Y-League report: Victory 2-1 Adelaide

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Melbourne Victory recorded its first win of the Foxtel Y-League season, beating Adelaide United 2-1 at Marvel Stadium on Saturday.

Summary

Yazid Said continued his goalscoring form for Victory and Jared Clark netted an own goal in the first half to give the host a 2-0 lead.

The Reds enjoyed the better of the second half, but were only able to score through Kristin Konstandopoulos’ penalty.

Luke Goulding was sent off in the closing stages for Victory, which squandered a few late chances on the counter-attack.

Victory made a bright start and it took a 12th-minute lead through Said, who scored his fourth goal in as many games this season.

Liston Diaz, denied by a close-range block that led to the corner, hit an effort that fell to Said to tap in at the back post.

Victory went close again nine minutes later, Nicholas Hatzigeorgiou firing wide after Brandon Lauton’s good work down the left.

Said was central to Victory’s second in the 25th minute, the attacker finding space down the right side of the area before his cross was turned in by Reds defender Clark.

Victory continued to enjoy some good moments to finish the half, although it was unable to add to its lead.

The Reds pulled a goal back approaching the hour-mark, Konstandopoulos converting a penalty after a handball in the area.

As Adelaide pushed, Victory missed chances on the break, holding on after Goulding picked up a second yellow card.

Head coach Gareth Naven’s post-match thoughts

“I’m really happy for the boys in regards to they’ve played the top team in our conference. We set out to think about what we need to do, get better from last week. A lot of the things we put in place during the week in regards to how we want to go about it happened. Can we still do it better? I think so. I’m really happy for their first win of the Y-League and, also, they continued to push harder, even though they looked like they were getting tired towards the end.

“In saying that, we could’ve finished them off 3-1 with Lauton at the end, and he takes those things to heart, he’d be really upset that he couldn’t finish that off for the team and maybe release the pressure valve. For the players, starting to understand what professional football players do and what professional teams do and they’re always in the match and it’s about them understanding that. We took a nice step forward.”

Result

Foxtel Y-League 2018/19 Round 5
Melbourne Victory 2
(Yazid Said 12′, Jared Clark 25′ og)
Adelaide United 1 (Kristin Konstandopoulos 57′ pen)

Victory: Matthew Sutton (gk); Luke Goulding, Benjamin Carrigan (c), Aaron Anderson, So Nishikawa; Nicholas Hatzigeorgiou (Matthew Bozinovski 65′); Brandon Lauton, Stefan Ristic (Thierry Iradukunda 57′), Aydin Mustedanagic; Yazid Said, Liston Diaz (Jack Palazzolo 61′).