Melbourne Heart coach John van ‘t Schip feels Saturday night’s 2-1 victory over Perth Glory was a good indicator of just how far his new-look side has come in a short time this season.
Written off by many after the retirements of big names John Aloisi, Josip Skoko and Gerald Sibon at the end of the last campaign, the youthful Heart have now won five of their last six games to be one of the league’s form teams, sitting pretty in third on the table.
It wasn’t the most convincing of victories for Heart, though, on Saturday night as they were probably outplayed by Perth for much of the second half after Matt Thompson’s 33rd-minute strike was cancelled out by Billy Mehmet two minutes later.
But with three minutes remaining, the Heart found a way through Glory’s defence as a powerful strike from Aziz Behich was parried away by Danny Vukovic, only for Mate Dugandzic to be on hand to nod home the rebound.
“I said in the dressing room, I think it was a beautiful ugly win,” declared van ‘t Schip after the game.
“In the last year, maybe we had these kinds of games and we had a draw or we lost them.”
“Now we’re capable of winning these kinds of games and that’s very important because you can’t play always good, especially knowing what the trip means to go up here, the flight, the time differences are in their favour.”
“So having a win is great for the confidence of everybody.”
Van ‘t Schip said his side will take plenty of belief into Friday night’s Melbourne derby clash with Victory at AAMI Park.
It will be Heart’s first game in Melbourne since demolishing Newcastle 3-0 on November 12, with their only ‘home’ game in the last five matches being a trip to Morwell to play Wellington.
And, having seen his side produce wins from two tough road trips in eight days to Brisbane and Perth, van ‘t Schips says his side certainly deserve to be gearing up for bigger and better things throughout the rest of the season.
“Taking in consideration the games that we played in the beginning and that we maybe should have had more (wins) and also looking at the tough games we’ve had to play in the last weeks, then I think we more than deserve where we are now,” he said.
“I think that’s something we can be proud of but that’s nothing until now, the season is still young.”
