Adelaide United has to stop dangerous Melbourne pair Archie Thompson and Carlos Hernandez if it is any chance to win Saturday’s Hyundai A-League Grand Final, according to Reds midfielder Paul Reid.
And Reid believes trash-talking may be an effective method to limit Thompson’s output in the season decider.
“Archie Thompson is a really confident guy so he’s a real danger for us so the less time he has on the ball, his confidence is going to go down,” Reid said.
“And if we can get in his ear a bit and give him a shake up, then it’s going to go a way to winning it.”
“We know how much of a threat Melbourne are going forward so if we can limit the amount of time they have on the ball and then break forward as quickly as possible then that’s going to be our best chance of beating them.”
“We definitely have to close Hernandez down and every Melbourne player all over the park. If we can stop the ball getting into players like Hernandez then it will certainly stand us in good stead of winning the final.”
Although Melbourne has totally dominated Adelaide this season with five wins from as many matches, Reid insists he and his team-mates are extremely confident of causing an upset in the Grand Final.
“We know we’re going to go in as the underdogs, we had two disappointing performances against them in the semi-final and they probably played the best they’ve played all season,” he said.
“So they can go in as confident as they like because we’re definitely going in confident as well.”
“We’ve got nothing to lose, we’re going there not expected to win and if we can play to our capabilities then we’ll definitely give them a real shake.”
Reid knows what it takes to execute against-the-odds victories, he was involved in the Wollongong Wolves’ famous Grand Final win against Perth Glory in the 1999/2000 NSL Grand Final.
Wollongong trailed 3-0 at half-time but fought back with three second-half goals, the last of which scored by Reid in the 89th minute, to force the match into extra time before clinching the title.
“You’ve just got to believe you can do it. The more they (Melbourne) win the more times we’re going to have the chance of beating them, so it has been five times this year but apart from the last two games we’ve put in really positive performances against them,” Reid said.
“It’s 11 versus 11, men against men and basically it’s 90 minutes … so we’ve just got to go out there with the belief that we can do it.”
