So the derby has been run and done. Congratulations first to both parties on the incident free night that passed between two typically acrimonious supporter sets. I, along with most of the Melbourne football loving public look forward to public comment acknowledging the derby crowd as exceptionally well behaved, or whatever line is trotted out typically at a sporting event when nothing happens.
Passive aggressive moment over.
On a football related note, the derby will called cagey, tactical, or down right dour. Michael Lynch has already written wonderfully about the reasons for this, its not limited to the personnel missing, but also the huge conclusions to be drawn as a result of a small sample size, Melbourne Heart would have been suddenly down for a very long year had they not salvaged a point from this game in the eyes of many experts. However its probably worth taking a bit of a closer look at the game if we truly want to look at the performance that Melbourne Heart put in. It was great to see Mate Duganzic back in the Melbourne Heart jersey after a nearly year long lay off he looked sharp, even if he didn’t give Adama Traore the torrid time he did last year. Mebrahtu looked serviceable up front, however the long ball nature of the team didn’t help his cause immensely, but when the ball was on the deck, his movement looked good although he’ll likely be replaced by Michael Mifsud, who brought up his hundredth cap with a goal over the weekend, big congratulations to the little man. The defense looked solid and rarely gave much of the much noted Melbourne Victory front line much space and the much maligned Jason Hoffman received what was arguably the most he could have hoped for out of this weekend, begrudging respect, he looked solid, although he did give Pain a bit much time and doesn’t intercept the ball as you’d like from a full back, questions remain over the omission of Jeremy Walker. Harry Kewell controlled the ball well and looked a touch above all comers when it came to his first touch and passing, he faded later in the game, but his effort was tremendous, coming in slightly under-done, he’d be very happy with his performance first up.
There is another story to tell from this game and it comes with facts and figures attached, hopefully each week we’ll break down, statistically, how Melbourne Heart played relative to their opposition. The first glaring difference between the two teams is by there passing, Melbourne Victory made 519 completed passes, while Melbourne Heart made 254, less then half of the opposition. While counter attacking football is certainly in vogue at the moment, this is still somewhat worrying, the passing completion statistics weren’t any better viewing, Victory made 87% of there passes, while Heart completed 77%. Given that the overall time in possession stats fall 57% to 43% it confirms what is readily known by a lot of Melbourne Heart supporters, that we play a very pragmatic, build up heavy type of football which would be much more appeasing if our overall possession statistics were higher, however a slow build up combined with little possession doesn’t make for particularly enthralling viewing. Both teams play a back four and both defences have the ball around the same amount, Melbourne Victory has 47% of their passes played by there defence while Melbourne Heart have around 54%. This isn’t the true tale though, Melbourne Hearts central defenders made a quarter of all the passes that were made in red on Saturday night, while Melbourne Victory had 17% of there ball played through the central defenders, this is ordinary news for two reasons, firstly, obviously, central defenders spend there time at the back, but moreso, our fullbacks, Aziz and Hoffman in this instance, had very little of the ball. Both were responsible for no crosses either.
Its only week one and its only 90 minutes and with a huge turn over of players, it was always going to be a rough start, but there’s plenty of room for improvement, lets see a great crowd against Central Coast next Saturday.
Come on you boys in red!
All Heart 