Adelaide United's Jeronimo Neumann confronts Victory's Jonathan Bru at Adelaide's Hindmarsh Stadium during the Reds' win last night. Picture: Sarah Reed Source: The Australian
THEIR coach was banished but Adelaide United's players bashed Melbourne Victory into submission in a rough-house 1-0 triumph in last night's A-League match.
Adelaide's Jeronimo Neumann scored the winner in a foul-tempered affair at Hindmarsh Stadium featuring six yellow cards and one red.
Ending a three-game losing streak, Adelaide rose to within a point of the second-placed Victory on the ladder, applying brutal tactics to their arch-rivals, which lost star striker Archie Thompson to injury.
The Reds copped five yellow cards in the first 40 minutes, resulting in caretaker coach Michael Valkanis snapping at referees. He was sent from the sidelines, and Neumann scored as he was marching down the tunnel.
Neumann leapt high to meet Dario Vidosic's sweet, sweeping cross from near the by-line, the Argentine crunching a close-range header into the net in the 42nd minute.
Adelaide celebrated wildly, suitable given its testy first-half mood in which it aggressively knocked Victory off-course. The Reds saved special force for their former teammate and now Melbourne playmaker Marcos Flores, who was fouled five times in the first half.
Adelaide's tactics worked: Victory failed to register a single shot at goal in an opening half marred by Thompson's 35th-minute departure with a cramped left hamstring and back spasms.
Ironically, it was Melbourne that went a player down when defender Adama Traore copped a straight red card for a late tackle on Jon McKain in the 75th minute.
Victory had recorded its first shot at goal some four minutes earlier when Marcos Rojas sprayed a speculative right-footer metres wide of the target.
Melbourne logged just three scoring attempts for the match, with just one on target.
Valkanis said his first win as coach since replacing John Kosmina two weeks ago was important for the club.
"We needed to have this win because we have been through quite a bit in the last couple of weeks," Valkanis said.
"I really wanted the players to show that passion, that aggression, to win a game."
Melbourne Victory coach Ange Postecoglou was pleased with his team's composure in the face of Adelaide's hostility.
"It was physical," he said.
"When it's like that it is pretty hard to get a decent flow in a game, it's pretty disruptive, stop-start all the time," he said.
"It makes it hard to get any flow or rhythm into it which, from our perspective, is the kind of football we want to play."
Meanwhile, buoyed by a raft of re-signings, the Western Sydney Wanderers will make use of lessons learnt from their previous defeat to the Newcastle Jets to seek their fifth consecutive A-League win tonight.
The Jets are the only side besides the Central Coast Mariners that the fledging club is yet to prove itself against, and they're getting another chance to do so at Campbelltown Stadium.
In their round-six match, a strong Newcastle defence brought down the Wanderers in a gritty 2-1 victory at Parramatta Stadium.
Lessons have been learnt from that defeat and the Wanderers want to prove they have the mettle to keep their impressive run going. "It was one of those games we took as another building block," coach Tony Popovic said yesterday.
ADELAIDE UNITED 1 (Jeronimo Neumann 43m) MELBOURNE VICTORY 0 at Hindmarsh Stadium. Crowd: 12,029. Referee: Jarred Gillett.
AAP
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