After a stellar victory over Macarthur in Mudgee, Mariners head coach Nick Montgomery is ready for his squad to continue the momentum this weekend as we head down to Melbourne.
The feeling is good around the squad off the back of Saturday’s performance, according to Montgomery, as we found our goalscoring touch.
“The boys are looking really good at the moment. Confidence is high, coming from the performance on the weekend, especially scoring four goals,” Montgomery said.
“It was a little bit more of what we are used to and what we have probably been lacking over the previous couple of weeks. The mood is high, and the boys are going to go into the game against Melbourne with full confidence.”
Despite Victory currently sitting at the bottom of the Isuzu UTE A-League Men’s competition ladder, Montgomery is not taking the challenge of a trip to AAMI Park lightly.
“You never underestimate Melbourne Victory. They are a massive budget team with good players and a good and experienced manager in Tony Popovic. What they probably have now is not that much pressure on them,” he said.
“They will go out and try and win games because they will be hurting, and it has been a tough season for them. There is however a lot of games where they have actually played well and not got the results that they probably deserve. That is football and it happens but we won’t go there and take anything lightly because they are a very good team.”
Off the back of last weekend’s match the side will be boosted with a number of returning players. The head coach extremely pleased with the performances of our academy and scholarship players who filled in on Saturday, causing a positive selection headache.
“We have a few players coming back this week, the young boys that came out to Mudgee on the weekend gave a good account of themselves. With six games to go it is great to have players back,” he said.
“Brian is returning, Nectar is back, Moresche is back, and Dylan Wenzel-Halls will possibly be back as well. That is four players, plus Beni Nkololo and Jacob Farrell to come back in as well. I’ll choose a team on the weekend that I feel will be best suited to getting a good result against Melbourne Victory.”
Montgomery feels a sense of belief that is currently radiating around the entire squad, with confidence high not just for this weekend, but heading into the back end of the season.
“We believe that we can win every week, at the end of the day we prepare to try and win the game every week. Once you cross that white line it is eleven on eleven, and we never lack belief,” he said.
“What we do now is believe that we can end the season strong and if we can do that, then we’ll give ourselves a good position hopefully going into finals football again.”
The Mariners take on Melbourne Victory at AAMI Park this Sunday March 19th, with kick off scheduled for 5pm.
