Melbourne Victory coach Ange Postecoglou was happy with the way his side responded to three straight losses as they thrashed Newcastle Jets 5-0 on Sunday.
Melbourne Victory coach Ange Postecoglou was happy with the way his side responded to three straight losses as they thrashed Newcastle Jets 5-0 on Sunday.
Marco Rojas and Mark Milligan both netted twice at AAMI Park, while captain Adrian Leijer also got on the scoresheet with a first-half header.
It saw Victory return to winning ways and while Postecoglou played down the importance of the win, he was glad his side are back in form.
“It’s as important as any other win I guess. You’re hitting the tail end of the season, heading into finals and it’s very important we get some good form,” he said.
“We’ve had a pretty punishing run of games from pre-Christmas. Every game is a big game for us. We’ve been trying to get up for all these big games week after week.
“We’ve had some injuries and absences that have meant we’ve had to toss things around and brought new players in so it’s been a very tough six or seven weeks but we needed to come out of it.
“That’s the football club we’re at and it was great to see today, back at home in front of our supporters, we were able to do that.”
Rojas was back to his best out wide, terrorising Jets left-back Andrew Hoole as he grabbed a brace and assisted Leijer’s goal.
While the return of Archie Thompson helped Rojas shine, Postecoglou said the return to form showed the 21-year-old was maturing.
“Every footballer in the world goes through those little patches where things aren’t going well,” Postecoglou said.
“It’s whether you get out of them and how you get out of them.
“I think it’s another step in his development tonight that he was able to get back to the kind of form he showed earlier in the year and again be really dangerous and it was great he scored a couple of goals.”
Postecoglou hopes his side can hit top form and be a threat in the finals, and said he was pleased with their attacking play against the Jets.
“We just looked a lot more threatening going forward like we had for most of the year,” he said.
“When we were playing well, we look very dangerous going forward. I thought today, particularly in the first half, every time we went up we looked like we were going to score a goal.”
