Much like was done at the end of last year, AHAH, will be looking at what John Aloisi needs to achieve this year to appease the Melbourne Heart faithful, now while a pass-mark isn’t the greatest achievement that a coach should aspire too, its certainly a good guide of what the majority of the Melbourne Heart faithful would like to see improved.
Away Games
While its flattering to a certain degree that Melbourne Heart associates winning football so much with AAMI park and the yarraside, its probably about time we got used to winning north of Victoria street (interestingly, when we played south of the Monash freeway, we didn’t have any luck either, loosing in Dunedin to a severely undermanned Wellington). From a club perspective, its phenomenal that we didn’t finish last considering we picked up a solitary point out of Melbourne last year and tells us two things, a) Our home record isn’t bad, it would have placed us equal 5th over the course of the year, this tells us that there’s plenty to be happy about when we’re at home, but b) the away table for the year past mirrors the actual league table a lot more then the home one does, so this should be the first thing that is addressed, when Wellington is travelling better then you are, you know its time to evaluate what’s going on.
Pass Mark: Not even a doubling of the points that we picked up on the road last year is really an acceptable result, as even that would only bring us equal with the Phoenix in terms of road woes. At least double figures in points is needed for real improvement to be seen, this would be a marked improvement and is the minimum required.
Why it will happen?: A curious and fortuitous bit of fixturing combined with an increase in personnel quality and a better run with injuries. We only play one of the top four teams from last year away twice (Adelaide) and play 6 ‘double weekends’ where we’ll play at Melbourne in consecutive weeks, capitilising on our home form should see a boost in confidence for away games. We’ve also got the ability to play with some serious steel in our team away from home, Patrick Kisnorbo and Robbie Wielaert at the back, the possibility of a Patrick Gerhardt and Massimo Murdocca midfield combination are going to be hard to break down and more importantly, hard as cats heads regardless and should be able to enforce themselves on a game. Although the pre-season injury record hasn’t been overly promising, Melbourne Heart will look for a better run with injuries this year, with several key players missing large chunks of last year.
Other things that needs to improve: It’d be great to see a bit of tactical flexibility and as a result of the increased points haul away from home, a finals appearance should make for an absolute minimum for JA this year.
All Heart 