The announcement of Vitezslav Lavicka’s imminent departure from Sydney FC failed to inspire the Sky Blues as they crashed to a 5-2 A-League defeat at home to Newcastle on Sunday.
A brace from Jeremy Brockie, goals to fellow former Sky Blues players Nikolai Topor-Stanley and Ruben Zadkovich and another to substitute Ali Abbas lifted the Jets into the top six at Sydney’s expense.
Trailing 3-0 at halftime, Sydney mounted a fightback with second half goals to Hiro Moriyasu and Michael Beauchamp but they couldn’t prevent a loss which dealt a significant blow to their finals aspirations.
Sydney players had spoken of their desire to send Lavicka out a winner after the club announced on Friday the Czech could would be departing at season’s end by mutual consent.
But there was little evidence of that motivation as Sydney continued their trend of slow starts in front of 10,232 fans at the Sydney Football Stadium.
There were some encouraging moments in the early minutes for the home side but Newcastle quickly took the ascendancy.
Topor-Stanley opened the scoring in the 22nd minute, cleverly looping a header into the top corner after Liam Reddy had blocked Ryan Griffiths’ shot.
Sydney were stunned again seven minutes later when Zadkovich doubled the lead with an exquisite finish.
The midfielder stormed onto Brockie’s pass and hit an unstoppable first time shot on the half volley before taunting the home fans by pointing to the name on his jersey in front of The Cove.
Things went from bad to worse when Sydney lost Mark Bridge to injury and the Jets went 3-0 up in the 38th minute.
Pascal Bosschaart failed to deal with a dangerous Tarek Elrich cross and Brockie made no mistake with a close-range header.
Knowing they needed to strike early in the second half to salvage anything from the match, Sydney hit back two minutes after the break through a fine individual effort from Moriyasu.
The Sky Blues kept up the pressure and were denied calls of a penalty for handball before Karol Kisel and substitute Juho Makela squandered decent chances.
Beauchamp put them home side within striking distance in the 72nd minute, prodding home a Bruno Cazarine cross from close range for his first ever goal in Australian domestic football.
But any hopes of stealing a draw were killed off when Brockie netted his second in the 87th minute, tapping in after Reddy fumbled an Abbas shot.
The Iraqi international completed the rout with a goal of his own deep into injury time following some great build-up by Michael Bridges to ensure Sydney concede five goals at home for the first time.
