Melbourne Victory may have just handed Hyundai A-League leaders Adelaide United their first defeat of the 2010/11 season but coach Ernie Merrick says the result will mean little if his team doesn’t build on it.
Melbourne Victory may have just handed Hyundai A-League leaders Adelaide United their first defeat of the 2010/11 season but coach Ernie Merrick says the result will mean little if his team doesn’t build on it.
In the past month the Victory have suffered 2-1 defeats against cross-town rivals Melbourne Heart at AAMI Park and Brisbane Roar at Suncorp Stadium but between those matches thrashed Sydney FC 3-0 at Etihad Stadium and came from behind to beat United 2-1 at the same venue on Friday night.
And it is that inconsistency of results so far in a campaign that has included four wins, five draws and four defeats that has frustrated Merrick, and the dual championship-winning coach is demanding more from a team he says ‘can play good football when they want to’.
“I feel as though we’ve consistently played good football apart from maybe one game but we’re not finishing off in the front third but we’re beginning to string those passes together now as was evidenced tonight,” Merrick said after his team climbed to third, albeit early in the round.
“But it’s really important that we go on a run.”
“That (win) means nothing if we don’t start picking up wins on a regular basis now.”
Striker Robbie Kruse, who got on the scoresheet for the fourth game in a row when he crashed in a long-range effort to drag his team back on level terms, echoed Merrick’s thoughts ahead of another Etihad Stadium encounter next Saturday night against Gold Coast United.
“It’s about building from here, we’ve got to actually start winning consecutive games and finally start creeping up the ladder because we don’t want to be thinking in a couple of games we’ll start doing it, we want to do it now,” Kruse said.
“We’ve got another home game next week so we really need to win that and keep building from here.”
Frustrated at having conceded such an early goal after Iain Fyfe scored in the first minute of the match, Merrick was nonetheless pleased that his men had responded to the adversity to come back and prevail.
“There’s no doubt it was a very good win against an undefeated team,” Merrick added.
“There’s not many teams in this league this year that have come from behind after losing the first goal so it was really good to see that we not only came from behind to win but I felt we could’ve sealed the game much earlier, we had numerous chances in front of goal.”
“All in all we had 100 percent of players playing for 90 minutes, it was a good performance.”
Merrick also paid tribute to new Adelaide United coach Rini Coolen who has taken the club from last place last season to top of the ladder after a dozen games and he has no doubt the Reds will be one of the heavyweights come the finals.
“It was a very intense game and credit to Rini Coolen, he’s got Adelaide playing attacking football and the crowd can come and see two teams having a real go at each other,” he said.
“It’s was a pleasure playing against teams like that, same as Brisbane Roar, and I think those are the teams that are going to finish up in the finals.”
