Melbourne Victory head coach Kevin Muscat was happy with his team’s performance against the Central Coast Mariners despite the 1-1 draw.
Victory missed numerous chances during the Round 14 clash at GMHBA Stadium on Saturday.
Besart Berisha’s opener was cancelled out by Blake Powell as the spoils were shared in hot conditions in Geelong.
At a post-match news conference, Muscat praised his team for its display, while he was also asked about debutants Dino Djulbic and Terry Antonis and right-back Jason Geria, who played his 100th Hyundai A-League game for the club.
on the game…
“I’ll get a chance to analyse the game properly but from being here and from the naked eye just watching the game live, there was so much to like. If we analyse the performance, it was an exceptional performance. A lot has been said during the week about the conditions and the players, I didn’t hear them speak about it once. Right from the outset (we were) being aggressive in our demeanour, aggressive in our attitude, aggressive when we didn’t have the ball, aggressive when we had the ball and trying to score goals and from our play (we) created an enormous number of chances through some good football. Analysing the performance, it’s very pleasing.”
on the chances…
“Immediately after a game the emotions won’t be exact, but once we get a chance to look back at that and see what we asked of the playing group, see what they asked of themselves and see what the output was and see what the outcomes were, I think we’ll be very pleased. It was as dominant a performance as we’ve had this season against a side. There’s some areas we need to work on, some areas we need to get better at, but I’m not going to let that overshadow all the good that was done because there was some very good football.”
on Djulbic’s Victory debut…
“Fortunately, he’s a naturally fit guy. He’s used to playing in warm conditions and hot conditions. His last few years have been in those sort of conditions so I wasn’t too concerned about that and then in the end we knew 90 minutes was maybe going to be testing for him, but also looking after him and protecting him from injury as well. Other than that, I was very pleased, he didn’t do too much wrong at all.”
on Antonis’ cameo off the bench…
“Once we get him fit and he’s nowhere near match fit at the moment, plus travel, he’s had some sleepless nights but you can just see when he came on, you can see where his qualities lay in wanting to get the ball and he can start attacks from deep, he can also play further forward. As the game went on, albeit it was only 10-odd minutes, you could just see him getting his eye in and the players around him starting to get used to him and the passes that he can start that penetration from a little bit deeper for us.”
on Geria playing his 100th league game for the club…
“We acknowledged that before the game. To play 100 games at our club is a special moment and the boys put on a performance that he would’ve been proud of. We could’ve been rewarded with a lot more but we certainty were rewarded with a performance and understanding what we were trying to do and what was executed out there was very pleasing. Back to Jason, outstanding achievement and he’s certainly got a lot more games in him at this club.”
