Perth Glory, in rather fortunate circumstances, secured a valuable point away from home on Sunday against former Glory coach Tony Popovic’s Melbourne Victory.
The 0-0 scoreline was probably a fair result on the balance of play, as while both teams had some guilt edge chances, it must be said that the surface at AAMI Park was an absolute shambles.
Both Tony Popovic and Ruben Zadkovich lamented how poor the pitch was, but it was interesting hearing how Zadkovich spoke of how the pitch impacted our tactical ideas for the game.
“We’re a team that likes to play through the thirds and build up our plays and it really made it difficult because we want to play in through midfield and bounce out into wide areas,” he said.
“It wasn’t until I walked across the pitch at the end of the game that I could see just how bad it was in small areas. It set up well for them tactically in terms of their 4-4-2 being compact and waiting for anything inside.
“It fell into their hands a little bit today and forced us to play a little bit long and a little bit back to front which is not our strength.”
It was refreshing to hear Zadkovich speak of the game in a fraction more intricate detail than what he usually would, and fans were quick to suggest that it was our game plan to hit long and hope, but clearly, it wasn’t.
Melbourne Victory were the better side yesterday, there’s no question about it.
The home side managed to maintain a lot of momentum and pressure on the Glory’s backline due to a few reasons.
For one, their counter-press was pretty good, meaning our players didn’t get too much time on the ball which then subsequently forced us long.
Another reason being, we lacked a few outlets whenever we did regain possession. We struggled to find a method to get past the Victory wall, whether it was some quick passing followed by a switch of play, a striker that could hold the ball up or just the Glory keeping the ball better.
From a statistical perspective, most of the key areas were in the Victory’s favour.
They had more penalty box entries (41 to 22), key passes (10 to 4), possession (61% to 39%) and more shots on target (3 to 1).
Glory did extremely well defending their box. That is a positive, if fans are struggling to find some, that should be taken from this game.
Jack Clisby made a number of really impressive last-ditch tackles, Mark Beevers was a very handy presence at the back, as was Cameron Cook.
What was a surprise however was that the Glory had the better of the chances, at least from a statistical viewpoint.
Glory had a marginally better xG than the Victory, 0.98 to 0.73. Not exactly a game for loads of chances being created.
Adam Taggart was very unfortunate to miss his header in the 93rd minute, which was our best chance.
Luke Bodnar and Ryan Williams all had decent chances of their own.
In the end, the key reflections for this game should be as follows.
We weren’t playing at our best, that was clear, but it’s imperative when that happens that you compete against the opposition and try to get a solid result.
Yes, there were plenty of things we could’ve done better. But a draw away from home has kept us in the race for the finals.
Sunday’s clash against Sydney FC will be a massive one. It will be a challenge now that Mark Beevers will be suspended, following his red card yesterday, but if we can win this game, Glory will be in the six.
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