Melbourne Victory head coach Kevin Muscat hailed his team for a “fantastic result” after a 2-0 win over Perth Glory at HBF Park on Saturday.
An Ola Toivonen free-kick and Keisuke Honda penalty saw Victory overcome the Hyundai A-League leader.
Speaking at a post-match news conference, Muscat praised his side and discussed their performance.
on the game…
“Fantastic result and very well earnt against a team that’s had a very good season, fantastic season, so we knew we would have to earn anything we get from here and I thought we played with some real courage and real heart and were good for our three points. I thought it was a good performance. I think all three games have been fairly even, the first two we only lost by the odd goal. The huge difference tonight was scoring first for us. In previous games, we went behind and it helps the way they play and they’re very good at it, suffocating that game. To score the first tonight and then apply pressure in the appropriate moments and I thought we defended resolutely as well so, we earnt everything we got tonight.”
on the clean sheet…
“It is nice. I want to be a team that just goes out and attacks and wants to create chances, but we knew where we were as a team. Georg (Niedermeier) has come back into the team after recent weeks, Ola the same in terms of minutes, Carl (Valeri), James Donachie, Terry Antonis, so we’d been working very hard over the last two weeks. We knew where we were and adjusted accordingly and the players executed very well tonight.”
on Toivonen’s free-kick – the 5,000th goal in Hyundai A-League history…
“It’s nice. I’m not too excited by it, more excited by the fact that it gave us the lead and it was a well-taken, well-struck goal. It’s interesting, we conceded the penalty very, very similar to the one we got tonight in the last game – very, very similar. I’m just delighted with the result.”
on whether the win was important ahead of finals…
“I suppose, I suppose. You never know do you? One thing it has done is it’s certainly opened it up in terms of excitement. With Sydney winning last night and obviously this result and therefore Perth losing, it’s set up nicely for a run-in. From our perspective, the team – what I’ve generally found – that’s wanting to attack, that’s wanting to press high, never gets labelled as organised or disciplined. A team that sits as we were in the second half, they were throwing a lot of men forward and we had to react, maybe it’d be one of the first times we get described with the adjectives of organised and disciplined so very happy to be organised and disciplined tonight.”
