Melbourne Victory Head Coach Tony Popovic was thrilled with his side’s performance in the 3-0 Derby win over City at AAMI Park on Saturday night.
A Jake Brimmer penalty and wonderful brace from Marco Rojas in the opening half-hour set up a deserved win for Victory.
After Victory extended its unbeaten run in the Isuzu UTE A-League to nine games, Popovic discussed the game and Rojas’ superb performance.
on the win…
“I said all week it’s a special game. Derby games are special. You only get three points, we understand that, but we haven’t had a result, a win, against Melbourne City for a while. We had two draws, we feel we’ve improved in each game from the first game to the second and today we improved again and today we deserved to win.”
on what worked…
“I think our whole game. I think defensively, we’re playing the best attacking team in the league, you have a look at the goals they score regularly, we were compact, we were aggressive, we were connected as a team and going forward we were a constant threat, we moved the ball quickly and gave them problems in wide areas and I thought we deserved the three-goal lead at half-time.”
on getting better…
“You’re always searching for more, which I hope that the players want more too, 3-0 at half-time, it was important, you don’t know what will happen in the second half, in terms of whether we can score more goals or not, but we continued to look threatening, we continued to create opportunities and I’m very happy that we kept another clean sheet against such a good team.”
on Rojas…
“Wonderful performance from Marco. It’s been coming and when I say it’s been coming, in terms of the output with the goals that he scored. The last three, four games, he’s been so good. He’s getting through the games a lot better so physically he’s in great shape and you can see that the power and speed is returning. The quality was always there, but now he’s feeling really good physically and he’s able to show the talent that he’s always had.”
