Melbourne Victory defender Adrian Leijer has dismissed any prospect of a hangover caused by the short turnaround heading into Friday night’s critical clash against Gold Coast United at Skilled Park.
Melbourne Victory defender Adrian Leijer has dismissed any prospect of a hangover caused by the short turnaround heading into Friday night’s critical clash against Gold Coast United at Skilled Park.
The fixture will be Victory’s third in seven days coming off Tuesday’s 4-0 drubbing of Wellington Phoenix and the 2-0 home win over Adelaide last Saturday.
It’s a demanding schedule made more significant by the gravity of Friday’s clash which pits first on the Hyundai A-League table, against third, just two rounds out from the finals.
According to Leijer, however, the squad has ticked all the right boxes in terms of recovery and preparation.
“We’ve just done the things we do after any game,” said Leijer at Melbourne airport on Thursday as he prepared to board a flight to the Gold Coast. “It’s just about doing the right recovery.”
“I suppose there’s been a bit more focus on it because it’s such a quick turnaround, but we’re all fit, we’re all in good shape and hopefully that comes out on Friday night.”
“We train five, six days a week anyway and Tuesday’s usually our biggest training day.”
“Instead of that this week, we had a game, so that’s not going to be a factor.”
Leijer said Victory have set themselves to claim their full complement of nine points against Gold Coast following the 3-2 win at Robina in Round 8 and 4-0 thumping at Etihad Stadium in Round 16.
Meanwhile, coach Ernie Merrick said he’s not overly concerned by a fitness query over Mitch Langerak who’s made the ‘keeper’s role his own after displacing the more senior Glenn Moss mid-season.
“He’s just feeling a little bit under the weather,” said Merrick.
“We’ll leave it and assess it tomorrow – we’ve got two good goalkeepers so one of them will be available.”
Merrick said he expects third-placed United, who trails Victory by three points and second-placed Sydney by one, to attack from the opening whistle in its quest for a precious top-two spot heading into the finals.
There’s no way however, that Melbourne’s prepared to go conservative to protect its lead at the top of the Hyundai A-League table.
“Our philosophy is always it’s all-or-nothing, it’s three points, let’s go for it,” he said.
“If we go a goal up, we’ll go for more and if we go a goal down we’ll look to pressurise them so much that we get something out of the game.”
“We’re going for three points (against Gold Coast) and we’re not going to change our style of play.”
