Victory in Melbourne 

It is about time that referees are held accountable for their horrendous mistakes. Peter Green’s horrendous decision in not pulling up Michael Theoklitos for handling the ball outside the area on Friday night ultimately cost the Victory’s chances of taking a well earned three points against Brisbane Roar should be punished by the A-League hierarchy. Teams’ chances of making finals are penalised by the incompetence such as that shown by Peter Green. Time to penalise the referees for their mistakes because it’s finally gone beyond a joke.

I often feel that I am neglecting this blog of late, particularly as I tend to concentrate any analysis of the weekend’s game in my blogs for Australian FourFourTwo. Therefore, a midweek game provides me with a rare opportunity to have a look at a game solely for this blog. Unfortunately for me, Wednesday night’s game produced such a dire performance from both teams that if indeed I had to write a blog for Australian FourFourTwo I may well have struggled to string together 500 or so words.

For the second match in a row, we saw a former Melbourne Victory player appear in opposition colours on our home turf. On Sunday we saw Michael Theoklitos return to Melbourne in Brisbane Roar with both ends of AAMI Park chanting his name and giving him a clap before the start of each half. This was interspersed with some good natured booing and the odd “7-1” chant. Contrast that with the reception that Nick Ward received last night, where every touch was greeted with some derision because in many fans’ eyes, Ward had failed to live up to his massive potential whilst in the navy blue.

As for the game itself, as I alluded to in my opening paragraph, was fairly dire with very little for the 11,000 odd people to get enthused about. In fact, it looked like a match between two teams who had only played a game three or four days before. For many Melbourne fans they were hoping that the scintillating form shown on Sunday afternoon would continue over to this game. Unfortunately it wasn’t to be with the whole team looking a little flat against a Wellington team willing to put significant numbers behind the ball.

In what was a fairly lacklustre game there was one action or repeated actions that was constantly getting my goat. That being our distribution out from the back. Time and time again we would see Michael Petkovic kick the ball out from a goal kick or from after collecting the ball only to see it come flying back time as our five foot nothing midfield and striker failed to get their head on the ball.

Whilst some part of the blame can be placed at the feet of Petkovic, some blame must be also attributed to our central defenders. As soon as Petkovic collected the ball they failed to provide themselves as an outlet for distribution. Say what you like about Muscat but more often than not he would make himself available for this option. Constantly seeing the ball fly over their heads was hardly conducive for great attacking play and Ricardinho’s frustration at times was quite obvious as he got beaten time and time again by the Wellington defenders.

This action of coming out of defence has always been an issue for the Victory, probably even from Day One. We have never really had a great header of the ball to target in these cases and against team with big tall defenders we tend to struggle and our fluidity in attack is reduced as a result. It’s definitely something for the coaching staff to look at.

With all that out of the way we look forward to Saturday night where the Victory head north to take on the North Queensland Fury. During the week, Fury coach Franz Straka has stoked the fires questioning Kevin Muscat’s toughness whilst some of his players are kind of happy that Muscat isn’t there to torment them. Hopefully the Victory boys can pick themselves from Wednesday’s disappointing performance and get the three points.

If you do want to read what I wrote after last week’s win over Brisbane, you can do so here.

It has been a big couple of days for Melbourne Victory with a series of big announcements. First up, we had the news that Michael Theoklitos would not be renewing his contract and would be heading overseas to try his luck.

This news is hardly surprising considering that the Victory had signed New Zealand international ‘keeper, Glen Moss before the end of last season. Theoklitos was one of the foundation players for the Victory and was a key component of the side for the last three seasons.

His stats for the record are: 72 games, 0 goals, 201 saves and 27 clean sheets. We wish him the best of luck with his endeavours overseas and I’m sure I speak for a lot of Victory fans when I say that we will miss chanting “Theo! Theo! Theo!” when a crucial save was made. “Moss! Moss! Moss!” or “Langerak! Langerak! Langerak!” just have the same ring to it.

My Michael Theoklitos highlights are as follows:

Favourite moment: Theoklitos’ crucial save in the dying moments of the 2006/07 semi-final against Adelaide shortly after we had taken the lead; Least favourite moment: Theoklitos’ brain snap that saw him stamp on Sasho Petrovski’s foot during last season; and the funniest moment was when he let Joel Griffiths know exactly how he felt about him by the use of an appropriate hand gesture.

Secondly, Melbourne finally confirmed the worst fears of all opposition supporters by signing captain, Kevin Muscat to a new three year deal. Only what’s different about this deal is that the deal is an one year playing and two year assistant coaching deal. So in many respects, this year will very much a testimonial year for Muscat although I am not sure how it’s going to work if (or should I say when) we progress from the ACL group stages next year.

Personally I think having Muscat involved in the coaching side of things is a good thing and it wouldn’t surprise me to see him take over the reins as Youth Team coach once he finally hangs up his boots. We definitely need Muscat for another year as we transition our defence to future years without him. It was also mentioned that Melbourne were sniffing around a state league player for their last signing. I would hazard a guess at it being some sort of defensive signing.

Finally, the other big news is that Melbourne Victory has finally joined the social networking scene by joining myself officially on twitter and also starting up an official Facebook page. So if you haven’t joined or started following them already - do so now.

It was good to be back in somewhat familiar company in the pub watching the Melbourne Victory in action. It sure beats being one of a couple people with their faces glued to the television without sound as experienced in different surroundings during our ACL campaign. To be honest I was a little glad when I heard that there would be no extra time and that the game would be decided by penalties if the scores were deadlocked after full time. In a game that was dominated by both defences I don’t think I could have handled an extra thirty minutes of standing, especially after a reasonably long day at work.