Melbourne Victory skipper Kevin Muscat admits he’s at a loss to explain why his team’s form on the road this season has been so much more productive than at home.
Muscat will be pleased, however, if the trend continues in Saturday night’s clash with Brisbane Roar at Suncorp Stadium.
The Victory have an outstanding strike rate away from home this season with five wins from six matches compared to just two from eight at Etihad Stadium.
“I couldn’t tell, you, I really couldn’t tell you,” said Muscat with a shrug when asked why the home and away results have been so lopsided.
“I wouldn’t have a clue.”
“For whatever reasons, we’ve travelled well this season.”
Speaking to the media after training at Olympic Park on Wednesday morning, Muscat said the Victory will be spurred by the 4-0 home loss to Central Coast in the club’s most recent outing – a result which still makes him wince – and encouraged by a great record at Suncorp: four wins, a draw and a loss from six outings.
“Our home form is an issue, I’m not hiding away from that fact,” he said.
“It is an issue and it’s something that we’ve got to rectify.”
“If we want to become champions and win things this season and retain our trophies we’ve got to improve our home form, but this week we’re away from home so we’ll concentrate on that.”
With the return to fitness of Nick Ward and Robbie Kruse, both of whom played in the Victory’s National Youth league win over Perth last Sunday, Muscat agreed that competition for selection is hotting up.
He said that Kruse, who came in for some close attention from several of his former team-mates – most notably battle-hardened veterans Danny Tiatto and Charlie Miller – the last time the teams met in Round 9, is desperate for a start.
“He’s certainly one in the mix, he scored a couple of goals at the weekend and he performed very well against them the last time so, if you’re superstitious you’d probably bring him straight back in,” said Muscat of Kruse.
“He was probably one of the better players and helped us gain the (2-1) result against them last time.”
“I daresay I don’t think they’ll make the same mistake and focus on him so much this time around.”
Muscat said he expected the Roar to have derived plenty of confidence from the 2-0 result against Adelaide United at Hindmarsh, the club’s first win under new coach Ange Postecoglou.
“Ange has tidied them up a little bit, to say the least,” said Muscat whose relationship with Postecoglou goes back to 1992-93 when their careers overlapped briefly at South Melbourne.
“He’s had an opportunity to get a foothold on how he wants his team to play.”
“He certainly wasn’t happy with a number of areas, the discipline side of things, and I daresay that he has changed quite a few things up there.”
