Merrick: winless Sydney are finals-bound

Melbourne Victory coach Ernie Merrick has offered a ray of sunshine to Sydney’s bleak A-League season, predicting the winless defending champions will make the finals.

Victory thumped Sydney 3-0 in a grand final replay at Etihad Stadium on Saturday night, extending their run of 10 rounds without a win to leave them anchored at the bottom of the ladder.

Attacking midfielder Carlos Hernandez was the star of the Victory show, terrorising the Sydney defence as he scored a goal and set up another.

Despite their run of outs – four draws and six losses, Merrick said he believed Sydney had too much talent and class to miss the playoffs.

“My opinion is Sydney will be in the finals,” Merrick said.

“Sydney are too good a team to be out of the finals, they are going through a rough patch. We all do that at some stage.

“Once they get a win, I think they will definitely pick up. He’s (Vitezslav Lavicka) a good coach, they are a good team, they are playing below themselves at the moment, but things will come good.”
Sydney themselves are trying to remain positive about their ladder position and have declared their title defence far from over.

Captain Terry McFlynn said they “definitely” could make the finals.

“We’ve got ourselves into this as players and we’ve got to dig deep, work hard every day on the training pitch and just believe that we can,” he said.

He admitted though, that his team was low on confidence, which was evident in their tentative approach to taking on Melbourne.

“We’re still showing signs, but it’s a confidence thing. The longer it goes on, the more un-confident we become,” he added.

“We still believe in each other. We stick together, we work hard every day and we’ll get through it.

“We always analyse the performance rather than the outcome. Out of 10 games we’ve played, seven of them we’ve been dominant.

“We believe what we are doing is right, at times you need some luck as well and that hasn’t been with us.”
Lavicka, who has a fear of heights, said he would climb the Sydney Harbour Bridge when his side won.

“I would like to climb tomorrow … maybe next week,” he said.

“It’s a difficult situation for us. Last season we had great success, but this season we are going through a very tough period.

“We need to stick together, work very hard. I still believe we can turn it around.

“Every coach is worried if the results don’t come. But I am that type of coach, and I give this belief to our players, that we never give up.”
Next round Sydney travel to Perth, who themselves are in trouble after five successive losses.