Gold Coast Miron Bleiberg has launched an impassioned defence of fellow coach Mehmet Durakovic, describing conjecture over the Melbourne Victory’s boss’ future in his role as premature.
Gold Coast Miron Bleiberg has launched an impassioned defence of fellow coach Mehmet Durakovic, describing conjecture over the Melbourne Victory’s boss’ future in his role as premature.
Despite Durakovic’s team overcoming Gold Coast United 3-2 in a dramatic game at AAMI Park just minutes earlier, Bleiberg was in a sympathetic mood, backing Durakovic as the right man to lead Victory back from the wilderness.
While it was a convenient smokescreen for the woes of his own team, who have lost four matches on the bounce, Bleiberg said he felt Durakovic had been treated unfairly by the media speculation about his future.
“I’ve followed a bit what was written about them and I think that for two reasons it is not fair what has been said,” he said.
“When people need to remember the first year of the A-League when Ernie Merrick was in charge, it was a very bad year for Melbourne Victory and because people were patient, in the second year, I was here when he won the grand final 6-0.”
“Number two is that I don’t think he has recruited any players except for Covic. Basically it is not his team. He deserves to prove himself when he gets the chance to choose his own player and choose his own structure,” he said.
He also praised the spirit of Melbourne after a week where they have been battered for their performance on and off the field.
“They showed a lot of courage and people say that I shouldn’t say that it is good for Sydney to be successful in the A-League but it’s important for Melbourne to be successful in the A-League too.”
“Hopefully they have turned a corner. It’s a pity it was on our back but it was a courageous performance with just 10 men to win the game.”
Bleiberg, who was handed a suspended fine for post-match comments about a referee earlier in the year, was much more circumspect on the circumstances of the match which saw his team concede two penalties and have five players booked.
“According to my players, the two penalties were soft. It’s not easy to start a game 2-0 down, but I am not blaming the referee for our loss,” he said.
“For 46 minutes we were 2-2 and had 11 men against ten and we should only blame ourselves.”
Bleiberg did however say that he felt that Melbourne Victory centre back and captain Adrian Leijer, a player who he has pin-pointed for alleged foul play before, was fortunate to escape a booking.
“I think in the first 30 minutes the ratio of fouls was 10 to one in Melbourne Victory’s favour. Every time we touched someone, we got a yellow card, but Adrian Leijer has five fouls on Maceo Rigters in the first 10 minutes,” he said.
