Melbourne number 1, back where they belong

The Victory are back at the top of the table, with their third win over Adelaide United this season. Nice one.

It was a top-of-the-table clash, with first place up for grabs, but I was still surprised at crowd attendance. Over 27,000 on a Tuesday night is a great turn-out by any stretch of the imagination, and a reminder that good performances (such as the one against Sydney) put bums of seats. Melburnians like their football, but they’d rather pay to see a team in form than a team out of form.

Adelaide looked flat for most of the 90 minutes. They had a handful of shots, Theo was forced to make one excellent save, but the former ladder leaders deserved to lose. Aurelio Vidmar admitted as much after the match:

“We had no aggression, desperation, not much at all. There was probably only a handful of players who could have came off that pitch tonight and said they gave everything they possibly could. We just weren’t at the races tonight. We were very lucky it was only 1-0.”

Melbourne certainly played with desperation, but was dogged by poor passing for much of the first 60 minutes. The ideas were right, but the execution fell short too often. Carlos Hernández, after putting in a great game on the weekend, struggled to find his rhythm. Perhaps the state of the ground had something to do with it all?

It was good, of course, to see Nick Ward get his second goal in three appearances. What’s even more encouraging is the fact that Melbourne has scored from set pieces in the last four games. In the past, Melbourne has rarely looked dangerous from set pieces – now, it’s one of our most powerful weapons. Even Carlos Hernández almost popped in a free kick, stopped only by outstretched Eugene Galekovic.