Vidmar loathe to make changes
Adelaide United coach Aurelio Vidmar is loathe to play around with his starting line-up for Saturday night’s Hyundai A-League 2009 Grand Final, brought to you by Foxtel, against Melbourne Victory and is expected to field the same eleven that produced a stirring win in the Preliminary Final against Queensland Roar.
Apart from jokingly reiterating his pledge to park a double-decker bus in front of goal to prevent the likes of Archie Thompson and Danny Allsopp from scoring, Vidmar said he is likely to stay with Jonas Salley as a second holding midfielder to try and stifle the influence of Victory playmaker Carlos Hernandez.
Hernandez absolutely killed the hopes of Adelaide hosting the grand final with a scintillating display two weeks ago at the Telstra Dome, but Vidmar employed Salley, after a long absence from the starting eleven, against Queensland and it work a treat, with Queensland-s usually vibrant brand of football becoming rather subdued for large parts of the game.
"That team did quite well, considering everyone was under a little bit of pressure to get a result,” Vidmar said at the Official Grand Final press conference in Melbourne-s Docklands. “The team did very well. There's no need to change it," he said.
"I've decided it (in reference to the starting eleven), that will be kept between myself and the team and will be announced just before the game."
"That's certainly an area (midfield) where they were very strong and they were very poor in those two games. That's an area we need to make sure we get it right," he said in reference to Salley-s inclusion.
Asked after last week-s match against Roar what he needed to do to stop Melbourne-s famed strike duo of Thompson and Allsopp, he said park a bus in front of goal.
"It's a double-decker (bus) by the way," he said. "I don't want to talk about their two boys up front; they just know where the goals are. We know it's going to be very tough, we need to play tough and smart football and we need everyone to do that."
While conceding that Melbourne has the edge over his side in recent matches, Vidmar believes his side can turn that around and that there is absolutely no way, his side will repeat the poor effort of two weeks ago, a view that was shared by almost everyone at the conference.
"It's 50-50, it's 90 minutes of football, certainly we need to improve on the performance we had against them in the major semi-finals, and I don't think we can play that bad again."
Having been through so much this season, including making the final of the AFC Champions League, Vidmar knows the players are desperate to win some silverware to show for their efforts.
"It's been a tough season for us. We've had a lot of football; we've played a lot of big games. One's that take mental and physical strain out of us," he said.
"At the end of the day, it's all about silverware. They'll say it's not successful unless you win some silverware and tomorrow night's an opportunity to pick up a trophy."