back, spoke of his hope that nobody (no cowboys) would derail his process. Right now, it seems his was the key word. Most recently he has had the temerity to berate Sydney Morning Herald journalist Mike Cockerill for his backing of Graham Arnold, covered here by fellow blogger Mike Salter.

Talk about hypocrisy. What, anyone with half a brain will ask, is the difference between Cockerill or Robbie Slater’s support of Arnold and Lowy’s backing of Kemeny and Kosmina?