With the announcement that Marco Kurz won’t be staying at Adelaide United past this season, the unknown Adelaide executives are going to go back to the drawing boards looking to find a winning formula.

There was a lot of discussion regarding whether Kurz had warranted a renewal with most people suggesting that, given the limited resources of the club, the German did as much as he could.

It hasn’t been a terrible season so far for the South Australian team, they won the FFA Cup in October and are set for finals, sitting in 5th spot at the moment. But there are still murmurs of discontent from fans that expect more.

Largely because aside from Perth Glory, all the teams are fairly inconsistent and are there to beat. Being in 5th is more an indictment of the teams below rather than Adelaide showing they are better than the rest.

So what’s gone wrong for Adelaide United for the board to decide that they need to go again rather than persisting with the German manager?

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Expected Goals

The rolling xG graph tells us that Kurz’s side started off the season poorly, conceding more chances than they were creating. But after a bumpy start, by the middle of the season Adelaide were a well-oiled machine.

They started to become more of a threat offensively and peaked at 2.13 xG per 90 as well as conceding less than a goal a game. Things were going quite well then and they looked to be competing against Melbourne Victory and Sydney FC for the second bye spot.

Except from Round 18 to 22, they went winless before sneaking a win in a tight match against Central Coast Mariners. Coming into the most important part of the season where they look to make form for the finals, Adelaide have dropped, once again conceding more chances than they are making.

This bit of poor form in the past couple of months have turned Adelaide into a team that went from a genuine championship contender to almost losing their finals spot to a resurgent Newcastle Jets. Although they look set for finals, there’s work to do if they don’t want to crash out at the first hurdle.

A crucial clash with the thrilling Wellington Phoenix awaits this weekend, and unless Kurz finds a way to stop teams from creating quality chances against a potent forward line-up of Roy Krishna, David Williams and Sarpreet Singh, it could get worse before it gets better.

Poor recruitment

Aside from Craig Goodwin, who has been outstanding, Adelaide’s transfer history this season is mediocre at best.

Their marquee Baba Diawara has been on the injury table for most of the past two seasons which has basically meant that Adelaide start on an uneven playing field because of the crucial role that marquees play.

But that can be put down to unluckiness. Maybe nothing showed up on the injury scans to suggest Diawara had an injury problem and Adelaide have unfortunately been stuck with him for the length of his contract.

There are other signings though, that haven’t worked out too much better. Ben Halloran, Mirko Boland and Scott Galloway have been decent, and probably fitting that their team sits in 5th because they seem pretty average.

The worst transfer though, was that of Ken Ilsø, who has a meagrely return of three goals from 19 matches. For a visa slot, the Danish has not been able to make his mark like some of the other foreign strikers — Adam Le Fondre and Ola Toivonen in particular.

To make matters worse, Ilsø was recently banned for doping. That should be the end of his career in Australia, if not entirely.

Injuries not helping cohesion

Key players missing a lot of matches has been a big reason for why Adelaide seem to lack any fluency when on the field.

This season, Adelaide have caught the Melbourne City syndrome, in that they have plenty of possession but create hardly any threat with it. They average 54.2% of the ball, only behind the aforementioned City but have the lowest number of through balls in the league.

That stat alone shows that the Reds are afraid to take risks and find the pass that will unlock an opposition defence. Nikola Mileusnic can provide that spark but he’s been another unlucky member of the team that hasn’t seen regular game time due to injuries.

Their captain, Isaias, has done a great job in controlling the midfield and retaining possession but due to injuries further back, he’s even had to play as a centre-back this season.

Kurz has been unfortunate to not have his best squad available for a significant amount of games, but he’s done well enough with the cards he’d been dealt with.

Adelaide are probably deserved of their 5th placed spot and although Kurz could have done more had things gone his way, the reality is that a new manager will be taking over from next season. That manager will have a strong base to work with thanks to Kurz and it’s certainly possible for Adelaide to become a Premiership contending team.

In the meantime, although it would require many things to change, maybe Kurz will be able to guide the team to one more trophy before he goes? Only time will tell.

Follow me on Twitter @ShababHossain13

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All numbers from Wyscout.