Melbourne Victory head coach Kevin Muscat has stood by his team selection after his side’s 2-2 draw against Jeonbuk Hyundai Motors, and warns everyone that more squad rotation should be expected.
Muscat left out the likes of Archie Thompson and Pablo Contreras from the squad altogether, while also leaving James Troisi on the bench for the AFC Champions League Group Stage match.
The Victory boss defended the need to keep things fresh, especially with such a jam packed fixture list.
“We’ve got a number of games and that’s how it’s going to have to be and expect it again in the future,” Muscat said.
“You can’t play through every game with the same bodies and from game to game we’ll pick a team we think is good enough to win the football game, but at the same time understanding the amount of games that we’ve got and the workload we’ve got going forward.”
“There has to be a reality associated with playing five games in 15 days or whatever it is – I think the sooner we accept that and embrace it the better, because people weren’t dropped, rested, they just weren’t selected tonight.
“We’ll pick a team on Saturday accordingly to win a football game, and then we’ll do it again three days later against Yokohama and then we’ll do it again when we go to Brisbane.”
Muscat also rubbished any suggestion that his focus was on Perth Glory on the weekend, firmly backing the eleven he put out on the park to get the result.
“I’ve placed a high importance on the game tonight,” he said.
“We still had a good team out there, don’t want to go down the road of disrespecting the players that were out there, I think it was a good team and I think tonight there were some good performances.
“It was basically a very, very young team and – all in all I was pretty pleased with the players and the most important game now is Saturday night.”
The draw leaves Victory with just a solitary point from their first two games, and have quite the task ahead of them if they are to qualify out of the group.
They have led both their games so far at half time, while not being able to hold on for the three points.
Muscat was disappointed with his side faltering again in the second half, but was pleased to see that they had reacted positively to going behind this time around, learning lessons from the Guangzhou capitulation.
“There’s still a lot of points to play for, we’ve still got two home games left,” he said.
“We couldn’t hold on really but we showed some character to score a very good goal and maybe there was a lesson learnt tonight from China because the same thing happened.
“We retreated and we didn’t have too many options going forward but going 2-1 down, there was a reaction and Kosta’s goal from our perspective was exactly what was needed because you keep wanting to pass the ball around the edge of your box, teams are going to take liberties and press you really high.
“It’s about taking advantage of the options that are in front of you and from our perspective it was a very good goal.”