Mehm Durakovic era ends at Melbourne Victory

The band-aid has been ripped off and Mehmet Durakovic is no longer the coach of Melbourne Victory. What had to be done was done.

It has been a hard early season for Mehmet and Victory, with results and performances poor and an increasingly frustrated loyal fan base.

I can’t help but feel for Mehm, who seemed a nice enough guy but wasn’t the man to take the club where it needed to be. I hope he can develop as a coach somewhere else and hopefully get back to coaching in the A-League someday.

It has been hard to watch Victory at times this season and the head coach must accept responsibility for that. It hasn’t been the results in particular, but the way in which results were coming. At the end of it, it was the right move for the club.

Personally, as a fan, I had lost faith in Durakovic to get the best out of the Melbourne Victory 2011-12 squad.

Two things had made me lose faith in Mehm. The first being the lack of structure in defence and midfield. If you are in the job for 10 months, and you can’t get your midfield organised and the way you want it to play, then something is wrong.

It has been hard to know all season what the exact structure is in midfield, and that must be a responsibility for the coach.

In recent weeks, the Victory defence has resembled an open book. Central Coast were unlucky not to put four or five past the Victory on the weekend. The season started well enough early on for the defence but has fell away ridiculously in the last month.

But why has it happened? No real structure down the back, in particular the flanks in recent weeks. In Durakovic’s last game, Bojic and Rose raided down the left and right wings without any real pressure. This was (yet another) prime example of flakey defence.

Another issue that helped me realise that Mehm wasn’t the man to make Victory to the top was player selections and tactics. Why the likes of Solorzano and Rojas haven’t really factored into first team considerations consistently has frustrated and baffled me.

Marco Rojas came to Victory after a glimpse of his talent at Wellington and has stagnated since arriving in Melbourne. It is quite sad to see Rojas with no confidence or spark and I hope the new coach can help him discover his potential.

Solorzano is another player who, I thought, would have a big part to play for Victory. The championship winning striker at Brisbane Roar came to the club in the off-season and hasn’t been seen. I think he is a very good player and offers more than Danny Allsopp, who has been in the squad most of the season. I hope Jim Magilton is able to get the best out of him for the remainder of the season.

As for tactics, Durakovic had a talented squad at his disposal. He has been let down by players at certain moments, but at the same time he also wasn’t able to decide on a formation to suit his “short, sharp passing game”.

Weeks into the season, you’d think a coach would know how to shape their side. When Durakovic did decide on a shape, it didn’t get the best out of the squad.

Talented wide players like Rojas and Cernak were left to sit on the bench as Mehm opted for a narrow defensive diamond of Ferreira, Broxham, Celeski. Narrow midfields can do well when you have the players for that (ie Central Coast), but in this case, it wasn’t.

When the club is in the situation that it is, something had to be done on field. I would like to know under whose advice the Victory board appointed Mehm Durakovic and why he was the best out of the 70 candidates apparently interviewed.

It is easier to be judgmental of it now, however. I was optimistic about Mehmet’s appointment after results in the Asian Champions League. He also reportedly had a great realtionship with Kevin Muscat and knew the club. Looking back now, I see the appointment of an inexperienced coach as the wrong move.

So now the era of Jim Magilton begins. I can’t say I know much about him, so I took to Twitter to ask about him. What I read was pretty positive and he likes to play positive football. I also heard him interviewed on Fox Sports’ “Matchday Saturday”, on first impression, he is well spoken, confident and knows the game.

All the fans can really do is get behind him and I really hope he does well. I also like the arrangement of his taking of the job on an interim basis. This way, it gives him a chance to show what he can do with the club, while giving the club a chance to look at alternatives if it doesn’t work out.

He steps into the job on a huge occasion this Friday and I hope he gets a win first up.