Melbourne Victory interim head coach Steve Kean praised the performance of goalkeeper Matt Acton after Tuesday’s 1-0 loss to Sydney FC.
Acton made nine saves as Victory was edged in the A-League clash at Jubilee Stadium.
Speaking at his post-match news conference, Kean discussed the encounter and the shot-stopper’s impressive display.
on the game…
“I think it’s an improvement second half. I thought we obviously didn’t start the game particularly well, but I thought we grew into the game and I said that to the players at half-time, we encouraged them to stick with the second part of the first half and build on that. We did feel that our wide players, Ben Folami and young Lleyton Brooks, went a little bit too wide when the ball was on the opposite side and it was letting (Paulo) Retre get out a little bit easy and I thought that was better second half, that then gave us a better defensive platform to build on and got some decent counter-attacks. With a young inexperienced side, they’ll be better for it, Lleyton Brooks will be better for it, Ben Folami is getting better, just in every aspect of his defensive play and he’s causing problems. We stuck with it. I’m not saying it was fantastic, but I thought maybe near the end of the match we could’ve got a bit more service to Rudy Gestede with Elvis (Kamsoba) off him and maybe we could slip somebody in and maybe get something, but we kept on trying to recycle the ball and maybe sometimes near the end of the match we just need to go a little bit more to the main threat and play off that but effort, commitment and especially encouraging for us is sticking to the game plan with and without the ball. There are positives to take from the game.”
on Acton…
“Excellent. He’s made big saves at big times to keep us in the game and that’s another message we said, stay in the game, you never know at the end we could get something so Matty kept us in it, but I thought defensively we looked okay, but Matty had a big game and the good thing is for us I felt we finished the game better than we started so that’s encouraging.”
? Acton, Acton man, I've got to be, an Acton man ?♂️#POTG #SYDvMVC #BigBlue #ALeague #MVFC pic.twitter.com/xWZ4ew9ng7
— A-League (@ALeague) April 27, 2021
on whether he’s spoken to Tony Popovic…
“I haven’t spoken to him yet. Paul Trimboli, our (football) operations manager, I think has been in contact, but I’m sure further down the line that will come, but the good thing is from our point of view is the staff that we have have been able to focus on this game, the last game, and that’s our job, just to make sure that we can finish the season and give the supporters something to cheer about.”
