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Victory can cover A-League losses: Celeski

Roar Guru
14th February, 2013
2

Melbourne Victory are confident of toppling the A-League’s form team Western Sydney on Friday night without key playmaker Archie Thompson.

The star striker is missing with a hamstring injury and the Victory also have problems at the other end with defender Adama Traore out.

But midfielder Billy Celeski believes the side can overcome the deficits as they bid to continue their impressive AAMI Park home record against the tearaway Wanderers.

“It’s always difficult without Archie because he’s such an influential player,” Celeski said.

“He’s great to have in your team and he brings a bit of X-factor every week to the team.

“It’s an opportunity for someone else to step up and prove a point because we’ll probably be without him for a week or so.”

He said teenage defender Scott Galloway was likely to step in for Traore.

“Adama is obviously a massive loss. He’s been great for us all year, just a dominant force down that left-hand side,” Celeski said.

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“But we’ve got full-backs who come into play. Scotty has proven himself the last couple of weeks that, even for a young kid, he can step up.

“He might get the nod, I suppose.”

Both teams are hunting down the pace-setting Central Coast Mariners who have a four-point buffer at the top of the table.

Western Sydney leapfrogged the Victory into second spot after the Melbourne side’s loss to Adelaide last week and are two points in front of them.

But Celeski said the Victory are still focused on top spot ahead of the finals.

“Of course we are – that’s why we’re here. That’s why we’re at this club. We want to finish top,” he said.

“I think the message has been loud and clear from the beginning that we want to finish on top.

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“If there’s three points up for grabs each week, we want to get all three.”

Celeski puts Western Sydney’s surprise run down to coach Tony Popovic.

“Popa’s doing really well up there. He’s got them well organised and it seems the boys have gelled really well and are working really hard for each other,” he said.

Celeski said the Victory needed to be wary of letting other teams dictate play, as Adelaide did last Friday.

“It was one of those games with tackles flying in and kind of interrupted the flow of our style of football and I suppose we weren’t good enough to overcome that and get on top of them,” he said.

“All the teams are going to try to slow us down and close spaces on us – they did it quite well, they dropped off really deep and made it hard for us to break them down.”

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