Gary van Egmond has pinpointed Victory’s Mark Milligan as the dangerman ahead of their clash at Hunter Stadium.
Newcastle Jets coach Gary van Egmond has pinpointed Melbourne Victory’s Mark Milligan as the dangerman ahead of their Round 4 Hyundai A-League clash at Hunter Stadium.
While Van Egmond admitted the Victory have plenty of fire power up front he said the lynchpin to their attack was Qantas Socceroos utility Miligan, who is capable of playing in defence and attack.
“Their front four are the danger men. Obviously they have (Marcos) Flores and Archie (Thompson), but (Gui) Finkler and (Marco) Rojas are also very important,” van Egmond said.
“The other one who is very important to how they work is Milligan.
“It’s about trying to not give him time on the ball. If you do that, quite a bit of the supply into that front four won’t be as good.”
The Jets coach acknowledged that despite Victory’s indifferent start to the season, they would be a tough opponent, but warned them that they would be in for a major battle at Hunter Stadium.
“They’re obviously well drilled and they’ve got quality in their line-up so we know it’s going to be a difficult game for us,” he said.
“But every team that comes to Newcastle knows they’re in for a hard game when they come here.
“We spoke about that before last week’s game when we’d lost our opening game at home – you need to make your home ground a fortress and we’re hopeful to carry that on from last week.
“We want to make sure that every team that comes to Newcastle, if they end up beating us, they’ve had to well and truly earn it and it may even affect them for the following week, the amount of effort they have to put in.”
Van Egmond said the other key to Newcastle winning the contest was to control the play.
Although the Jets defeated the Mariners 2-1 last start it was the Central Coast that controlled the majority of possession and territory and that is something the Jets boss plans to rectify this weekend.
“The issue for us is about controlling it and a number of other things will flow on from that. But if we don’t, they (Victory) have enough of an arsenal in their team to hurt you,” he said.
“If we can control the game, I think we can create enough opportunities in that front third to win the game.”
