When the Melbourne Victory host Gamba Osaka tonight in the third round of the 2008 Asian Champions League, most Victory fans will harbour more than a passing sensation of trepidation. No Archie Thompson. No Carlos Hernández. Can Danny Allsopp deliver the top-shelf performance we need him to deliver?
Allsopp isn’t the only one with a fair weight on his shoulders. Rodrigo Vargas, given the job of marking Brazilian striker Bare, has an equally critical role to play, while Leigh Broxham is set to take on Bare’s countryman, playmaker Lucas. And Ernie Merrick is looking to Kevin Muscat to provide a strong attacking thrust.
The match has been fairly described as a “must-win” affair. With away matches in Japan and Korea yet to come, anything short of a victory will render the Victory’s chances of progressing past the group stage very difficult indeed.
Gamba, meanwhile, have had a hectic schedule leading up to this match, playing three J-League matches in six days before flying out to Melbourne early this week. The fact that they won all three of those matches will bolster their confidence; but the heavy schedule may take its toll against Melbourne, especially in the latter stages of the match.
With Archie absent, Adrian Caceres is likely to push up alongside Allsopp, with Nick Ward filling the hole behind them. Archie’s absence also means a promotion for someone else: fans may cry for Kaz Patafta, but my guess is that Merrick will instead bring on Steven Pace to provide extra muscle in the midfield and close down Gamba’s Yasuhito Endo.
Archie and Hernández accounted for over a third of Melbourne’s goals last season, so they will be sorely missed. But there is some hope, as our J.League Correspondent revealed last month: Gamba has major weakness in defence. It may also be encouraging to note that the Victory’s three goals in the ACL so far did not involve Archie at all. Let it be known, we can score goals without Archie.
My tip (hoping to be proved wrong): Melbourne Victory 2, Gamba Osaka 2
Your tip?
7 responses so far ↓
1 Philip // Apr 8, 2008 at 10:22 pm
A lot will depend on Nick Ward being creative and active in mid field. His passing has been a bit wayward in recent weeks and he needs to play a good game. I’d like to see him be told to work his socks off for 60 minutes and then get Kaz on with fresh legs for the final 30 minutes so he has time to make a contribution.
I also so hope they have all been practicing putting crosses into the box. Our set pieces and crosses from out wide were shocking against Chonburi.
2 Kallie // Apr 9, 2008 at 11:37 am
Can we win the gme tonight? Possibly, i’m not going to rule it out and a really encouraging thing that i’ve noticed about Gamba is that they have conceded a hell of a lot of goals (1-1 in the 1st match, 4-3 2nd match). True, we can score without Archie and i’m confident that Vargas can do a fair bit to quieten Bare and keep him out of the match and use the other players like Patafta, Caceras to do the suprize attacks. I also hope that they have been practicing their shooting OUTSIDE of the box and attacking goal because that was their biggest downfall against Chonburi. I hope they’ve learnt their lessons, fingers tightly crossed!
3 john // Apr 9, 2008 at 10:10 pm
Melbourne didn’t win, but showed they can match it with the money teams.
4 Astri // Apr 10, 2008 at 12:35 am
Painful result, I cursed for 3 hours after the game. However it was entertaining, in the end I hate to admit that we were a bit outclassed overall. Suprisingly it was Melbourne who seemed to be tired and ran out of legs, not Gamba. That Bare guy is a monster! I think we really could have used Archie & Carlos in such an open attacking game, they would have loved it. In the end we went toe to toe with them and just fell short. Maybe we can win back some pride and return the favour in Osaka but I doubt it. Big ups to Super Kevin Muscat for a flawless display in defence, Kemp continues to play well too.
5 chris // Apr 10, 2008 at 11:11 am
how about celeski what a game he put in, muscat was great and i loved how he gave it too broxham the twat everytime he stuffed up!
if archie was in the team he would of taken on the defenders and lost everytime… but we did miss hernandez… and was pace and panto doing most of the game?
6 Philip // Apr 10, 2008 at 1:56 pm
Very dissapointing result brought about by extremely bad marking just outside the six yard box and some sloppy goal keeping. We have been weak on set peices all last year and it caught us out again. In the midfield Ward needs to take a look at himself he was slow and turned the ball over too many times. But wasnt Muscat just superb, thank goodness he was on his game.
Despite the disspointment it was a great and entertaining game of football. Both sides missed other opportunities and with a bit of luck we could have been celebrating a courageous win.
7 Kallie // Apr 10, 2008 at 8:42 pm
This can only be a good thing for Melbourne, i’ve been lost for words all day but for Melbourne only good can come out of this. Did we match it with Gamba? yeah we did, but only for 75min, then it went downhill and fast. Our defence, which normally is solid, was woeful at times, with the last two Gamba goals easily could have been avoided, as for the first two, well they were just magic! The upside was that we also scored some fantastic goals (and not from our strikers - thank you Roddy) and we could take the game to them. But what was Ernie Merrick thinking with the sub’s? No wonder Caceras is leaving the club and Kemp, back to his old tricks again! We can only wonder what the games would have been like should Archie & Carlos being playing, but this is great pre season for us for version 4 of A-league.
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