Melbourne Victory Head Coach Tony Popovic says his team is growing in confidence after a 4-1 win over Macarthur on Friday night.
Goals from Ben Folami, Jake Brimmer, Roderick Miranda and Josh Brillante saw Victory keep the pressure on the top two in the Isuzu UTE A-League and extend its Club-record unbeaten league run to 12 games.
Speaking at his post-match news conference, Popovic discussed the game, his team’s form and the reason for Matt Spiranovic’s substitution.
on the game…
“I’m disappointed that we gave away such a soft penalty, we lost the ball on the edge of the box and then we were maybe a little bit fatigued, a little bit lazy with our trying to block the ball, we gave away a soft penalty and away from home it just gives confidence to the team that just conceded a second goal and we did similar in Newcastle. When they scored, we weathered five or so minutes and then we picked up again so it’s pleasing we’re able to do that. The offside is an offside so in the end it’s good defending from the players to get up to leave him (Aleksandar Jovanovic) offside and nice to get a couple of goals towards the end.”
on Roderick’s goal…
“If you saw the goal we scored against Newcastle, he ran into midfield, got it back from young Nishan (Velupillay) and played a diagonal ball as a number six so he keeps telling us at training he should be playing six or eight. It’s a nice finish. I think we should get more from him from set-plays because he gets the first contact quite often in matches. Happy for him and happy we capitalised on the set-plays.”
on confidence…
“With every result we grow in confidence of course, we’re 12 undefeated, it’s another fantastic away win, a team that obviously has a lot to fight for as Newcastle did so very positive. We now need to continue this. We have two and a half days before our next game so it’s a really short turnaround, which I don’t quite understand, how it’s at 2 o’clock on Monday. It’s another challenge, the team (Brisbane) that just recently got a point against us in Melbourne so we certainly won’t take them lightly and we know we have to play well if we want to keep this undefeated run going.”
on Jason Davidson’s absence…
“He missed some days of training over Easter, he wasn’t feeling very well and he trained a couple of days with the team … but we didn’t feel that the level he trained at was going to help us in this match so we’ll see now how he goes in the next couple of days at training and see if he’s fit enough for the match on Monday.”
on Spiranovic…
“He felt some tightness towards the back end of the first half and in the end we just thought with the break at half-time, it cooled down and we’re putting Matty at risk, we didn’t want to do that, we’ve got Brendan Hamill, who did very well in the second half, so hopefully Matty’s okay.”
