Wednesday, April 20, 2011

Kruse to start against Tianjin

Posted April 19, 2011 15:02:00

Star striker Robbie Kruse will return to the Melbourne Victory starting line-up, as they seek a much-needed Asian Champions League win over Tianjin Teda on Wednesday night.


The bottom-placed Victory earned their first point in three group matches with a 1-1 away draw against the Chinese side on April 5, when substitute Kruse played a key role in erasing an early deficit.


That performance has given the Victory confidence they can take all three points in the return match at Docklands.


"We'll be going out there for three points straight from the kick-off," Victory's caretaker coach Mehmet Durakovic said.


"We'll be trying to get as many players as we can forward and create as many chances as we can, as much as we get did against Tianjin the other week.


"Hopefully we'll do that and hopefully we get the three points."


Kruse, who did not start in the last match partly because of a heavy pre-match travel schedule, will be pivotal after troubling the Tianjin defence.


"He absolutely did quite well when he came on, and you've got to reward the players for what they've done," Durakovic said.


Durakovic says with Archie Thompson and Isaka Cernak also in the side, there will be an attacking focus.


"We want to push up as much as we can, we want to push Robbie as much as we can forward, we want to push Isaka as much as we can forward, help Archie up there," he said.


"We'll be going with an attacking line-up, hopefully with three up front, so we'll see how we go."


Tianjin will be without their Serbian captain Marko Zoric, who was sent off in the last match for a crude tackle.


- AAP



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