Victory pay the price for failing to kill another opponent off
Stop me if you’ve heard this one: a game was there for the taking, only for Melbourne Victory to let it slip. This time, a game begging for a coup de grâce instead ending in a 1-1 draw with Brisbane.
Stop me if you’ve heard this one before: on Saturday afternoon, a game was there for the taking, only for Melbourne Victory to fail to seize it in their grasp. A 1-1 draw with Brisbane Roar that was begging for a coup de grace after Charles N’Duka’s 13th-minute opener, only for the blow to never materialise. And lo, as has so often been the case, this was duly punished, this time in the form of a former favourite son; Nick D’Agostino netting with fewer than 15 minutes to go to ensure the visitors would share the points.
Welcoming a Roar side mired in a three-game losing skid and with their coach, Michael Valkanis, banished to the stands after a red card this previous week, things looked like they were going to be pretty straightforward for Victory. Juan Mata was dictating terms in the midfield and had put the ball on a plate for N’Duka to maraud in behind the visitors’ lines and open the scoring with a well-taken finish. They would have 62% of the ball across the opening stanza, while touching the ball in their opponent’s penalty area 13 to four and outshooting their foes eight to three. Just one of the Roar’s three efforts was actually within 30 yards of the goal, too, a 39th-minute header that was denied by Jack Warshawsky.
But N’Duka’s goal would be the only one. Yet again, Victory would flirt with putting a game out of sight, only to prove incapable of actually doing so. As the second half commenced, the control of the game that Victory felt like they’d fashioned began to loosen. Up the one end, the Roar began to find a foothold and, even if it wasn’t a good one, used it to fashion some chances. Victory, meanwhile, would fail to send any of their six attempts on target and, even while retaining the majority of possession, look increasingly disjointed and lacking in definitive purpose on the ball.
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Thus, when D’Agostino struck, opting not to celebrate against his former side, it likely took few by surprise. Both because it felt like a natural evolution of Victory’s failure to actually put the game away and because this was just how things have been this season: contests in which they’ve actually proven clinical and ruthless, such as their Big Blue thrashing of Sydney or 3-2 win over Wellington last weekend, serving as more the exception, rather than the norm.
“It feels like a loss, to be honest with you,” coach Arthur Diles reflected post-game. “We’ll definitely take the point, but, yeah, it feels like a loss.
“We started the game ever so well, and were quite dominant, and things were looking great. We were on top but, in the end, we weren’t clinical enough to just put the other one in. That game was waiting there for us to score the second, and they [Roar] were sitting there, they were vulnerable, and we just didn’t have the killer punch today. And in the end, it cost us.
“In the first half, I was very pleased with the football, the dominance, the territory, and the intent, the intensity; the energy was great. But in the end, you’ve got to keep going, we’ve got to be a little bit more dangerous in front of goal. I felt that we didn’t, in the end, we weren’t dangerous enough in the box.
“And that’s not good enough from us. We’ve got to keep going. We’ve got to be a little bit more clinical, more ruthless and put them to bed.”
Missing out on the chance to jump into third on the A-League Men table, the draw meant that Victory instead remained in fifth, now nine points back of the top-of-the-table Newcastle Jets but just five clear of eleventh-placed Central Coast.
In seven days, they’ll meet crosstown foes Melbourne City in the third and final derby of the season. Aurelio Vidmar’s side is one of the few teams in the league that have probably proven even more blunt in front of goal than Diles’ this season, and, with the defending champions set to enter that game off three nights’ rest after a midweek Asian Champions League Elite fixture, the expectation will be that Victory takes the points.
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But the burden of expectation hasn’t been all that kind to Victory so far this season – exemplified by a 1-0 loss to Western Sydney that ended their four-game winning run. And even without Kai Trewin, City can likely be counted on to put forth a defence that will be tough to break down.
“It’s all about working,” said Diles. “You keep working. And that happens on the training paddock. You don’t stop.
“In the end, [one part of converting] is a decision, and the other is the execution. Sometimes it’s the right decision, and just the execution lets us down. Sometimes it’s the reverse. But you’ve got to keep going. You’ve got to keep being in those positions. You’ve got to keep working in training. And it’s just repetition, repetition so that come the games, when you’ve got that confidence and belief, it should happen naturally.
“It’s not something that we’re worried about. It’s definitely frustrating at times, absolutely, but in the end, we always create enough chances to be in a match and potentially win them, and today was no different.”