Melbourne Victory coach Kevin Muscat was delighted with his side’s performance – namely new signings Carl Valeri, Besart Berisha and Matthieu Delpierre – in their 3-0 win over NPL side Bentleigh Greens in a pre-season friendly at Kingston Heath Soccer Complex last night
The clash provided an opportunity for the Victory players to get some game time against quality opposition as the A-League club’s pre-season preparations get underway.
“[I’m] more pleased with the actual effort and performance to be honest,” Muscat said.
“We got exactly what we needed out of the game.
“We got 45 minutes into all of the players which was pleasing – at a decent intensity as well so that was the main focus for us tonight.”
The Victory boss was delighted to get a run out of his new signings Valeri, Berisha and Delpierre during the clash and said the squad will hope to build on their strong performance.
“[The new signings] seem to have settled in quite well and obviously for Carl [Valeri], for Matthieu [Delpierre], getting used to local football here in Australia – all three credited themselves pretty well tonight,” Muscat said.
“We’ll hope to build on that performance tonight but at this early stage we’re working on our conditioning and we’ll make sure we get to a standard that’s required to go out and run games out.”
He also commented on the positive vibe being built around the club this pre-season as the Victory squad look to improve in the lead up to the 2014/15 A-League campaign.
“This is just the start of our fourth week, [the preseason has] been very positive,” the head coach said.
“The atmosphere in the group, the additions that we’ve made to the squad has improved us and every week we look to take a little bit more out of the games in terms of the tactical side of things. But this early in the pre-season I was more pleased with the conditioning aspect of the game.”
Muscat was also impressed with a number of trialists that took to the field – including Melbourne Knights’ Jordan O’Dougherty and Dandenong Thunder’s Kieran Dover.
“The majority of them were familiar faces to the football club as well so it’s just another opportunity for them I suppose to put them in the shop window and have a look and see what they can do – they didn’t let themselves down either so all round it was a pleasing night,” he said.
Melbourne Victory are set to play another pre-season friendly against Hume City FC next week and the Victory boss hopes to get some game time into some of the returning members of the squad.
“We’ll have hopefully a few bodies added to that – hopefully we’ll have Gui Finkler, Scotty [Galloway] and Jordy [Brown] to that group from tonight as well,” Muscat said.
“Gradually, week by week, we’ll want to improve not only the conditioning aspect of the game but the tactical awareness.
“I thought there was some good football tonight but I was most pleased with the way we pressed and took a lot out of the game from that perspective.”
Melbourne Victory face NPL side Hume City next Tuesday, 29th July. Kick-off is scheduled for 7:30pm at John Ilhan Memorial Reserve.