Melbourne Victory captain Kevin Muscat is looking forward to the return of strikers Archie Thompson and Ney Fabiano from suspension for this weekend’s Hyundai A-League clash against Queensland Roar at Suncorp Stadium on Saturday night.
Melbourne Victory captain Kevin Muscat is looking forward to the return of strikers Archie Thompson and Ney Fabiano from suspension for this weekend’s Hyundai A-League clash against Queensland Roar at Suncorp Stadium on Saturday night.
Thompson is returning from a two-week suspension, while Fabiano has been out of action since the Round 4 match against Adelaide.
Despite both strikers missing last Friday night’s match against Adelaide, two penalty goals to Muscat and a strike from Billy Celeski secured a come-from-behind 3-2 victory, and Muscat reserved special praise to striker Danny Allsopp who has been playing up front by himself in recent weeks
“Especially after the result over in Adelaide on Friday night, to get them back into a confident team – they’d get a game in any other team in the competition – to have them back is great,” Muscat said after training on Wednesday afternoon
“Danny has had to lead the line on his own, there is a lot of responsibility on him for quite a few weeks. A lot of boys stepped in and played their part while players have been away.”
“Now everyone is back, near enough, Carlos (Hernandez) is still a week or two away but it just adds competition again, them two boys come back and are going to push for selection on the weekend.”
Muscat said it was important to get back to playing good football after the loss to Sydney, which he said was the worst of his career at the Victory.
“I don’t think any of our confidence was sapped, but the fact that we performed terribly against Sydney. A few critics, a few noises started appearing and it hurt us, we didn’t play well and we acknowledge that and to turn it around and put a performance in like that (against Adelaide) considering we went 1-0 down to a penalty, I didn’t think it could get much worse and we turned it around,” he said.
The skipper shouldered much of the responsibility for the loss against Sydney and he was ecstatic with the way the side turned it around to beat the then first-placed Adelaide on their home turf.
“I was hurting just as much as the other boys after that Sydney game, to come back and turn it round like we did, not only the result but the performance, they’re the games you can walk away from and sometimes get beaten and you think we couldn’t have done much more and for periods of that game it seemed like we were going to get nothing. Not too much went our way but we got what we deserved on the night like we did against Sydney.”
Some of the Victory players have been affected by a virus this week, with Thompson leaving the track early on Wednesday, but Muscat said everyone will be ready to go come Saturday night and he hopes to overturn the 2-0 loss suffered against the Roar at Telstra Dome back in Round 6
“There’s a few boys that aren’t travelling to well, thankfully we’ve got a few days before the game,” Muscat said.
“There won’t be any excuses come Saturday night, we’ll be raring to go with a bolstered squad.”
“They beat us here as well, I’ve got a long memory when it comes to results so it was disappointing on that night, they beat us convincingly so hopefully we can are turn them over in their backyard.”
“It’s an important one for us as well ’cause we want to maintain a bit of form now and go on a little bit of a run.”
