Melbourne Heart was satisfied to leave Perth with a 1-1 draw with the Glory after a slow start and now turn all their attention to beginning a tough run home against Gold Coast United on Wednesday.
Following Saturday night’s draw with the Glory, the Heart remains in seventh position equal on 31 points with the Newcastle Jets, but having played two more matches and with inferior goal difference.
That means that Melbourne, in its first season in the A-League, will need rack up the points in a tough run home starting this Wednesday against Gold Coast at AAMI Park. Then comes cross-town rivals the Victory, league-leaders Brisbane, the Central Coast Mariners and Sydney FC.
Star striker John Aloisi feels that his team will take confidence from not only Saturday’s come-from-behind draw, but also the wins leading into it over Adelaide, Sydney and North Queensland.
“It’s good for our confidence because we came from behind and didn’t play well in the first half. In the second half we played some good stuff, created some chances and the boys that came on were brilliant,” Aloisi said.
“We really took the game to them and we will come away with confidence and we’ve gone four games unbeaten now. Let’s hope that we can go back home to play the two games in Melbourne, and try to win the first one against Gold Coast because that’s a massive game and like a final for us.”
Coach John van ‘t Schip was also relatively pleased that his team fought back from conceding a first half goal to get one of their own in sensational fashion to Alex Terra in the 71st minute.
“If you look at the whole game we are happy. Of course we came here to win and we knew what we had to do, and to get into the playoffs we need the points, but if you see how we played in the first half we were struggling,” Van ‘t Schip said.
“The second half was a lot better with us creating chances, playing more our game and even after 1-1 there were chances to win it, but they had a very big chance as well so I can live with the result.”
Terra scored his third goal of the season with a scissor kick that scorched the net in one of the best goals anyone is likely to witness. His coach wasn-t overly surprised to see him do it because he’s seen in training, but he was glad he substituted him early on in place of Rutger Worm.
“It was a great goal and that makes football nice to see and watch when players can make goals like that.”
Alex knows how to score goals like that and I’m happy for him after a difficult period that he’s had here with little injuries and not playing as much as he wants,” he said.
“We’ve seen him to do that at training and he actually did at the first training he came to. He’s not ready still to play 90 minutes and we have to be careful with him and other players coming back from injuries or with guys like John (Aloisi) who sometimes can’t play 90 minutes or three games in a week.
“We have to manage that and Rutger had some physical problems as well. He started and didn-t really get into the game, and knowing that we had Alex on the bench we took the risk to put him on a little bit earlier.”
Van ‘t Schip is now hopeful Simon Colosimo will return to face Gold Coast on Wednesday because he is well aware he needs all hands on deck in a big run home as the Heart tries to secure a finals berth.
“Hopefully Simon will be back. The messages are that he’s going OK with his treatments and training sessions so it would be great to have Simon back. He’s an important player and we need all our players,” he said.
“When guys come off the bench they can give you that little bit extra and we had that for this game and hopefully will have him back for the upcoming two games, especially the first one on Wednesday.”
