Wanted, One Central Defender

What a game on Saturday night! Probably the most exciting A-league match I have attended in terms of goals and attacking play. Of course both managers will need to ask some serious questions of their defences that allowed so much freedom and space to the opposition midfields.

Gary Cole will be madly scouring overseas leagues this week after Victory’s defence failed miserably on Saturday night. The experiment with Matthew Kemp as a central defender was exposed as the folly that many were suggesting and now Ernie has a nightmare of his own making.

After commenting in the press pre-season that there was no need to sign an additional central defender Ernie seems alreadyb back tracking to a degree. With Daniel Vasilevski being released by mutual consent yesterday and young Matthew Foschini signed to a two year contract today it would seem that Ernie's is preparing to give Foschini a chance at the problem centre back position.

Matthew Kemp was never a logical person to partner Vargas. It left the Melbourne defence ridiculous short at the back. Although very mobile and a good tackler Kemp is only 1.75m tall and doesn’t make much of a threat in the air. Melbourne looked so much better when Kemp was moved back to his preferred full back role.

Merrick does have Stephen Pace in the squad and may be another option this week against Fury. At 1.85m Pace does strengthen the defence by providing some height but there is a question surrounding his speed and ability to deal with quality strikers. What he does add is the ability to man mark the main striker and free up Vargas to play his normal free role.

For all its lack of defence though you could not fault Melbourne’s attacking play. When Billy Celeski was introduced to the game on Saturday night, it looked a different Victory side out there to the ones that sputtered along in the first half. Suddenly we had a player on the field who was able to build up the attack from the back and allowed Hernendez much more freedom to roam forward and create havoc in the Roar defence. The additional of Fabiano 10 minutes into the second half also gave Melbourne further options when going forward.

So influential is Fabiano that many Victory fans are calling for a 4-3-3 and Ernie Merrick may be tempted to give them what they desire. I think the only thing stopping it him switching to it right now is the fitness of Celeski. With Fabiano playing as a Centre forward both Allsopp and Thompson push up further and generally take the ball higher up the field. I actually prefer this as both Allsopp and Thompson are much more confirmable when running at defenders than when they have their back to goal.

With two long away trips in the next two weeks (Townsville then Perth) Melbourne need at least one win to stay in touch with Gold Coast who already are showing signs of how dangerous they can be.
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