Melbourne City coach John van ’t Schip believes his side deserved walk away with all three points from the Melbourne Derby on Saturday night after an injury time header from Eric Partaluu gave City its third win of the season.
The Dutchman singled out a strong showing in the first half as the motivator for the upset win over their more fancied rivals.
“Looking at the first half we dominated the first 25 minutes clearly, we were aggressive, on top of them, creating some chances, some good football as well,” van ‘t Schip said.
“Overall the first half was clearly for us, second half was more an open game, we were not that compact as we were in the first half – but overall the boys we really good in the way of working and fighting and being aggressive in a good way and I think we deserved to win.”
The win was City’s second in a row and marquee international Robert Koren’s first game, in which van ’t Schip hopes will be a platform for further success this season.
“Winning the second game in a row is good, getting Robi Koren back on the pitch, second time clean sheet, so there’s a lot of positives to take out…so look I’m very happy with the way things went this evening,” the victorious coach said.
The form of Tando Velapi in goals has also been telling after he replaced the out of favour Andrew Redmayne.
“Looking at last game and this game he’s really for the defence proved that he has a kind of calmness, he’s reading the game outside his goal, he has very good reaction on the line so he had a very big contribution on the defence as well,” he said.
The game will be remembered for not only City’s late winner, but also so several fiery clashes between the two sides, the most notable of which was Jacob Melling’s errant elbow on Leigh Broxham, which left Victory coach Kevin Muscat fuming.
However Van’t Schip refused to comment the dubious incident, which only warranted a yellow card in the referee’s eyes.