Merrick sets Nix a new A-League challenge
Nov 12, 2016 - 5:45 PM Wellington coach Ernie Merrick is refusing to get carried away with their first set of back-to-back wins in over a year, and challenged his team to make it three next week.A five-star performance from Roy Krishna inspired the Phoenix to a dominant 2-0 win over Central Coast on Saturday to claim successive victories for the first time since October 2015.
Merrick was full of praise for Krishna, who netted his fourth goal in three games, but was just as ecstatic with players deputising for five regulars away on international duty.
Now Merrick has urged his men to keep gathering momentum in the A-League, although they'll have to do it against a Melbourne Victory side that fired six past them three weeks ago.
"I thought that was a very important game for us to win. I thought it was a terrific occasion, Remembrance Day, and coming over here to Canberra," Merrick said.
"But I feel as though we need to go on a run of more than two, so we've got to keep it in perspective.
"To have so many inexperienced players come into a team at once, I knew we'd prepared for it pre-season, but it's still a lot of pressure away from home."
Merrick admitted that without his troupe of All Whites, he had planned to maximise Krishna's speed against the Mariners' defence at GIO Stadium.
"Roy was on fire up front and his pace is incredible.
"We knew that, so we set up for a counter-attacking game. Our defence though, that was where the real inexperience was," he said.
"So with an experienced line-up at the back, we had to make sure we were very compact and we relied on fast-breaking play and I thought Roy, Hamish (Watson) and Roly (Bonevacia) were first class there."
Source: AAP
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