Melbourne Victory coach Jim Magilton has refused to give up on the club’s Hyundai A-League finals hopes even though Saturday night’s 3-1 home defeat to Newcastle left them teetering on the brink.
Melbourne Victory coach Jim Magilton has refused to give up on the club’s Hyundai A-League finals hopes even though Saturday night’s 3-1 home defeat to Newcastle left them teetering on the brink.
Following their first home defeat in 16 matches, dating back to January last year against Adelaide United, Victory now find themselves eight points adrift of the sixth-placed Jets with only three games remaining.
But Magilton still believes something can be salvaged in the latter stages of this campaign, with matches to come against Sydney FC (away), Wellington Phoenix (home) and Perth Glory (away).
“No, certainly not, it’s only beginning,” Magilton said when asked if the season was now virtually over.
“So whilst we’re all disappointed we’ll, as we have done, as a staff, we will get together, we’ll pick the bones out of it and we move on.”
“We were very good for 20 minutes just before they scored.”
“Three goals are poor goals but can I look any of them in the eye and say that they didn’t have a go today? Absolutely not, they kept going.”
“I thought that they continued to try and play and whilst the result was disappointing the last three games we’ve got to just believe that we can win.”
Magilton’s thoughts were backed up stand-in skipper Harry Kewell, who scored one penalty but blasted a second spot kick over the bar.
“Yeah again that’s what it felt like but we’ve got to keep going,” Kewell said when asked if it was just one of those days when things didn’t go to plan.
“And we are working hard and we can see that there’s a change happening and we all want to be a part of it.”
“It is disappointing, I think that was our first home defeat this season, especially here, and we wanted to keep that solid but we didn’t so now we’ve got to correct that and we’re going to go up to Sydney next week and put on a good show.”
Magilton admitted that Newcastle’s three goals had all come about as a result of poor defending, allowing teenager Jacob Pepper to bag a double after Ryan Griffiths had opened the scoring but he insisted it didn’t represent a consistent pattern.
“Well for a month we’ve been very good (but) today was a bad day,” Magilton added.
“Individually (and) collectively, we had a poor day.”
“I thought we’ve got a structure in our team, I think that we have given individuals jobs to do within that team.”
“At the end of the day, if it comes down to a lack of quality, there isn’t an awful lot you can do or a lack of poor decision-making, there isn’t an awful lot you can do but today (they were) three bad goals, there’s no doubt about that.”
