Well, what a week its been at Melbourne Victory. Francis Awaritefe axed, continued rumours of splits in the Board, Harry Kewell hiring his own personal coach and intense speculation of Mehmet Durakovic’s future. Despite the Club’s stance that its not in crisis its quite obvious that there are many issues going on behind the scenes. Naturally the Club is going to deny that trouble is brewing but for us outsiders its not hard to see that something is up.

Good performances on the pitch won’t necessarily make those problems go away, but it is a good place to start. Enough is enough now. Its time for the players and the coaching staff to deliver, starting with Gold Coast United tomorrow. Adrian Leijer said this week that the players are fully focused on getting the job done on the pitch:

Our job is to get things right on the park. That’s the only thing we can control. We can’t control anything that’s going on off the pitch.

The world we live in is pressure – that’s what sport is all about.

We’re working hard to get back where we should. That’s all it’s going to take. The game on the weekend is still only round eight … there’s still a long time to go in this season. You can say what you like but we’re confident we can turn it around.

This year the spotlight has been on us all a lot more. Whether that’s part of the reason for the performance, who knows?

But we’re all professional, we’re all dealing with it. And we have to. We’ve got no choice. We have big name players, high expectations and that’s what it should be.

In terms of the squad there is plenty of uncertainty but there are also a few players making a return. This was the team as of Thursday:

Fabio, Petar Franjic, Leigh Broxham, Jean Carlos Solorzano, Archie Thompson, Marco Rojas, Rodrigo Vargas, Diogo Ferreira, Billy Celeski, Tom Pondeljak, Carlos Hernandez, Jimmy Jeggo, Danny Allsopp, Isaka Cernak , Lawrence Thomas, Ante Covic, Harry Kewell, Adrian Leijer.

Since then Danny Allsopp has experienced some hamstring tightness and is in doubt. So too is Carlos Hernandez who injured his hip during training yesterday. Matthew Kemp’s run in the starting XI has been halted due to muscle strain and will also miss Sunday’s game. On the upside though Kewell, Cernak and Ferreira all return from injury. Velaphi and Brebner are still unavailable and Matthew Foschini is on Olyroos duty.

With no Kemp and Foschini this week the Right Back position provides a problem once again. I think we could see either Broxham or Franjic filling in. As for the rest of the line-up, who knows? With so many in’s and out’s each week its becoming so hard to predict just who will play.

No matter who starts though, this really is a must win game. Four games out of the next five are at home. If we can manage a win tomorrow then it could be the catalyst we need to get our season back on track. Lets hope so.

Don’t forget, kick off is 5pm at AAMI Park – and if you fancy making a day of it you can watch Victory’s Youth team from 2:15pm.