Melbourne Victory midfielder Marcos Flores has described his team’s challenge to overcome their horror start to the season as a “grand challenge”.
Melbourne Victory midfielder Marcos Flores has described the task his team faces to overcome their horror start to the Hyundai A-League season as a “grand challenge”.
The Victory have endured a forgettable fortnight, losing to cross-town rivals Melbourne Heart and suffering a record 5-0 defeat to Brisbane Roar at the weekend.
Flores revealed he had hardly slept since the debacle at Suncorp Stadium on Saturday night but vowed that things would turn around, starting on Friday night against his former team Adelaide United at Etihad Stadium.
He also said it was only a matter of time before the players adapted to new coach Ange Postecoglou’s game style.
“I promise myself, I promise my team, I promise the supporters we are going to overcome this situation,” Flores said after training at Gosch’s Paddock on Tuesday.
“We just need this time and we need the support … the only thing we have to do is fight and try to hurt the opposition.”
The Victory players were put through their paces in a spirited training session on Tuesday, after undergoing an open and honest review of the match against Brisbane, which involved “really hard” criticism, Flores said.
There was plenty of niggle involved and in match simulation, things threatened to boil over after Jonathan Bru took Danny Allsopp’s legs out from underneath him in a strong tackle.
Allsopp got to his feet and menacingly loomed over Bru who was still on the ground, but decided against taking any further action against the Mauritian.
And it is that kind of passion and aggression that has Flores convinced a good result isn’t far away for the Victory.
“You can see in our training, now we are fighting for a spot, every (one of the) 22 players have the same chance to play,” Flores said.
“If you see the training, how hard we fight each other … This is going to be a grand challenge for us.
“I didn’t sleep the last 48 hours, now with this training … I am so happy for training we have today, we hurt each other so that is a good thing because we want to hurt the opponents.
“Today I saw blood in the faces of my teammates and that is something that gives me confidence to say I am in one really strong group and we are going to make it work.”
Flores is desperate to see that same fight present in the Victory’s performance against Adelaide this week.
“To be humble, we want to attack and we want to wake up and the only thing I want to see (is) my teammates angry and try to fight each other,” he said.
The 26-year-old also rubbished suggestions in parts of the media that some of his teammates were not fit.
“That’s completely wrong, we work (for) four months like animals, our fitness coach make (an) unbelievable job,” he said.
“The thing is you will never see one team tired who is winning 3-0, always you will criticise the fitness of the team who’s losing, this is normal, this is football.”
Flores said it was now the Victory’s responsibility to restore the faith in their supporters this week.
“We cannot expect more from supporters, they come 42,000 people (to the Melbourne derby) and we let them down and now we have the new opportunity to make the supporters believe,” he said.
The Victory could be boosted by the returns of Archie Thompson, Marco Rojas and Mark Milligan from international duty for the clash with the Reds.
