The Victory take on the Perth Glory in a do-or-die elimination final tonight, and coach Ange Postecoglou is confident his team can make it further into the finals.
Coming off a well earned 3-2 win against Wellington Phoenix last week, Postecoglou says all the years work has come down to these last games.
“We’re very confident, and I’m certainly not the kind of person that goes into a finals series without the belief that we can win the competition,” he said to the media.
“We’re not there just to take part – we’ve been preparing for this all year.
“We’re there now, so we’ll make sure we give it our best shot and I reckon our best shot will go pretty close.”
Having met Perth Glory in the last rounds of the season and suffering an embarrassing loss, Victory will be nervous coming into the semi-final.
After languishing at the bottom of the ladder in February, Perth Glory has changed tackt with their new coach Alistair Edwards. They have since won four games, drawn once in their past seven games.
Postecoglou knows that with the underdog tag, Perth Glory will be a hard team to beat.
“They’ve tweaked things a little bit, but I guess more than anything there’s a psychology to it too – a new coach comes in and everyone wants to prove themselves.
“And they can play with a little bit of freedom too, knowing that probably everyone sort of wrote them off.
“They’ve still got some quality players – they made the final last year. A lot of those players will be backing up tomorrow.”
Melbourne Victory v Perth Glory
Kick-off: 7.30pm AEDT
Venue: Etihad Stadium, Melbourne
