Melbourne Victory continues its NPL2 West campaign with a trip to Langwarrin on Saturday.
Summary
Despite taking a 2-0 lead, a much-changed Victory suffered a 4-2 loss to the St Albans Saints in Round 11.
A host of players who have been regulars at NPL level this season missed the clash after travelling with the senior team for an AFC Champions League meeting with Daegu on Wednesday.
Goalkeeper Matthew Sutton, centre-backs Benjamin Carrigan and Aaron Anderson, midfielders Birkan Kirdar and Rahmat Akbari and forward Jack Palazzolo were among them.
Victory still produced a promising opening 45 minutes against the Saints, with Yazid Said scoring his sixth goal of the season.
Said, 19, was also involved in the opener with Stefan Ristic, 18, before Victory was overrun in the second half.
Victory is eighth in the NPL2 West, while Langwarrin sits in fourth in the NPL2 East.
The teams last met in June 2018, when Victory recorded a 3-0 win at Epping Stadium.
Head coach Gareth Naven’s pre-match thoughts
“I’m always expecting our boys to have good attitude and good effort. What I’m expecting is we learn really quickly on the things that we’re very strong at and those mistakes on the weekend, when we make less of them, our performance is definitely at a higher level. Obviously we’ve talked about it this week in the review and we’re strong at counter-attack, we’re strong at possession and the things we’ve got to get better at is managing the match at times, managing certain situations where we use possession for the right purpose, not the wrong purpose.”
This week
NPL2 West 2019 Round 12
Langwarrin v Melbourne Victory
Saturday, May 11, 3.00pm AEST
Lawton Park Reserve, Langwarrin South
U20 NPL2 West 2019 Round 12
Langwarrin v Melbourne Victory
Saturday, May 11, 1.00pm AEST
Lawton Park Reserve, Langwarrin South
U18 NPL West 2019 Round 11
Hume City v Melbourne Victory
Sunday, May 12, 2.30pm AEST
ABD Stadium, Broadmeadows
U15 NPL West 2019 Round 11
Hume City v Melbourne Victory
Sunday, May 12, 12.30pm AEST
ABD Stadium, Broadmeadows
Last week
NPL2 West: Victory 2 (Wilkes 21′ og, Said 41′) St Albans Saints 4
U20 NPL2 West: Victory 6 (Velupillay 6’/52′, Bassal 12’/30′, Nedanovski 55′, Deme 78′) St Albans Saints 1
U18 NPL West: Victory 3 (Moukachar 8′, Duratovic 19′, Anastovski 27′) Whittlesea Ranges 1
U15 NPL West: Victory 5 (Minutoli 32′, Krysinski 44′, Gust 54′, Karvounis 56′, Kapaklis 60′) Whittlesea Ranges 1
