Victory's loss highlights some serious concerns

It’d be easy to dismiss Melbourne Victory’s 2-1 Asian Champions League loss last night to Jeju United of South Korea as something of a natural and acceptable outcome considering the events of the past week at the club.

As the expected effect of a coaching change and the general confusion which comes when the manager you’ve had for more than six years is suddenly axed by an administration who’s been at the helm for less than six weeks.

Unfortunately such thinking would be excusable only at the most amateur level sporting club and not for a professional entity in a must win ACL game. The reality is last night’s loss only confirmed just how serious some of the concerns are at the A-League’s once strongest club.

Not only does last night’s loss illuminate some of the significant problems related to the current composition of the Melbourne side, but the pitiful crowd of under 5,000 coupled with season long, relatively small attendances have many understandably and justifiably questioning the relevance and direction of the Victory within the so called sporting capital of Australia.

Despite suggestions going into last night’s game from caretaker coach Mehmet Durakovic that there’d be some significant changes to the Melbourne squad, things were pretty much left untouched.

With the exception of sending out a team which had a far more responsible shape and structure to it, Durakovic’s starting line-up hardly differed from Merrick’s with the average age of the team being more than 30 and with just 3 players under the age of 25.

Last night’s match further illustrated that Merrick had squeezed virtually every last drop out of the squad, and with the exception of Marvin Angulo who was deployed in an advanced role and granted far more responsibility and appreciation than Merrick ever gave him, there was little evidence from last night’s game that Durakovic will be the Victory’s saviour. At least not with this group of players. It remains frustrating and frankly illogical how Kevin Muscat can still command a game despite having no future as a professional footballer, while it’s equally baffling that youth system players such as Diogo Ferreira and Petar Frajic, arguably Melbourne’s two brightest prospects, have been demoted to the bench for both ACL games and made to step aside for the likes of the former Victory captain.

What’s perhaps even more alarming than the current composition of the Melbourne squad and its imminent departure from the Champions League is the small crowd that turned up at the Docklands last night. Whether it’s a case of the Melbourne public yet to embrace the importance or lustre of the Asian Champions League or the circumstances surrounding mid-week sporting fixtures in this town, what can’t be ignored is that more than ever the Victory finds itself in a genuine struggle for relevance in a city never short on sports and sporting teams. No longer does the Victory have claims of being the only A-League team in Melbourne thanks to the successful advent of the Heart, but its battle with Rugby will now have to be fought on two fronts with the emergence of the Rebels in Super 15 competition. To say nothing of the dominance of the AFL which has has recently forced the A-League to completely overhaul its season dates from next season on.

All of these concerns, both from a team prespstctive and marketing point of view should be treated as huge challenges for the new Victory administration, already widely criticised for its botched handling of the Merrick sacking last week. Its challenge should be nothing short of a full-scale search which must be conducted far and wide to indentify precisely the right coach for this team. One who's first and foremost prepared to radically reconfigure if not deconstruct the Victory squad in additioning to selling his team and football philosophy to a city never short on choice.