By Max Hatzoglou
Western United have secured a spot in the A-League Men finals and set themselves up to make history this season, after a promising 2-0 win over Macarthur in Tasmania last Tuesday.
The win puts United two points behind Melbourne City in second position on the ladder with a game in hand, giving them a chance to finish on top for the first time since joining the competition in 2019.
Coach John Aloisi was excited about what his team can achieve this season.
“It’s exciting to be where we are, that’s for sure,” Aloisi said post-game.
“We know that we’re definitely going to finish in the top three now with the amount of points we have and we’re only two points behind City with a game in hand.
“Obviously the next game is the most important because that’s the Mariners away in 10 days time so it gives us a bit of a break mentally and physically to prepare for that game.
“At the beginning of preseason, we said that we want to be very competitive, that we want to be there fighting for something at the end of the season, and we’ve given ourselves an opportunity now with one week to go and three games to play in that week.
“We will make sure that we’re ready for the next game against the Mariners, but also enjoy this game here and the last four days that we’ve had in Tasmania, because it was big for us.”
Prior to United’s most recent back to back wins in Tasmania, it suffered a shock 4-1 defeat to Wellington Phoenix in Ballarat which left question marks on the team’s potential this season.
Aloisi spoke about the importance of his team responding to the loss.
“A lot of doubt crept in, not so much in the team, more on the outside about, are we good enough to really compete when we lost 4-1 to Wellington, but the boys wanted to show that they are good enough and the reaction has been brilliant from them,” he said.
The former Socceroo also said the loss was a good wake up call heading into finals.
“You don’t want to be going into the finals, just scraping through and just getting there,” he said.
“We want to go there in good form so we needed that poor performance to actually go, ‘you know what, we need to make sure that we’re focused each game, preparing well the whole week’.
“And we do, just that game we let her intensity down a little bit so that’s why it was so pleasing the last two games and at times tonight, we needed to dig deep and we showed that resilience that we showed earlier in the season.
“So we were happy, we know that we’re going to go into that final week in good form and feeling good about the way we’re performing.”
After finishing last season with eight-straight losses, Aloisi also credited his players for creating an “amazing” culture this season and for buying into the new system as they strive to win their first title.
