Tony Popovic and his squad are under no illusions that their current position on the A-League Men (ALM) table is “not good enough” heading into the season’s final weeks, especially given the expectations of the club and its fanbase.
After green shoots had begun to emerge across a month in which they took seven points from a possible 12, Victory was brought down to earth in frustrating fashion against Sydney last week: crashing to a 1-0 road defeat despite restricting the Sky Blues to a single shot on target: Anthony Caceres’ 35th-minute winner.
The result left the ALM heavyweights rooted to the bottom of the ladder for yet another week and nine points back of the finals places, a gap which could stretch to ten by the time they take the field against Western United on Monday.
Coming into the season having invested heavily into a squad that finished second and made the semifinals the previous campaign, Victory’s alarming slide down the table has led to significant permutation amongst the club’s fanbase, with Popovic a common target of their vexation.
“At Melbourne Victory, you feel pressure and expectation regardless of the results and that’s how it should be,” the coach said on Sunday. “Regardless, that’s expected.”
Though possessing a game in hand on their rivals jostling for a position in the top six – albeit that is a contest with Melbourne City that will resume with them a goal down following the violence at the Christmas Derby – time is rapidly running out for Victory to save their season.
The parity that has gripped the league this season is only able to give so many second chances before the task of making a run at the finals becomes impossible, and United will themselves will move into seventh and open a seven-point gap on their local rivals should they take the points. The margin for error is thin to non-existent.
Victory hasn’t been as abject as previous bottom-placed finishers such as Perth Glory’s efforts last season or the worst of the Central Coast Mariners’ period in the wilderness, but that will come as little comfort to a fanbase frustrated by continuing struggles to create clear goalscoring opportunities and defensive lapses that have left them staring down the barrel of a second wooden spoon in three seasons.
“You see the frustration after a match, which is what you want,” said Popovic. “You don’t want to see players happy in our situation.
“We’re not happy, we’re disappointed with where we are. It’s not good enough, where we are.
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“But there’s been a lot of circumstances but at the start of the second part of the season, from round 14 when we played Wellington, there’s been a real improvement in performances and consistency. We’ve had a lot more senior players together. More continuity, and stability throughout the group. Those performances have remained.
“We can see that, performance-wise, it’s solid, it’s good. It needs to be better because we’re not getting all the results we want. But we have to keep believing and the proof is in what we see every day in training. We see a group that’s united, we see a group that’s training well.
“We didn’t get the result we deserved last week but, if we didn’t get the result we probably deserved that as well. So we have to be better. We want to be better tomorrow. We’re at home. We’re looking forward to the game.”
Announcing earlier in the week that they had re-signed coach John Aloisi for the next two seasons, United have looked a far cry from the side that lifted the title last season – they’ve gone from equalling a record for 1-0 wins to conceding the most goals in the ALM – but have hit some form as of late: recording back-to-back wins over Newcastle and Perth.
Scoring three goals across these two wins, young striker Noah Botic, who signed his own contract extension this week, has served as a breakout figure for the side from Melbourne’s west — Aloisi’s efforts to contain hype surrounding his potential increasingly frustrated by the 21-year-old’s own form.
“They’ve won their last two games and two games can turn things around quite quickly, six points can do that,” Popovic said of his opponent on Monday night. “They’ll come to play against us with confidence.
“But [though] we didn’t get the win last week, we had a top performance. We need to marry the two together and get the performance with the result, I’m sure we can get the result tomorrow.
“A lot of people in Australia have been aware of [Botic] for quite some time. [Western has] nurtured him along, and looked after him quite well last year he didn’t play many minutes – getting used to professional football against men.
“You can see that 12 months has helped him develop. Once he’s scored his first goal you can see that his confidence has grown. Strikers, you want and need goals. Since his first goal, you can see that his belief is there and he certainly has talent and a bright future ahead.”
“If we can keep creating the opportunities that we are, and we certainly have done that in recent weeks. Then we’ve got to believe that regardless of the opponent or regardless of the defence that’s there in front of us that we can score. This is more about us, the game tomorrow.”
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Header Image Credit: Melbourne Victory
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