Victory Coach Ange Postecoglou is in fighting spirits ahead of opener. Source: George Salpigtidis / News Limited
MELBOURNE Victory coach Ange Postecoglou has declared his young side ready for battle in Saturday's derby against Melbourne Heart.
Postecoglou said his players had taken enormous confidence from the historic Liverpool match at the MCG in July and are better prepared than they were for the corresponding clash last season.
Saturday's Etihad Stadium fixture is the most anticipated Melbourne derby since Heart joined the A-League in 2010, with the match expected to go close to a sell-out.
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Victory rounded out its preparations yesterday with a brief intra-club match in front of 5000 at AAMI Park as the 2013-14 squad were introduced to fans.
Mark Milligan was the only player who didn't partake and with him and Kosta Barbarouses away on international duty, Victory will be the younger of the derby sides with Connor Pain, Jason Geria and Jimmy Jeggo set to start and Andrew Nabbout and Nick Ansell likely to be in the squad.
Victory held its own in July despite losing 2-0 against a Liverpool side boasting Steven Gerrard, Luis Suarez and Glen Johnson, and Postecoglou was proud of his players.
"When Connor Pain knows he can take on Glen Johnson he's not going to fear anything that's going to be thrown ahead of him from now on,'' he said.
"The same with Nabbout, Geria, (Scott) Galloway, Ansell, (Jesse) Makarounas, all these guys that played and played very well I think feel a little bit more self-assured about themselves and the way we play our game.
"It (the Liverpool game) was good because it gave us a bit of a focus halfway through, if we didn't it would've been a bit of a grind to go for that long.
"The biggest challenge was getting them up again afterwards because it was a massive game and massive night.
"We had to put out a young team, which wasn't ideal and could've been disastrous, but you've backed the young guys all of last season and never let us down and they didn't let us down that night and it just builds belief.
"After that game I think everyone emotionally and physically needed a break and we gave them a bit of time off, myself included, because we obviously had a big build-up.
"But since then it's been good, things have settled down. There's times when it was challenging with numbers but the last five or six weeks have been really good.''
Postecoglou's debut season was a rollercoaster for Victory, whose defensive frailties were on show in round 1 last season when Heart won 2-1.
Missing Milligan and Archie Thompson, Victory was then humbled 5-0 away to Brisbane Roar the next week.
It forced Postecoglou to adopt a more pragmatic ¬approach from round 3 as Victory's fortunes slowly turned before finishing just one game short of a grand final berth.
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But with the addition of James Troisi, Mitch Nichols, Barbarousas and Pablo Contreras — who have 102 international caps between them — hopes are high in the blue half of Melbourne.
"We're further advanced than last year but then you don't know if the competition's further advanced as well,'' Postecoglou said.
"I'm really happy with our recruiting and the young ones have certainly gone up another level and holding on to Millsy (Milligan) has been a massive bonus for us.
"We were pretty well prepared last year as well, obviously it's a little different now because we're 12 months down the track in terms of understanding how we want to play the game — we'll be ready to go, there's no doubt about that.
"Where last year we started off slowly with getting to grips with things; certainly I expect us to start, in terms of the game we want to play, a lot better.
"We gave debuts to a lot of guys last season that hadn't done a pre-season with us and came halfway through their first year of professional football and all those guys now are looking like professional A-League footballers.
"Last year, with the young guys, at times our training was inconsistent in terms of quality because they were getting to grips with how hard we train, the type and load of training.''
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