Queensland Roar captain Craig Moore might be eying off a return to the national squad for the World Cup qualifier against Qatar on October 15, but at the moment he’s more concerned about the task facing him in Melbourne on Sunday at Telstra Dome.
Moore, continuing in his bid to impress Socceroos coach Pim Verbeek before the Australian squad is named next month, will be kept busy as he tries to stifle the Hyundai A-League’s most prolific side.
The Victory have netted twelve goals in the opening five matches of the 2008/09 Hyundai A-League season, with the highlight a 5-0 thumping of reigning premier Newcastle, and sit on top of the table.
However, Moore wasn’t about to nominate any one player in the Melbourne side as a danger man, suggesting that the Victory have scoring-ability across the park.
“There are all different sorts of threats from Melbourne, they’ve scored a lot of goals this season, but it has come from quite a few different areas,” Moore said.
Moore believed that the Victory’s goal-laden trio of Danny Allsopp, Archie Thompson and Carlos Hernandez would be a major challenge for the Roar’s defence.
“It’s very good for the A-League, it’s probably one of the best attacking combinations, and they’ve proved that so far this season,” he said.
“So it’s nice going in there as a defender trying to keep that quiet, but that’s the challenges that I enjoy, and hopefully the rest of team enjoy as well.”
However Moore did suggest that Allsopp’s game was perhaps a little one-dimensional.
“Danny is a good goal-scorer, he’s bagged a few this season as well, so hopefully we can keep him quiet, it’s not as if there’s any secrets, you know exactly what you’re going to get with Danny Allsopp.”
Moore brought himself out of international retirement recently, but remains in the dark about Verbeek’s possible future plans for him.
“I spoke to him (Verbeek) briefly after the Newcastle game,” he said. “But as you could imagine I wasn’t too happy.”
“You probably know more than me, if you’ve done your job properly,” Moore joked with reporters.
Despite the Roar’s slow start to the 2008/09 Hyundai A-League season, where they have won just the one match and sit sixth on the table, Moore was confident that a turnaround in form was just around the corner.
“The league is still very tight, we all know that if you can string a run of performances together, you climb the ladder very quickly and put yourself in a good position,” he said.
“We’re not in a situation where we’re panicking at all, there’s still a lot of football to be played.”
“I’m sure that if we continue to play the way that we’re playing, we’ll get more positive results than disappointing ones.”
