Melbourne Victory was punished for missed opportunities in a 1-0 loss to Langwarrin in the NPL2 West on Saturday.
Summary
Victory squandered numerous chances, particularly in the first half, at Lawton Reserve.
And it was left to rue the misses after the break, Jordan Templin scoring a 67th-minute winner for Langwarrin.
Victory started brightly and it created the best of the opportunities towards the end of the first half.
Stefan Ristic, 18, was close to opening the scoring on the half-hour mark, receiving a pass from Yazid Said, 19, before striking the post.
Liston Diaz, 17, then forced a good save from Langwarrin goalkeeper Fraser Maclaren, having taken an excellent first touch after a long pass.
Victory was pushing and Said was denied by a save following an Aydin Mustedanagic cross, with Ristic’s follow up blocked on the line.
The second half was far tighter, with Luis Covarrubias heading a great chance wide for Langwarrin before its opener.
A throw-in from the right eventually fell to Templin, who buried a low finish from inside the area.
Victory continued to push in the closing stages, but it was unable to find an equaliser.
Head coach Gareth Naven’s post-match thoughts
“I was really happy with the performance, but in saying that, the outcome I’m not happy about. We’re creating the chances we did to go 2-0 or 3-0 ahead and conceding in a way that we know we need to be alive, we need to fix it really quickly. It’s a pattern that occurs every week, that we dominate play, good attitude, good intentions from the whole group, a really good performance, and it didn’t result in getting a reward, getting some points from it. I said to the group that the performance was good, longer, better efforts in our approach and to be honest, we dominated and through our domination we’ve got to finish teams off.”
NPL2 West 2019 Round 12
Langwarrin 1 (Jordan Templin 67′)
Melbourne Victory 0
Melbourne Victory: Matthew Sutton (gk); Brandon Lauton (c), Matthew Bozinovski, Aaron Anderson, Aydin Mustedanagic; Jack Morton (William Wilson); Stefan Ristic, Birkan Kirdar (Anthony Leban), Thierry Iradukunda; Yazid Said, Liston Diaz (Nuh Sehavdic).
Under-20s
Victory’s under-20s extended their winning streak to four matches by beating Langwarrin 2-1.
