Melbourne Victory are ready for a crucial clash against Western Sydney Wanderers
Melbourne Victory has arrived in Sydney ahead of its Hyundai A-League encounter with Western Sydney Wanderers on Tuesday night and head coach Kevin Muscat says his charges have recovered well from Friday’s match against Perth Glory in Geelong.
Played in oppressive conditions with the mercury soaring into the high 30s, the match at Simonds Stadium was a challenging one given the conditions but Muscat assures members and fans the team is ready for its second game in five days.
“It was hot but we’ve recovered well from it,” Muscat said.
“The last couple of days, we’ve recovered very well and … we want to end this first half of the season on a positive and we head to Western Sydney and the table will tell you one thing but they’re a decent team, they’re a good team and they’ll be very very determined and hungry to get a result also so we’ll need to be very good on the night.”
Muscat suggested that some ‘new faces’ will be presented with an opportunity in the team on Tuesday, namely players who have been missing recently through suspension or injury.
“Rashid, Jesse Makarounas and Fahid, these guys all come into consideration, Daniel Georgievski’s another one, that’s what I mean about new faces, all of them have trained very well in the last couple of days.
“We’ve got some bodies who can come back into the team … there’s opportunities there and there are people asking to be given that opportunity and some of them will get it,” Muscat said.
Melbourne Victory will face the winless Wanderers in their first game played outside of Victoria for a month and have only collected four points from a possible 12 in their past four encounters but Muscat reinforced that the loss on Friday night doesn’t constitute concern.
It’s our second loss for the season….but we gave ourselves a lot to do when you take everything into consideration we gave ourselves a lot to do and the response in the second half was very good and the effort was excellent,” Muscat said.
