City coming home for Christmas, starting with a Derby showdown
After crisscrossing Australia and East Asia in recent months, Melbourne City boss Aurelio Vidmar is looking forward to an extended home run, starting with Saturday's traditional Christmas Derby.
Forget being home for just Christmas. After crisscrossing Australia and East Asia across the opening months of the campaign, Melbourne City boss Aurelio Vidmar is looking forward to a month in which his side will play all of their games at AAMI Park – starting with this Saturday’s traditional Yuletide derby with Melbourne Victory.
After multiple delays, City touched back down in Melbourne following their 1-1 Asian Champions League Elite draw with FC Seoul last Friday afternoon and were mercifully afforded the weekend off. This, in turn, afforded them the rare luxury of being able to log a full week on the training track in preparation for their showdown with their crosstown rivals.
Thanks to the quirks of the A-League Men’s fixture, one that had to be re-jigged to both account for City’s campaign in Asia and the ‘hibernation’ of Western United, Vidmar’s side hasn’t played a home league fixture since October 25, when they thumped Perth Glory 4-0.
Admittedly, that slate of league fixtures does feature a game at AAMI Park, an ‘away’ derby against Victory on November 8, and they also defeated Malaysian powers JDT on Swan St on November 25. Nonetheless, City fans wanting to utilise their season tickets have had to watch their side log domestic trips to Brisbane, Adelaide, Gosford, and Newcastle since that Glory win, as well as international travels to the Japanese and South Korean capitals.
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“It’s obviously been quite a tricky period for us,” Vidmar said on Friday. “We had a later game against Seoul on Wednesday, rather than Tuesday [and] we didn’t arrive back, after lots of delays, until Friday, very late in the afternoon. So, really glad that there was no game for us on that weekend, and it gave us a little bit of time for a couple of the guys who’ve had a lot of minutes and a lot of game time [to rest].
“Generally, the players love it when there’s a game every three days, because they don’t have to train: it’s all about playing and recovering. But the beauty of this next period, through to the end of January, is that all of them are at home at AAMI Park. That’s a real blessing for us, because the travel does take a lot out of you, especially the trips in the league that lead into the Champions League.
“They’ve been tough, and they do take a toll somewhere down the track. But we’ve had to find a balance where we can freshen them up and, at the same time, be able to train – because that’s an important part of the training program and performance. So it’ll be nice just to be able to travel seven minutes down the road [instead].”
Despite the relatively heavy workload City has experienced this season, they’ll enter Saturday’s clash with Victory well placed in both the A-League Men and the Asian Champions League Elite.
With just two games remaining in the group stage of the latter, City sit fourth in the Eastern Region on 10 points and will only need a single win in their final games against eighth-placed Ulsan and ninth-placed Gangwon to guarantee progression to the knockout stages.
Domestically, Vidmar’s side occupies fourth spot on the table with a game in hand over their rivals and while their three draws are the equal-most in the league, their lone defeat is also the equal-fewest of the competition’s 12 sides.
“This start of the season compared to last year [has been stronger]… everyone’s got momentum going into it,” said City striker Max Caputo.
“It’s a good group of people, because even if we lose a game like the Adelaide game, we go into the Asian Champions League and we go and win 2-0 at home.
“We know we’ve got a strong group of strong characters around the group. And we know that going into this game – or any game really – we’ve got a strong mindset and mentality that we’re going to get over the line.”
Conversely, despite their much-needed, pressure-reducing 2-1 win over Adelaide last weekend, Victory will head into the derby sitting at the foot of the table, with their finishing woes throughout the season’s opening months rendering their goal difference of -6 the worst in the league.
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Sparked by Caputo’s second-minute goal – the fastest ever scored in the fixture’s history – City secured a 2-0 win in the first meeting between Melbourne’s shades of blue in that aforementioned November meeting. But as is always the case, form does tend to go out the window for these types of fixtures.
“It’s a derby, and there’s always a lot of things happening in those games,” said Vidmar. “They had a pretty good 45 to 60 minutes against us last time we played them. And they have been playing well without really getting the right rewards. They finally got that last week, so they should feel some confidence
“But our focus is always going to be what we’re doing and how we need to do that. Obviously, we’re up against a very good team, especially a very good attacking team. The inclusion of Nishan Velupillay, for example, is an added bonus for them because he’s a very good player, a very creative player, which gives them a lot of strength and different possibilities going forward. [Juan] Mata is hitting some nice form as well.”
After the attacker recovered from a concussion, Vidmar indicated that Andrew Nabbout will play some role for City in the derby, while Mat Leckie, who had surgery last week in the hopes of fixing his hamstring issues once and for all, has already returned to doing light gym work at the club’s Casey training base.
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