Melbourne Victory have continued to apply the psychological pressure on Adelaide ahead of Friday’s clash at Etihad Stadium, with skipper Kevin Muscat saying his side will go into the encounter with their confidence high on the back of nine consecutive wins over the Reds.
Muscat admitted that the Adelaide squad of 2010-11 was a ‘different animal’ to the one Melbourne have completely dominated over the past three seasons, but said that the fact it had been so long since the Reds had beaten Victory would playing in their unbeaten opponent’s minds.
“They are coming across here and before you ask about records and stuff, that sits in our favour. There’s no doubt that’s in the back of their mind. We know how important this game is for us and we’ll concentrate on a game of football and not worrying about past results,” the skipper said.
“There’s no doubt they are a different animal and I have the utmost respect with what they’ve done so far. They’ll come across knowing they haven’t won here for three odd years. Hopefully that’s playing on their minds a little bit.”
“We’d like to go into the game knowing if we play anywhere near our best the result will look after itself.”
Muscat remembers the last time the Reds took all three points at Etihad Stadium as well. It was in October 2006, when the Melbourne skipper had a famous touchline run-in with then Adelaide coach John Kosmina.
That match was also significant for the fact it ended Melbourne’s seven-match winning streak, a feat yet to be matched in the A-League. Adelaide are on a record streak of their own having not lost in the first 11 matches, but Muscat is confident that Victory can become the first team to defeat them this season.
“I’ve got the utmost respect for what they’ve done this season, they are undefeated and their coach Rini has done a good job and we want to be the first team to knock them off,” he said.
“They’ve been very good, as have Brisbane. We’re the only team to beat (Brisbane). For the majority of the game (against Roar last week), I thought we were going to get another win against them. We’ll go out there, do our homework, look at how we can beat them and then worry about if we need to nullify them.”
Despite that loss away to Brisbane last week, Muscat feels Victory’s current form is good enough to beat the Reds, so long as his team produces a solid 90-minute performance.
“There’s no doubt we will go into the game, after watching last week’s game, albeit a bad result for us, we played some decent stuff. I’ll debate that with anyone. We’re relatively confident if we do turn up for a full 90 minutes, rather than 45, we’ll do quite well,” he said.
