The Western Sydney Wanderers will find out after 7.00pm AEST tonight who their grand final opponent will be.
This afternoon both Central Coast Mariners and Melbourne Victory will be battling at Bluetongue Stadium with a grand final place at stake.
Melbourne Victory turned around their performance at Etihad last Friday week, after trailing 1-0 when Shane Smeltz missed a penalty kick for Glory.
Few minutes later referee Jarred Gillett awarded a penalty to the Victory after Steve Pantelidis fouled Andrew Nabbout and got sent off.
The replay showed that Andrew Nabbout handballed before Steve Pantelidis committed the foul.
After that controversial moment Mark Milligan scored the penalty and took the game into extra game. During extra time Archie Thompson scored Victory’s second goal, which was enough to take the Victory into today’s semi-final.
Melbourne Victory’s last visit to Bluetongue was in Round 22 which the Mariners destroyed the Victory 6-2 in a wet match.
Victory will need to control this game and not lose many turnovers as the Mariners will punish the Victory like they did in Round 22.
Besides the onslaught in Round 22, Victory did produced good performance against the Mariners with draws in Round 7 at Etihad and Round 16 in Launceston, Tasmania.
Victory’s first half performance against the Mariners in Launceston was outstanding. If Victory can reproduce that performance, we will have a great semi-final on our hands.
The Mariners have not played a league game two weeks ago when they defeated Melbourne Heart 2-1 at Bluetongue.
However they did travel to China last week to play in the Asian Champions League game on Tuesday night, which the Mariners lost 2-1 to Guizhou Renhe with seven players rested from their senior list due to today’s game.
Graham Arnold’s squad did not win the Premier’s Plate this season and now the championship is the club’s main priority.
That was well documented by Arnold’s decision to have seven players rested for an ACL game, which indicates that the Mariners want to advance to their forth grand final appearance.
I believe Central Coast will win this game in normal time as Victory still have defensive issues which was still shown in the Perth Glory elimination final match last week.
If the game changes momentum in Victory’s way, then they could reproduce the fight that was shown against Perth and have a great chance to advance to the grand finale.
Also I’m expecting a good tactical battle between Graham Arnold and Victory’s coach Ange Postecoglou.
Whichever team does progress to the grand final next Sunday at Sydney Football Stadium will need to work tactically and mentally to shut down the 13 match unbeaten Wanderers from winning the crown.
However, this afternoon, their first task is to win the semi-final.
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