Good morning all. I guess don’t really need to tell you the importance of tonights game but drop three points and you can pretty much call it a day for Melbourne Victory. Despite our mathematical chances of making Finals, in reality its much less promising.

To be honest I couldn’t care less if we made the Finals or not. Whats more important to me is that we see a change in mentality. Yes, its been a disappointing season but we can’t go down without a fight. We also can’t go the whole season without beating the Candy Stripes. Tonight’s game is more important than the Finals for us. Its about restoring some pride, and doing our best to damage the chances of the opposition.

With both teams still missing several players to Olyroos duty it’ll be interesting to see what effect it has on the game. To be honest it weakens He*rt much more than ourselves so we already have a slight advantage there. The only disappointment being that we can’t heckle Aziz Behich from the stands. What a shame.

In terms of the line-up I think we can expect something similar to the Gold Coast game. The squad is as follows:

Tando Velaphi, Fabio, Petar Franjic, Mark Milligan, Leigh Broxham, Matthew Kemp, Grant Brebner, Jean Carlos Solorzano, Archie Thompson, Marco Rojas, Rodrigo Vargas, Carlos Hernandez, Jimmy Jeggo, Danny Allsopp, Ante Covic, Harry Kewell, Adrian Leijer.

The only doubt is Adrian Leijer who picked up a shoulder injury on Wednesday. The manager said yesterday:

We are going to assess him again tomorrow. He’s in good hands with the medical department. Obviously the turnaround is pretty quick. We will see what he is like tomorrow afternoon.

Normally you wouldn’t risk your captain in a big game if he’s carrying an injury but considering our situation we wouldn’t be risking too much if we let him play. If he’s feeling up to it then I say we give him the green light.

I don’t think there’s much more to say about this game. Lets just hope the players can give us something to celebrate tonight. Come on boys!