Melbourne Heart coach John Aloisi said his side won’t get carried away with their impressive 3-1 win over Sydney FC.
Melbourne Heart coach John Aloisi said his side won’t get carried away with their impressive 3-1 win over Sydney and will quickly turn their attention to next week’s clash against Wellington.
The Heart took advantage of a lacklustre performance from their opponents to open up a two-goal lead by half-time thanks to goals from Nick Kalmar and Jonatan Germano.
The three points were safe 10 minutes into the second half when David Williams converted a penalty after Sebastian Ryall was sent off for bringing down the Heart attacker when he was the last defender.
The victory takes Heart up to fifth place on the table thanks to their superior goal difference as they now have the same amount of points as both Sydney and Newcastle.
“We needed that one. It was a must-win for us because if they won this game they would have opened up a six-point gap so we needed that one,” Aloisi said.
“It puts us back into fifth place, but we know that there is still a long way to go and a lot of football to be played. Happy with the win.”
The victory was Heart’s fifth straight at their home ground, but they will need to fix their poor away record if they are to remain in the top six come the end of the season.
They have lost their past six on the road and have yet to taste victory out of Melbourne with their only away victory coming in the opening round against their cross-town rivals.
But Aloisi is confident of reversing that trend next week against Wellington Phoenix.
“We’ll enjoy the win tonight but we’ll focus straight away on the Wellington trip and we’ll put this away record to bed,” he said.
“It’s another big game for us, Wellington are in a position they need to win at home. I think they’re six points behind us, so very important game for both sides.
“We’re confident we can go over there and get a good result.”
Aloisi also revealed his decision to play Kalmar over the fit-again Fred was because of the former’s good form of late.
“I thought Nicky played really well two weeks ago here at home and Fred was coming back from injury,” he said.
“Last week as a team we didn’t probably play as well as the Perth game, but I thought it was only right to play him tonight and to start him and I thought he did well again tonight.
“Scored a good goal, the type of game today the midfield that they had I thought he could get in good goal-scoring positions and he ended up doing that and set up Willo for the penalty which was a great ball too.”
