Melbourne Victory youth coach Darren Davies has admitted results come second to performance as a young Victory side claimed their maiden win of the season against Perth Glory Youth.
The team played a fantastic brand of football on Sunday afternoon at a sunny Lakeside Stadium, with Davies particularly pleased with his younger brigade of players.
“The boys are getting better and better – as we say they’re a young group. We obviously got a bit of experience in there to help the young boys today which was very good,” the head coach said.
“I thought the experienced boys worked and helped the young ones along so it was a good mix. It was a good performance, plenty to work on – we want to continue to get better and better – so there’s plenty to work on but a pleasing day.”
Amongst the younger ones in the group was the returning Jordan Brown, who’d recently participated in Young Socceroos duty and returned with an incisive performance in midfield.
“Yes it was [nice to get players back from international duty]. I think Jordan [Brown] was cramping with 25 minutes to go but I’ve just spoken to him and he’s good,” Davies said.
“It was good to get him back. Jordan’s only a 1996 born and he’s one of our ‘youngies’ as well.
“There’s a number of them who we have particularly high hopes for so it was good to get them back.
“The youngsters have performed well, the senior boys were great and special mention to young Johnny [Vakirtzis] out on the right hand side.
“He played 45 minutes making his debut, he was outstanding as well so as I said, a good exercise all round.”
Davies also stressed his satisfaction of the performance, which saw his side pile on three goals for the second week running.
“It’s early days and as I say, we’ll continue to work hard and all we can do is just continue improving.
“We’re learning every day, every day is a learning moment – we’ll continue to do that. We’ll be ok, there’s plenty of hard work ahead of us but it’s a promising start.”
He added, “Regardless of the win, it was a great day, a lovely day. A nice crowd turned out and I thought the boys performed particularly well so the result is the icing on the cake. All round it was an excellent exercise today.”
Melbourne Victory Youth face up against the Brisbane Roar in a top of the table clash on Saturday afternoon. Kick-off at Lakeside is scheduled for 2:30pm.