Melbourne will press on with its attacking style of football in the home leg of its Major Semi-Final, despite holding a two-goal buffer over Adelaide ahead of next Saturday night’s match at Telstra Dome.
A few minutes after Melbourne had comprehensively beaten the Reds 2-0 in the away leg at Hindmarsh Stadium, Victory coach Ernie Merrick insisted the job was far from done and he intended on fielding an attacking team again next week.
“Melbourne Victory has never been a club to bore the fans to tears. We’ve always been a very attacking team and we’ll go for more goals because that’s the style of football we’ve played all year and that’s what we’ve prepared for all season,” he said.
The away goals from Carlos Hernandez and Danny Allsopp would appear to give Melbourne close to an unassailable advantage in the tie. However, Merrick will impress on his players this week the importance of maintaining the same focus they took into the first leg.
“We had said right from the beginning that we will play exciting attacking football. Don’t worry about rough, tough and all the rest, let’s play exciting attacking football because that’s what we do best,” he said.
“I thought it was very important to play the style of football that suits us. Whether it was home or away, but also every goal we score, in the event of an aggregate draw, it’s two goals. We set out to score goals, but we’ve got a team who can do that and the boys didn’t let anyone down.”
“But the job’s not finished, we’ve got a long way to go. Straight away we will be right into recovery, the boys will be up early doing another session. We’ll have Monday off then straight back into it. I think this team has showed this discipline all the way along,” he said.
Hernandez was outstanding in the first half, and Merrick singled out the Costa Rican for specific praise.
“Carlos is at the highest level of fitness he has been, since he’s been with us,” he said.
“We knew Paul Reid will be marking him, we made him mix it, up, come to feet, come off at angles, and get behind them. When Carlos gets the turn he’s absolutely deadly. He’s one of the quickest in the team over five metres,” he said.
“Because he has that weight on his backside, He’s really good at holding off defenders and turning them. His control and shooting was just first class.”
