- Video
-
Club Roar
Captured a great grassroots sporting moment? We want to see it!Content Collections
The Roar Community
- Join
- Login
Melbourne Victory coach Kevin Muscat is as surprised as anyone that Perth Glory’s visit is a battle for A-League supremacy.
Geelong will host the meeting of the league’s top scorers with the top-positioned Glory, and Muscat is keen to edge closer to Kenny Lowe’s side.
“There’s no doubt in my mind they’re a good team, they’ve got the most points at the moment so they’re the best team in the competition,” he said.
“They’re travelling very, very well… we’re looking forward to a good game but drawing back and making that gap smaller at the top of the table.”
Perth failed to hit top gear in their last visit to Victoria, holding City to a 1-1 draw.
Despite sitting four points clear of Victory and Wellington Phoenix on top of the A-League, Perth haven’t achieved title favouritism with fans or bookies because of their pragmatic style.
All but one of their A-League wins has been by a single goal, whereas Victory have produced breath-taking attacking football at times.
It’s led to an us-against-them propaganda effort from Lowe, who claims Glory are under appreciated on and off the pitch by footballistas in the “Eastern States”.
While Muscat is no stranger to a war of words himself, the Victory boss was more interested in the battle to come at Simonds Stadium on Friday night.
“Kenny’s trying to create a little bit of a siege mentality across there up against the Eastern States,” he said.
“Not from my perspective, I’ve got a lot of respect for what they’ve achieved so far.
“Only the uneducated would write them off.
“They’ve got a great chance at doing something, now what comes with that is expectation.”
Muscat could have set a trap for himself discussing expectations – the last team he challenged to live up to their growing expectations was Melbourne City prior to last month’s derby.
The canny coach can sense a key moment in Friday night’s match to claw back ground on top spot in the surprise table-topping clash.
“You wouldn’t envisage it was going to be one v two and an opportunity for us to get that difference at the top of the table to a point,” he said.
The two sides did meet back in October in a firey FFA Cup fixture in the West.
Glory prevailed 4-2 after an extra time period that saw two Glory goals and two Victory dismissals.
But Muscat says that match was too long ago and too incident-packed to offer a guide to the teams first A-League meeting for the season.
Victory will be without four of their best starting team, with Mark Milligan (Socceroos duty), Matthieu Delpierre (foot), Daniel Georgievski (ankle) and Fahid Ben Khalfhallah (suspended) out.
Muscat said Georgievski and Rashid Mahazi (hip) would contend for Tuesday’s trip to Western Sydney while he was tossing up whether to put Leigh Broxham in midfield or defence.
“We’ve got one or two decisions to make,” he said.
Glory can again call on Serbian midfielder Nebojsa Marinkovic after his missed the City draw with a stomach bug.
Are you the ultimate team manager? Pick your own superstar team and go head to head with other football fans for glory and cash prizes on Draftstars. Imagine what you could be buying instead. Set a deposit limit.