Victory in Melbourne 

One of the worst kept secrets was finally confirmed yesterday as Michael Thwaite signed a deal with new A-League outfit (and soon to be most hated purely because they are pinching players from everyone) Gold Coast United. Its a bit of a slap in the face for the Melbourne Victory really considering that they had been try to woo him back to Australia for the best part of two years and now that they have got him, he’s off to another club. Thanks for nothing.

Maybe he had read my blog post for 442 from a couple of weeks ago, where I had pointed the finger the finger of blame for our then recent poor run of form and our defensive woes at Michael Thwaite. If you didn’t catch it the first time here is a excerpt.

Too often in recent games his opponents look to have turned him too easily. Two prime examples spring to mind, the first being from Friday night’s match against Newcastle when Marko Jesic easily turned the Melbourne defender to whip in a brilliant cross for the opening goal of the game. Thwaite looked to have no second effort as he basically stood there and watched his opponent put in the cross.

The other example that springs to mind comes from the Perth match where a simple swivel of the hips from Adrian Trinidad was enough to lose Thwaite and allow the Argentinean to set up Eugene Dadi for Perth’s first goal.

For me, Thwaite quite simply hasn’t lived up to the reputation that saw him in the Socceroos squad only a few years back and currently is not worthy of a starting XI spot. Apart from being turned easily, there are plenty of other examples of poor positioning and being pushed off the ball too easily.

He also appears to be lacking in confidence and the smile that was evident in the early rounds looks to have disappeared. Maybe the distraction of his supposed move to Gold Coast United is also playing on his mind.

Thwaite’s dip in confidence has also appeared to have a flow on effect to fellow defender, Rodrigo Vargas, with the usually reliable defender making a number of uncharacteristic mistakes in recent weeks.

On a brighter note it was great to pick up our second win on the bounce against the Queensland Roar on the weekend. I rather enjoyed it because it allowed me to annoy the crap out of the number of Roar fans that I know. Probably the biggest talking point of the night was the state of the pitch, and quite frankly it was a disgrace. I have chosen this topic for my latest 442 blog post and you can read what I have to say here.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, January 6th, 2009 at 9:36 am and is filed under melbourne victory. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.